Broken Age Needs More Money

[Schadrach]

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?

Or that DoubleFine are poor at managing time and money, to the point of failure.

For comparison, Shadowrun Returns is due out this month. It's a bit late (as are virtually all Kickstarters), but otherwise seems to be coming along swimmingly.

So far, I've had mostly good experiences with Kickstarter, aside from everything always being late and a couple of projects that utterly fail at shipping and logistics (still don't have my Ouya, Kanzume Goddess was pretty terrible about shipping too).

On the other hand, I think the way they handled it is quite good. They didn't try to back out of their commitment to the backers

They can't per KS TOS. They have to provide the pledge promises listed, or if they cannot or will not provide refunds to any backer that requests one. Note the important distinction between pledge promises and estimated delivery dates and what the KS TOS says about them (specifically that one must be met or refunds offered, the other is just an estimate).

I think that if established companies are going to start asking for Kickstarter cash then they need to offer shares or pieces of the profit.

KS TOS specifically disallows doing exactly that, mostly because KS doesn't want to get involved with the SEC in any fashion. Also, $1M limit on crowd funding via sale of shares.

The truth is that the fans are powerless once the donation period is over.

Mostly, but not entirely. If they failed to meet pledge promises (which are quite vague in this case), refunds can be demanded. But aside from that and generating bad PR, yeah, backers don't have a lot of influence.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

worries me a little for Massive Challice, and other nonDouble Fine Kickstarters i've backed

 

[Quellist]

What really ticks me off is they waited until the Massive Chalice kickstarter was complete to announce this. I think a lot of people (me included) would have been less keen to throw money at a studio thats, lets be honest, failing to deliver as promised.

I mean for fucks sake, these people got 8 frigging times what they asked for and NOW they say they dont have enough money for the game? Schaffer is supposed to be an industry veteran yet he cant complete even when he has far more money than he asked for? seriously?

Its honestly beginning to look to me like publishers are possibly needed by some studios to keep them in check and keep their feet on the ground. You know what they say about executive meddling, you only here about the bad stuff, never the times the publisher/producer/whatever gets involved and it turns out to be a good call.

 

[wulf3n]

I think this needs to happen, too many think Kickstarter is something it isn't.

Having said that, and after reading this thread, a lot don't seem to understand games development either.

 

[Norrdicus]

Or that DoubleFine are poor at managing time and money, to the point of failure.

For comparison, Shadowrun Returns is due out this month. It's a bit late (as are virtually all Kickstarters), but otherwise seems to be coming along swimmingly.

Not exactly swimmingly. The non-backer versions of the game will require DRM (deal with Microsoft, the Shadowrun license holder) and the second city promised as stretch goal will only be free for backers. Fingers crossed that the pricing of the DLC city won't be stupidly expensive compared to the content offered.

Not only that, but there were some other budgeting-related design decisions, like having no looting, which might fit the setting though, and checkpoint saves. The developer of Eschalon series managed to do both things while having only 1 dedicated employee, but whatever.

Still, Harebrained Schemes showed that they can balance their budget and develop their game in time, if nothing else.

 

[Entitled]

How do you start with a 400,000 budget and spunk away 3.3 million? I'll tell you how... by not giving a crap about the responsibility you have to your investors and being secure in the knowledge they'll give you more.

There was no 400,000 budget, it was pretty explicit from the pitch that at this point their only plan was to make some sort of adventure game, and 400.000 was the minimum to start developing something. But 3 million was the budget from day one of the actual development of the story and the design, that were started with that in mind.

Regardless of how they ended up running over that 3 million, at it's core it seems to be a lot more responsible to the "investors" to actually spend all that 3 million on the game, than to pocket most of the money and push out a low-budget flash-based novelty game put together by Schafer and five other guys in six months, which is pretty much what you would have been getting for $400.000.

Double Fine are using their fans to keep them afloat. That's not cool.

They are tyring to sell more copies of a game to new people, to stay afloat.

Compared to the old-fashioned industry, where a developer running out of money would have done the same game-splitting, but by actually selling it twice for all the fans, this is positively benign.

