Broken Age Needs More Money

[Genocidicles]

Such is the cost of keeping the businessmen out of game making.

 

[Clankenbeard]

As a backer, I read this article as "you now have to wait a little longer to get your game." I am not enraged. Doublefine has done a lot of internal work to raise more money for the studio. They were successful with their recent release of "The Cave", brought in money with an Indie Bundle, and found ways to get their older titles to new audiences like releasing Brutal Legend on Steam. They have brought in money people to help them find these avenues to get more cash.

My bottom lines are twofold:
1. I want the game that Tim wants to make.
2. I want to continue watching the 2Player videos of the process. It is fascinating.

Accountants and efficient project managers could have made a game on time and on budget. And I would have already played it, been underwhelmed, and forgotten about it by now. I'm hoping for the friggin' Sisteen Chapel ceiling here and I'm willing to wait for them to do whatever financial backflips are necessary. That being said, I paid for my part of the project. If Michelangelo wants to do more than a single coat of satin finish white, he needs to find his own way to pay for the brushes and paint. He seems to be working this out.

 

[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.

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

So? I know that. It doesn't change anything.

 

[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.

So? I know that. It doesn't change anything.

You say they are being greedy for making a second Kickstarter with a completely different team. Thats like saying EA is greedy for making a game at the same time as Ubisoft. There is no connection except they work under the same roof. They're not doing the second kickstarter to get money for the first game or the company at large. They're doing it because they have half a team they don't want to fire, and Massive Chalice looks like a great idea.

 

[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.

It is dodgy that's the thing. It's asking you to pay for a game and just have faith that it'll be finished. He has to actually earn the money to finish the game? What if he doesn't and people have already paid for an unfinished game?

Thats how kickstarters work. They ask for money and ask people to have faith in the project. Its not our problem that Tim has overblown the budget, thats their problem. And he's fixing it by releasing it to the public through early access on steam. We still get the same end product we where promised (by the looks of it we get a lot better end game product than what we where promised tbh). It doens't make a single difference for any of us, except we have to wait a bit longer for the full game, which I'm perfectly happy to wait for.

 

[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.

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

So? I know that. It doesn't change anything.

You say they are being greedy for making a second Kickstarter with a completely different team. Thats like saying EA is greedy for making a game at the same time as Ubisoft. There is no connection except they work under the same roof. They're not doing the second kickstarter to get money for the first game or the company at large. They're doing it because they have half a team they don't want to fire, and Massive Chalice looks like a great idea.

Haha, no, it's not. Besides, they just showed they don't know how to handle money, after asking for even more of it. You don't ask for 400.000, get eight times more and manage to fuck it up anyway, unless you're incompetent. Massive Chalice looks like Fire Emblem Awakening to me, except it'll likely not be as good.

 

[Neonit]

Is it wrong that at first i though this was a pun at the cost of dragon age?

ot: i have to wonder how much of financial trouble they would be in, if they would get only the targeted amount of money.
i have done some software development in my time, i know whats its like to want to add "just one more thing".... But damn, thats like sin no 1. experienced people should know better.

Unless, it is planned, and they did their budget ASSUMING that they will get that extra money. We will never know.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Broken Age Needs More Money

Tim Schafer has revealed that Broken Age will be split into two chapters, so the first half can be sold through Steam Early Access in order to fund the development of the second half.

When Broken Age hit Kickstarter as the Double Fine Adventure [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fine-adventure] in early 2012, it had what appeared to be a hefty funding goal of $400,000. A month later, it had brought in more than eight times that amount from adventure fans eager for something new from Tim Schafer - over $3.3 million. Yet somehow, that now isn't enough; Schafer said in a message to backers today that blowing away the original funding target "didn't stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money."

A long, hard look at the numbers made it clear that the only way the team would be able to get the game out the door more or less on time - it was on track to be fully release-ready sometime in 2015 - and within budget would be to cut the content by roughly 75 percent. "What would be left?" Schafer wrote. "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? Yikes! Sad faces all around."

Schafer said going to a publisher for funding was out of the question "because it would violate the spirit of the Kickstarter," and another Kickstarter round didn't seem right either. Thus the current plan to make some "modest" cuts to the game to have the first half ready by January, and then release it through Steam Early Access.

"We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May," Schafer explained.

"So, everybody gets to play the game sooner, and we don't have to cut the game down drastically. Backers still get the whole game this way - nobody has to pay again for the second half," he wrote. "And whatever date we start selling the early release, backers still have exclusive beta access before that, as promised in the Kickstarter."

I don't know much about game development and hey, things happen, but no matter how you frame it, this looks a little dodgy. It's not as though Double Fine just barely made its goal; it earned more than eight times what it said it needed to make its game. And yet now it needs more - a lot more - to get it across the finish line. That just does not look good.

Schafer's message was originally sent only to Double Fine Adventure backers, but you can read it in full at Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195509/Double_Fine_splits_Broken_Age_in_half_to_fund_completion.php].


Permalink

There just being gloomy. He said himself that he just made the game too big.

 

[Ian Kapsthan Frost]

If I recall correctly, then one of the big problem was the amount of money the rewards/shipping actually ended up costing. I think one of the early videos mentioned something around 400,000$ or more, although I can't recall this exactly. But as far as I know this was also why they focused so heavily on digital rewards with Massive Chalice.

This is not really an excuse though, since they knew about this pretty early and should have already considered reducing the scope then.

