Broken Age Needs More Money

[MasterProcrastinator]

Oy... that's 3 million dollars+ however much you've gotten from humble bundles (which I think went over a million) and from other sales. I get you dont' want to dip into dangerous levels but thats quite a bit. And you only got 1.3 million for Massive Chalice? How the hell are you going to fund that if potentially 4 million isn't enough?

Well, among other things...

[...]Broken Age was made so expensive by making all these new art assets for everything, whereas Massive Chalice should, by its very nature of being a tactical rpg, reuse much of what they create quite often.

 

[Abomination]

I'm starting to feel concerned about my Massive Chalice kickstarter backing.

This reminds me of those people who win the lottery then find themselves 6 years later in a worse financial situation than they were before they won the lottery.

 

[dragongit]

Oy... that's 3 million dollars+ however much you've gotten from humble bundles (which I think went over a million) and from other sales. I get you dont' want to dip into dangerous levels but thats quite a bit. And you only got 1.3 million for Massive Chalice? How the hell are you going to fund that if potentially 4 million isn't enough?

Well, among other things...

[...]Broken Age was made so expensive by making all these new art assets for everything, whereas Massive Chalice should, by its very nature of being a tactical rpg, reuse much of what they create quite often.

Well ok, but it's still a matter of art assets to be made and the writing. I could imagine Massive Chalice costing a whole lot more then 1 million. The article even stated that to release by 2015 and be on budget they would have to cut 75% of the game out, or reduce the art assets. That means the game would need well over 10 million to reach the vision they desire (I assume that means a massive amount of hiring) . Thats quite a lot more then their original vision of 400K. I just hope they aren't trying to bite off more then they can chew to the point where the project might collapse in upon itself. I still will have faith this project can be awesome. I didn't kickstart it sadly at the time, but I'll hopefully contribute if it does come to early access.

 

[MasterProcrastinator]

I'm sure they'll learn from this experience. I can't see this happening twice; they'll be trying to avoid it at all cost. Even for this to happen once is a huge blow to the company's reputation.

 

[Razhem]

The problem with the artsy types, they have no idea how to use a calculator...

I'm pretty sure if "double fine" wasn't on the title, people right now would be screaming bloody murder. That your company has made some awesome imaginative games does not mean you get a free pass at this sort of bullshit. And yes, you original backers will get the full game IF they can get the funding for the second half, or at least that's what the small text seems to imply. And that brings the other question, how much do they need and how much will they actually end up using to finish their "vision"?

I mean, increasing scope is all nice and dandy but not when it ends up like this. And it seems they have gone waaay over the adapted budget too or they wouldn't be asking for more money out front.

 

[tautologico]

Stuff like this happens all the time with software projects. The thing is that we never saw it happening before our eyes because publishers simply said to the press "release date for game X is delayed to date Y" and everyone accepts that. But no one really knows why the delay. In such a situation a developer would go to the publisher to ask for more money and more time, and the publisher could just cancel the project, force a reduction of scope or quality, or believe in the developer and give the extensions. Again, we never saw this happening before because it was "behind walls", but with Kickstarter wee see all this.

Yes, this was clearly a planning mistake from Double Fine and Tim Shafer. But these things happen even to experienced devs. This just serves to remind people that Kickstarter is always a risk.

I like what I've saw so far in the development videos. They have provided me with a lot more entertainment than my pledge money is worth. Of course I'm not thrilled with the news but I don't think it is necessary to be overly harsh with Double Fine.

EDIT: Oh, and the "they got 8x what they asked for!" complaint is not entirely reasonable. The game's scope and production also increased a lot from the original idea. The original pitch was for a simple and small adventure game, something that could be done with 300k (100k was for the documentary). The game they're developing now is much, much bigger, and with higher production values (more/better art, voice acting, etc). As I said it was a planning mistake and they ended up with a much more ambitious game than what was possible with 3M, but if they just delivered the originally-planned 300k simple adventure a lot of people would be pissed. It's hard to manage expectations and project scope when funding is so much bigger than expected.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Had a feeling something like this is coming when they said money is getting thin months back and it was bound to happen that people see sometimes developments aren't finished on time which also means more bills need paying and more money needs spending.