Microïds also divided Syberia into two games, except that they also sold it twice to the whole fandom. Compared to that, putting up an Early Access for it and hoping that more people will bu the overall game if they have something tangible to download directly instead of just pre-ordering, is closer to Minecraft selling betas, than even to that.

It seems to me that your compaints are more directed at how you feel about "the spirit of Kickstarter" in general, than at any actual probem with this particular move that we have been reading about here. Games have always been running over their budgets, they always used tricks to make more money, some of these put a disproportionally harsher burden on the most supportive fans , some of them didn't. This is the latter.

 

[Irridium]

Welcome to game development folks! Where sometimes things go wrong, things change, and sometimes things just fall apart. This is what happens, and Schafer even warned that things could go horribly wrong.

This has always happened in game development. Only this time we get to see it.

 

[Eric the Orange]

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?

I never said they would get enough money. In fact I sincerely doubt that as they would need 300K sales to make how much they think they need. And most of the people who are going to buy the game have already bought it.

What I mean is that when it goes up on Steam early access for the first half of the game, people who backed the game will be able to play what they put up without paying any more.

 

[Eric the Orange]

So... what's the problem? He's coming out with the first half off the game so we can play something and they can start reaping revenue sooner. We all still get the game and we get part of it sooner.

I don't understand the hate.

Are you people getting dumber or just louder?

The problem is they overshot there mark. They had 3m to make a game and only made the first half with that money. What people are mad about is the poor planning on Schafers part, He should have made a smaller contained game with the money given.

 

[Eric the Orange]

They (Double Fine) wouldn't get the money they want for these projects within the industry because they're going massively over-budget and they have a team that is far too big for their financial power.

Hindsight my friend. You can't just assume any publisher would have been like "psh, these double fine chaps will go over budget on this game, so we shant give them our money"(he's English for some reason.)

 

[Entitled]

So... what's the problem? He's coming out with the first half off the game so we can play something and they can start reaping revenue sooner. We all still get the game and we get part of it sooner.

I don't understand the hate.

Are you people getting dumber or just louder?

The problem is they overshot there mark. They had 3m to make a game and only made the first half with that money. What people are mad about is the poor planning on Schafers part, He should have made a smaller contained game with the money given.

Given that even that "first half" is far bigger than what they could have made from 400.000, and then there is another half coming soon after it, I can't see how this is actually worse than if they would have sticked to a smaller game, unless you are imptient to have this project finished asap, which I haven't seen anyone arguing for.

 

[Excludos]

How did no one see this coming? Sad thing is if you would replace the name Schafer w/ Molyneaux you would practically have people jumping for joy. But because it is Schafer and that automatically bestows a wealth of undue cred of course this will get played up like some sort of tragedy.

Well I feel sorry for those who funded, but hope you can find a means to be satisfied with the half of game that will be delivered for your full investment.

Captcha: Hear hear!

Seriously. Doesn't anyone actually know how to READ?!

All backers of kickstarter gets early beta access before the game goes on steam. Then, a few months down the line, they get the remaining game. This is only a way for Double Fine to sell the game to people before its actually done, by splitting it in two parts. But you still get BOTH parts!

This isn't a tragedy, this is brilliance. This way they're not fucking with the people who payed for the kickstarter, and we get a better game out of it.

For those who says that "but he got so much more than the 400 000 he initially asked for!". Yes, this is true. But believe it or not Tim and double fine didn't actually have a plan for what game they where going to make when they kickstarted this. All they knew was that it was going to be an adventure game. They even talked about reusing an old engine to keep the cost down. When they got 8 times what they asked, the scope of the game rose swiftly. They made their own engine, their own art, assets, sounds, everything. Tim got a bit carried away and made a game too big.

For those who actually backed and are complaining, you should really watch the 2pp behind the scenes video. They show very nicely how a company makes a game, and where it started going wrong with the budget on this one. But hey, that was part of the kickstarter too, remember? "If all goes to plan, or if it fails spectacularly, it will all be recorded for you to see. Everybody wins!".

