Spacebase DF-9 Recovers $400,000 Investment In Two Weeks

[Andy Chalk]

Spacebase DF-9 Recovers $400,000 Investment In Two Weeks

It took Double Fine just two weeks to recover the complete $400,000 external investment in Spacebase DF-9.

A $400,000 development budget may not sound like much compared to the money spent on triple-A titles like Modern Warfare or BioShock, but it's a lot of coin for an indie studio and a bit beyond the reach of the Indie Fund. So to support the development of Spacebase DF-9, the space station simulator announced by Double Fine in October [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/128723-Double-Fine-Reveals-Spacebase-DF-9], the Indie Fund teamed up with Humble Bundle, Hemisphere Games, make all, AppAbove Games, Adam Saltsman, The Behemoth, Morgan Webb and Rob Reid to cover the cost.

The good news for all involved is that it took just two weeks for the open alpha version of the game to earn back the entire $400,000 investment. 85 percent of the revenue came from Steam Early Access, according to an Indie Fund blog post, while the balance was earned through direct sales.

"This is an important milestone for us because the success of this experiment opens the door for us to support more projects of this magnitude in the future. To be clear, this won't affect the number of smaller projects we fund. Our bottleneck has always been finding promising projects to invest in, not lack of funds," the message states. "It also provides an encouraging data point about bringing together larger groups of people to support larger projects, and we are mulling over what this might mean for the future of Indie Fund."

Founded [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98792-Indie-Developers-Create-the-Indie-Fund-to-Help-Other-Indie-Developers] by indie developers Jonathan Blow, Ron Carmel, Kyle Gabler, Aaron Isaksen, Kellee Santiago, Nathan Vella and Matthew Wegner, the Indie Fund is a simple, flexible source of investment for independent game developers. The fund has previously supported Q.U.B.E, Antichamber and Dear Esther.

Source: The Indie Fund [http://indie-fund.com/2013/11/spacebase-df-9-recoups-investment-in-two-weeks/]


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[Therumancer]

That's good news I suppose, but to be honest I've been a bit wary of Double Fine recently, I'm pretty sure that I remembered reading that despite having blown away the initial funding goals by a crazy amount, they managed to basically bankrupt their "Adventure Game" project and were trying to secure more donations. If I remember that correctly, I don't think I ever did hear how they managed to wiggle out of that nightmare, since I would have been pretty POed had I been one of the original backers for that project.

It's good to hear this current project is doing well, but at the same time I do have some concerns about how they will actually use that money, alpha aside, and honestly I'm not sure if Doublefine should be developing more than one project at once at the moment.

That's just my thoughts on the subject. On principle I Don't think a company doing crowdfunding should be collecting for more than one project at a time, though I suppose I shouldn't be saying that since I did donate to two different projects by InXile.

 

[Branovices]

That's just my thoughts on the subject. On principle I Don't think a company doing crowdfunding should be collecting for more than one project at a time, though I suppose I shouldn't be saying that since I did donate to two different projects by InXile.

They have more than one team of developers at the company. It isn't as though everyone there all work on the same thing at once.

 

[Therumancer]

That's just my thoughts on the subject. On principle I Don't think a company doing crowdfunding should be collecting for more than one project at a time, though I suppose I shouldn't be saying that since I did donate to two different projects by InXile.

They have more than one team of developers at the company. It isn't as though everyone there all work on the same thing at once.

Yes, however the financial problems are all under the "Doublefine" name which includes those dev teams.

Besides which I think a company like this that is large enough to juggle multiple development teams and projects shouldn't really be considered indie or be using crowdfunding tools. On some levels it seems almost like Tim Schaefer is trying to act like a bigger publisher while maintaining an indie hat for PR purposes and public support.

I don't like it, but as I said, I did back InXile doing multiple projects, so I suppose I can't claim to take an ultra hard line. Truthfully though InXile did seem to say at one point they wouldn't be starting development in earnest for "Tides Of Numinerra" until "Wasteland 2" was done. As a result I don't think they are dividing their efforts the same way, just planning ahead to their next project so it will be ready when they are done with their current one.