Now we land at the awful predicament I warned about as they never defined what people will actually get for their money, there was a full game implied but what that now means is anyones guess.

 

[Entitled]

Now we land at the awful predicament I warned about as they never defined what people will actually get for their money, there was a full game implied but what that now means is anyones guess.

It still means a full game. RTFA.

They make more money by selling the first half of the game on Early Access, but backers already have access to that.

 

[Dogstile]

He should have just gone "fuck it" and considered the extra funds as pre-orders. That way nobody gets pissed and he doesn't have to make a bigger game.

 

[MasterProcrastinator]

He should have just gone "fuck it" and considered the extra funds as pre-orders. That way nobody gets pissed and he doesn't have to make a bigger game.

Making a bigger game isn't something that Tim 'had to do'; it's something Tim wanted to do, and something he probably would've jumped at as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

 

[Dryk]

Understandable but unfortunate

Is it really that hard to work within a given budget? Especially when said budget was 800% the size of what you originally expected to get?

It's actually harder that way. People get into trouble all the time because they have what appears to be more money than they know what to do with and manage to spend it all.

 

[Gizen]

So, anyone else immediately think that this is anecdotal evidence that maybe it's not actually the publishers that are artificially inflating game development costs?

Is it really that hard to work within a given budget? Especially when said budget was 800% the size of what you originally expected to get?

It was never JUST the publishers. The majority of those in game development have never been able to work within a budget, because your average game developer is not good enough with money to understand when it's time to scale back on their own. Hell, just look at Duke Nukem Forever, which took 12 years to release crap because they had a ton of money that was all their own and they didn't know how to use it properly, and just kept adding things non-stop and/or restarting the whole project from scratch.

The issue why publishers get so much of the blame is that, just as developers don't understand how to spend money wisely, your average publisher doesn't understand how to make a game properly. Their lack of knowledge causes them to either be incapable of properly reigning in a bloated development team at all, or, in their attempt to control the reigns and keep costs manageble, they'll forcibly steer the developers in a bad direction that results in a worse game, which is often how we get shitty clones of popular games instead of new ones.

The problem is that both publishers AND developers are incredibly shitty at money management. There needs to be more developers who know how to properly allocate resources, and more publishers who actually have experience making games personally and know wtf to do.

 

[lancar]

While I can understand the devs situation, I can't really condone the practice. This particular kickstarter may have to serve as a warning to others to be sensible with their spending, since obviously Tim wasn't, regardless of how it goes.

Still, I do hope they'll finish & release the game as promised. It'd be very damaging to this business model if one of the kickstarters that popularized it all crashed and burned.

 

[Eric the Orange]

I gave you the money you asked for in the belief that I wouldn't need to provide more. Considering all the money the Kickstarter made it should have been enough. Now I'm supposed to give you more money for only half of the game (that's only in, essentially, beta) so the other half can get made and all because you got kind of full of yourself and spent more money making a game bigger than it should have been thereby stretching yourself too thin all because of your "big ideas"? Tim, you've done some amazing work, but, respectfully "(bleep) you."

If you already backed it you don't have to pay anything more. The people paying will be those that did not back it.

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

I like how he says they weren't greedy with a second kickstarter, and then the next news is how they fucked up the first one and need more money. I'm so glad I didn't contribute to either.

 

[Kahani]

"How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story?"

Yes. Obviously. Or, more accurately, you shouldn't have got to the point where anything needs to be cut at all. It is irrelevant how many "sad faces" might be around, if you only have the budget to do a certain amount, then that's what you do.

If you already backed it you don't have to pay anything more. The people paying will be those that did not back it.

Assuming they get enough money from people buying half a game to finish the other half. If more than 8* their original budget wasn't enough, how much more do they need and what are the chances of them actually getting it?