Seriously. I'm ashamed that Andy would indicate that this is dodgy in any way, just for a few more angry comments and click on an article.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I don't see the problem here(and I'm a backer). Backers pay nothing extra, more people are given an opportunity to back the project through the Early Access program, and the end result will presumably be better than what we would have gotten otherwise. This is little different than games that continued to take pledges on their own sites after being funded by Kickstarter.

I can't see this as anything other than a win, personally.

 

[Excludos]

So... what's the problem? He's coming out with the first half off the game so we can play something and they can start reaping revenue sooner. We all still get the game and we get part of it sooner.

I don't understand the hate.

Are you people getting dumber or just louder?

Assuming they earn enough to actually finish producing the game which I see not happening really. I'm sure a lot of people aren't going to want to pay upfront for a bit of a game and hope they get the rest later. Considering he said they'd have to cut 75% that worries me. They made 25% of their intended game with 800% of their intended budget? How much money will they need to finish it?

No. They said they would HAVE to cut 75% of the game if they didn't do this. This way, we get all the game.

Read my answer above to what they did with their 800% money. They didn't just go "lol! I'll buy a house in Hawaii for this!".

 

[Eric the Orange]

So... what's the problem? He's coming out with the first half off the game so we can play something and they can start reaping revenue sooner. We all still get the game and we get part of it sooner.

I don't understand the hate.

Are you people getting dumber or just louder?

The problem is they overshot there mark. They had 3m to make a game and only made the first half with that money. What people are mad about is the poor planning on Schafers part, He should have made a smaller contained game with the money given.

Given that even that "first half" is far bigger than what they could have made from 400.000, and then there is another half coming soon after it, I can't see how this is actually worse than if they would have sticked to a smaller game, unless you are imptient to have this project finished asap, which I haven't seen anyone arguing for.

The problem is he probably won't get that money. In the kick starter video he said he'd need another 3m to finish the second half. So assuming they sell the early access for 15$, take off 5$ for steams cut, that means they need 300k sales, and those won't be from the backers who would be the core fan base (of which there were only 90k btw). So it seems extremely unlikely that this game will be finished as he wants it to be.

 

[Excludos]

@Shadrach I understand that it is not supported by Kickstarter but if the devs are just going to use crowdfunding as a way of absolving themselves of all accountability then it should definitely be implemented somewhere. It's the only way to stop this sort of poor practice happening and it's more than deserved when it comes to established companies/dev teams using Kickstarter.

@Quellist I said that repeatedly when they launched the Massive Chalice campaign and none of my friends paid any attention to me. I told people not to invest in it when they didn't even have any proof of managing their time or budget well with the last project. Guess I was right. Plus the justification for the Massive Chalice funding was ridiculous... "we have too many developers, we needed another game for the rest of the team to work on". If you cannot afford the talent you have then you have to downsize your team/company. Yes, it's unfortunate and regrettable but that's the way the world works. I can't (and wouldn't even if I could) go on Kickstarter and have people subsidise my wage if I get hit with redundancy, why should they?

You are way out of your depth and don't know shit about game development. I suggest stop attempting to sound like you do. This is normal for 90% of games that come out. This just happened to be out in the media, because thats what Tim himself wanted. He wanted to let people know how games are made, and the walls they stumble upon. There's a problem with either one thing, or another. This time, it happened to be Tim making too big of a game to the budget, so he starts looking elsewhere for money so he can deliver on the game that he promised. As long as you don't end up paying more for the end product, I don't see how this is somehow bad for you?

 

[Nikolaz72]

How did no one see this coming? Sad thing is if you would replace the name Schafer w/ Molyneaux you would practically have people jumping for joy. But because it is Schafer and that automatically bestows a wealth of undue cred of course this will get played up like some sort of tragedy.

Well I feel sorry for those who funded, but hope you can find a means to be satisfied with the half of game that will be delivered for your full investment.

Captcha: Hear hear!

full game for full investment.

Can't believe the people who don't read the entire story.

 

[Excludos]

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.

Budget for game 2 is separate from the budget of game 1. Hell. The entire team on game 2 is different from game 1.