That said the gist of the point wasn't so much about developing two games in of itself, so much as starting another project when the first one is under such scrutiny. Given that this is all "indie" and crowd funded, to me at least it seems Tim Schaefer and his company are shadier and shadier every day... which is sad because I like Tim's work.

 

[MasterProcrastinator]

That's good news I suppose, but to be honest I've been a bit wary of Double Fine recently, I'm pretty sure that I remembered reading that despite having blown away the initial funding goals by a crazy amount, they managed to basically bankrupt their "Adventure Game" project and were trying to secure more donations. If I remember that correctly, I don't think I ever did hear how they managed to wiggle out of that nightmare, since I would have been pretty POed had I been one of the original backers for that project.

I'm one of them, and I'm not annoyed at all. Being a backer comes with the deal of watching the project's development unfold, meaning we all got to see exactly how they got themselves into this apparent pickle... and it's not anywhere near as scary as it seems. They overshot big-time, for sure, but it was done through artistic ambition (they "created too much game", as Tim put it), and not just reckless misspending. And Tim mentioned that this has happened on a few projects he's been on, and it's not an uncommon case. In fact, Frictional Games got themselves into a similar situation [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9011-The-Terrifying-Tale-of-Amnesia] with 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent', and things worked out okay there. In circumstances like this, it's just a matter of finding a workaround, and thankfully Double Fine has already done that. We're still all gonna get the game we were promised; the only uncertain variable is how long that's gonna take (which will depend on how well the first half of the game sells).

There's not too much to worry about here, honestly. The video game media has really ramped up the supposed 'drama' on this occasion, and certainly twisted things in an unflattering way for the purpose of sensationalism. Tim summed it up quite nicely in one of the private documentary episodes, with the quote "We're making a bigger game than we Kickstarted. We're delivering it later, but we're paying with our own money for it, and doing early access to fund the rest of it. And then to have that framed as a total scam and a rip-off [...] is kinda mind-boggling.".

 

[Robeltu]

I think that's pretty great news to be honest. Double Fine are one of my favourite companies as each of their games appeal to a niche genre which can be very risky business wise. I've been playing the crap out of Spacebase and looking forward to future updates as well as Massive Chalice.

Strangely enough I don't really care for Broken Age and wish they'd tone down the scope of that game and increase the team sizes of their other games.

Also Brutal Legend PC DLC would be great

 

[Sight Unseen]

That's good news I suppose, but to be honest I've been a bit wary of Double Fine recently, I'm pretty sure that I remembered reading that despite having blown away the initial funding goals by a crazy amount, they managed to basically bankrupt their "Adventure Game" project and were trying to secure more donations. If I remember that correctly, I don't think I ever did hear how they managed to wiggle out of that nightmare, since I would have been pretty POed had I been one of the original backers for that project.

It's good to hear this current project is doing well, but at the same time I do have some concerns about how they will actually use that money, alpha aside, and honestly I'm not sure if Doublefine should be developing more than one project at once at the moment.

That's just my thoughts on the subject. On principle I Don't think a company doing crowdfunding should be collecting for more than one project at a time, though I suppose I shouldn't be saying that since I did donate to two different projects by InXile.

Double Fine backer here (both projects in fact) and I can say that I'm not frustrated at all with them because they've been completely transparent with us backers the entire way along and this whole thing has been blown way out of proportion by gaming media. For lack of time I can't go into the specific details but if you'd like me to be more thorough just leave a reply and I'd be happy to explain this from a backer perspective when I have a chance

OT: Good on double fine for recouping so fast, I was considering this game but I already have way too many games to play.

 

[Siege_TF]

Why is everyone in my base SOOOO sad? I have a pub, I have real food, I have monitors, I have beds, and all the necessary staff, but they're all still hungry, bored, and lonely. Also big pathing and priority issues.