Notch Decides Not To Back Psychonauts 2

[Andy Chalk]

Notch Decides Not To Back Psychonauts 2

The $18 million price tag on Psychonauts 2 left Minecraft mastermind Markus "Notch" Persson with a serious case of sticker shock.

Back in February, Notch set the world (or at least our little part of it) on fire when he Psychonauts [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115713-Notch-Volunteers-to-Fund-Psychonauts-Sequel-UPDATED] creator Tim Schafer to say, "Let's make Psychonauts 2 happen." Was he serious? "I'm serious," he tweeted shortly thereafter.

A week later things got even more serious when Schafer claimed that Notch had expressed no reservations [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115853-Notch-Still-Good-for-Psychonauts-2-UPDATED] about a $13 million budget for the game. "As soon as I mentioned the amount of money he said, 'Yeah, I can do that'," Schafer said.

But now it seems that the ugliness of reality has set in and Notch is having second thoughts, not just about the money but about the effort involved in throwing around that kind of bankroll. "I somewhat naively thought 'a couple of million' was two million. I had no doubt in my mind that a Psychonauts 2 would earn that money back easily," he recently wrote on Reddit.

"Turns out they wanted 18 million dollars, haha. I don't have the time at the moment to even try to get educated enough to make an eighteen million dollar deal. Perhaps in some distant future when I'm no longer trying to make games, I could get into angel investing," he continued. "I've made one private investment into a game so far, at 100k, and it's frankly a lot more work than I thought."

It's hard to have a whole lot of sympathy for a guy who's biggest problem with an $18 million deal isn't the $18 million but the hassle of setting it all up, and the comment about assuming that "'a couple of million' was two million" doesn't at all jibe with what Schafer said a year ago. But you can't really blame the guy for not wanting to throw away 18 million bucks just to impress strangers on the internet, either. Regardless of how you want to look at it (and let's be honest, criticizing Notch with any degree of seriousness for having a change of heart on this would be awfully silly), the bottom line remains the same: For the foreseeable future, the Psychonauts 2 brakes have been firmly applied.

Source: Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/17pi2e/notch_earned_101_million_usd_from_minecraft_in/c87rvfe]


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[Erttheking]

Why is it I'm getting to feeling that everyone is going to hate Notch now?

 

[Avaholic03]

Disappointing, but not all that surprising.

However, it doesn't eliminate the possibility that Notch could fund part of the game while allowing the rest to be financed through other methods such as crowd funding.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Awww. Can totally get why he wouldn't want to just splurge all that cash on it though.

 

[Fappy]

Notch was just blowing smoke back when he thought he was the King of the World. Now that things have settled down and he has a more realistic understanding of business and the industry, he likely realizes the claim he made back then was never going to fly. I'm not convinced he actually wants to run a company big enough to make 18-million-dollar investments to begin with.

 

[Harker067]

I understand why Notch doesn't feel up to bankrolling such a big project and no hard feelings towards him at all.....

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but I REALLY WANT PSYCHONAUGHTS 2 WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

[Scars Unseen]

You know what? As much as I wanted the deal to go through, I can't help but laugh at the thought of indie champion Notch backing out of one $18 million dollar deal, when the 'evil' triple-A publishers go through with deals like that all the time.

I mean, $18 million isn't even a lot by current standards. That's the low end of the development budget today. And Notch should know that. If he honestly thought Double Fine would have been able to make a fully rendered 3D platformer with the same scale and scope as the original, for a couple of million dollars... how does a guy like that end up being one of the major indie players in the industry? I could have told you right from the outset that it would take more than a couple of million dollars to make a Psychonauts 2. A couple of million isn't enough for three-dimensional platformers. A couple of million is what you spend when you're making a high end 2.5D RPG like Project Eternity, or a sidescrolling 2D platformer.

Seriously, how could such a major industry player be so naive as to how much it would cost to make such a game?

And for the record... I'm kind of ok with not having a Psychonauts 2. It would have been nice, but I'm ok without it. Perhaps it's for the best. The original was such a unique game of its period, and so much time has passed since it came out, I think it would be best to leave it be. Not every good game needs a sequel. Some of the best games are the ones which stand alone, as a statement of where the industry was at the time. Hopefully, Double Fine will be able to continue working on original, creative games, as they're far too good to be shackled to one game or series.