Somehow I am still puzzled why it is taking them so long to develop the game, especially since Tim Schafer has lots and lots of experience working on 2D Adventure games. Sure, the art is really great and certainly takes time to create, but it still seems weird for it to take that long and be that expensive. I mean, are all 2D games that expensive to make nowadays?

 

[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.

It is dodgy that's the thing. It's asking you to pay for a game and just have faith that it'll be finished. He has to actually earn the money to finish the game? What if he doesn't and people have already paid for an unfinished game?

Thats how kickstarters work. They ask for money and ask people to have faith in the project. Its not our problem that Tim has overblown the budget, thats their problem. And he's fixing it by releasing it to the public through early access on steam. We still get the same end product we where promised (by the looks of it we get a lot better end game product than what we where promised tbh). It doens't make a single difference for any of us, except we have to wait a bit longer for the full game, which I'm perfectly happy to wait for.

No you will get the product you were promised IF they make enough money doing this. It does make a difference. He has to sell an unfinished game to people on good faith that it will actually ever get finished. He has to sell this to enough people to actually earn the money to finish it. I'm pretty sure all or most of the people with faith in him backed the kickstarter anyway. So he's looking for enough people who aren't die hard Double Fine fans to trust him.

This is a problem. Obviously Double Fine has more faith in people buying the product than you do. I can't tell if this will be enough. But its still not dodgy in any way. Its just a way to for them to actually finish the game they promised.

 

[Excludos]

If I recall correctly, then one of the big problem was the amount of money the rewards/shipping actually ended up costing. I think one of the early videos mentioned something around 400,000$ or more, although I can't recall this exactly. But as far as I know this was also why they focused so heavily on digital rewards with Massive Chalice.

This is not really an excuse though, since they knew about this pretty early and should have already considered reducing the scope then.

Somehow I am still puzzled why it is taking them so long to develop the game, especially since Tim Schafer has lots and lots of experience working on 2D Adventure games. Sure, the art is really great and certainly takes time to create, but it still seems weird for it to take that long and be that expensive. I mean, are all 2D games that expensive to make nowadays?

The problem lies in the massive amount of artwork that has been done for the game. They also made the game engine from scratch. 2d games aren't that expensive generally, but the unique style (for better or worse) that double fine has done took a lot longer than they thought.

 

[Excludos]

Is it wrong that at first i though this was a pun at the cost of dragon age?

ot: i have to wonder how much of financial trouble they would be in, if they would get only the targeted amount of money.
i have done some software development in my time, i know whats its like to want to add "just one more thing".... But damn, thats like sin no 1. experienced people should know better.

Unless, it is planned, and they did their budget ASSUMING that they will get that extra money. We will never know.

We do. There are behind the scenes videos from 2pp for those who backed the project. The budget was never the initial 400k, the budget was from day 1 of the actual development, 3.3 mill. Then Tim went ahead and made a game waaay to big for the budget. He admitted its his own fault. Since then they have done several things to earn extra money, like humble bundle deals and releasing Brütal Legend on Steam (they got around 2 mill for this I think). And its still not enough, thats how massively over the budget Tim went.

Some people doesn't have faith that this will be enough to finish the game. Thats fine, and a point to argue. But trying to argue that this is greedy, dodgy, or in some way a scam, is just plain illusional and stupid.

 

[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.

It is dodgy that's the thing. It's asking you to pay for a game and just have faith that it'll be finished. He has to actually earn the money to finish the game? What if he doesn't and people have already paid for an unfinished game?

Thats how kickstarters work. They ask for money and ask people to have faith in the project. Its not our problem that Tim has overblown the budget, thats their problem. And he's fixing it by releasing it to the public through early access on steam. We still get the same end product we where promised (by the looks of it we get a lot better end game product than what we where promised tbh). It doens't make a single difference for any of us, except we have to wait a bit longer for the full game, which I'm perfectly happy to wait for.

No you will get the product you were promised IF they make enough money doing this. It does make a difference. He has to sell an unfinished game to people on good faith that it will actually ever get finished. He has to sell this to enough people to actually earn the money to finish it. I'm pretty sure all or most of the people with faith in him backed the kickstarter anyway. So he's looking for enough people who aren't die hard Double Fine fans to trust him.

This is a problem. Obviously Double Fine has more faith in people buying the product than you do. I can't tell if this will be enough. But its still not dodgy in any way. Its just a way to for them to actually finish the game they promised.

Obviously they do, obviously they all have their heads in the clouds too. And yeah, asking people to buy half a game and promising you'll finish making the rest later is dodgy. Especially when they already cocked up with the money they had. Yeah there's plenty of legit reasons a game could go over budget, I'm not attacking them for that, but we're supposed to just have faith they'll do better this time? Based on what exactly? Look I love Schafer, I do, and I don't think he's being sinister here, I just think he's being dumb.

I think we have different meaning of the word "dodgy" here. Dodgy is if you know you're doing something wrong. But in this case, it seems to be the only option left for them if they want to finish the game at all. You could argue its dodgy to overblow the budget this much, but I'd rather put that under the category "mistake". They are also looking into other ways to get extra cash to finish the game. I don't think Tim will just up and leave if the game is near finished and the money suddenly runs out. If they do this will turn into a much bigger scandal and we can have this debate again. Meanwhile I have faith that he will finish the product he set out to make.