$18 million isn't a lot? Maybe by AAA publisher standards where they spend ludicrously excessive amounts of cash on administrative costs and marketing. Chris Roberts brought up a chart of manpower costs when he was explaining why he was asking for as much money as he was for Star Citizen. Let's look at that, shall we?

So the total cost(including equipment and software) for a member of a game development team(aside from those QA peasants) is around $127,571 per year. So let's assume a long development time: 5 years. $18M would pay for a 28 man team for 5 years. Frankly, I think that 28 people may be a bit of overkill for a platformer, as is a 5 year development cycle. $18M is quite a lot of money when you don't have to feed CEOs and plaster your game's image on every major television network every 10 minutes.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

Normally I wouldn't bat an eye and simply say "Yeah, that's reasonable. I know I would be cautious with that much money.", but yesterday's announcement now has me confused. After all, an $18 million backing is a good way to spend your fortune that you yourself said you didn't know what to do with. If it was "I decided to spend this $18 million to help fund lesser known projects" that would be one thing, but now I'm just confused.

 

[thiosk]

Good.

I've been saying for two years now that the guy better show some fiscal restraint, because i doubt 0xTC is going to have the same kind of legs as minecraft.

If lightening strikes, make sure you can live out your years not in a gutter before frittering it away and hoping for a second bolt.

 

[Yellowfish]

Okay, so I noticed "Psychonauts 2" in the article's title and got really, really excited. I thought that maybe the game's already in development and the devs are using Kickstarter and Notch decided not to back it for some reason. Then I read the whole article.
I think I'll go shoot myself or something.

 

[Remus]

Yes he has a lot of new money. No he does not want to invest it in an IP that has a poor track record for income returns. Can you blame him for not wanting to make an investment that is questionable at best and potentially high risk, low benefit? Oh wait this is the internet. Of course you can. There's a difference between investing in a game project and creating or investing into a charity. With charities you can immediately see the results and whether or not that money was squandered to the heads or actually used as it was meant to be. This is a business proposition, plain and simple. There's a reason why the AAA publishers haven't invested into this project. Why should the new money then do it?

 

[BX3]

"I somewhat naively thought 'a couple of million' was two million. I had no doubt in my mind that a Psychonauts 2 would earn that money back easily,"

I have a feeling he's just afraid it's not gonna sell... again....

 

[hatok]

I don't why he's being villainized so much, honestly. Yeah, it sucks that he went back on his word, and his reasoning is kind of meh.
But you can't really say 'just' 18 million dollars. That's a lot.
It doesn't matter how much that is relatively speaking, that's a tonne of money to be casually thrown around

 

[ThriKreen]

So the total cost(including equipment and software) for a member of a game development team(aside from those QA peasants) is around $127,571 per year. So let's assume a long development time: 5 years. $18M would pay for a 28 man team for 5 years. Frankly, I think that 28 people may be a bit of overkill for a platformer, as is a 5 year development cycle. $18M is quite a lot of money when you don't have to feed CEOs and plaster your game's image on every major television network every 10 minutes.

Excessive? You still need to pay for the building lease and maintenance of the office, the support staff for IT, admin for managing paperwork for benefits and stuff (do you want to deal with the paper work and also work on the game too?) and of course, and you always need to advertise to drum up interest and such - sending people to cons and expos, paying for booths and displays. Heck, even a person with a camera for the "Making of..." video.

And oh yeah, Doublefine is based in San Francisco which is like the most expensive city to live and work in. So you'd probably doubling the cost of those averages listed.

There's a lot of back end costs people just simply aren't aware of in the game dev industry.

 

[mjc0961]

k. We knew this last year when Notch changed his mind like an asshat and said he was just joking right after claiming he was serious. And thus also no, it is not silly to be upset with him over it. You don't say "I'm serious" and then turn around and say "I was just joking and everyone took it seriously for no reason wah wah wah!" unless you want people to think you're an asshole.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOtch!

And seriously: I don't blame him(even though he took my hope away after arousing it) - it's his cash. His lots of cash.
But isn't 18M a relatively small budget nowadays? Even when we talk about a game that isn't necessarily in AAA segment?

 

[Jamous]

I understand why Notch doesn't feel up to bankrolling such a big project and no hard feelings towards him at all.....

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but I REALLY WANT PSYCHONAUGHTS 2 WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

And you have summed up quite possibly everyone's thoughts in a nutshell. I salute you.