Broken Age Needs More Money

[Entitled]

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.

I would be amazed if a game as big as this is becoming, wouldn't sell at least half a million copies. It's easy to imagine at least 300k of that picking the Early Access, especially if it's a completed form of the first half.

As you said, those who backed the Kickstarter are the core fanbase, and core fanbases tend to be smaller than the peripheral audience.

Besides, even if they don't succeed, then the second half will be dragged out, but as selling Early Access would drag them down with even more legal expectations to actually finish the game, they would eventually HAVE TO find a way to finish it anyways (or go bankrupt trying, which is unlikely).

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Imagine being a project head in any other industry, asking for a working budget of $400,000. The CEO was having a really nice day so he gave you $3 million. And a few months later you come back to his office saying you've gone over budget and are already half done.

Think you'll still have a job?

 

[MasterProcrastinator]

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.

Thank you! It's no wonder Double Fine withheld this news until after the Kickstarter for 'Massive Chalice' had been wrapped up, what with the number of shambling morons on the internet, who are capable of mentally misconstruing even the clearest of explanations.

 

[Phlakes]

What? A developer went over budget and is asking for more money to finish their game, after being given a certain amount that was assumed to be able to fund a high quality product?

That's just preposterous.

...and exactly what publishers go through. I guess this is where people start learning why publishing works the way it does rather than mindlessly condemning it. But who am I kidding.

 

[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.

I think you have the wrong definition of the word dodgy.

dodg·y (dj)
adj. dodg·i·er, dodg·i·est Chiefly British
1. Evasive; shifty.
2. Unsound, unstable, and unreliable.
3. So risky as to require very deft handling.

We call them dodgy because their practices are high risk and not well thought through. I don't believe there's any criminal intent behind it at all. It's just really stupid to do business the way they do and I refuse to pick up any of their slack.

If you're a backer, you don't have to pick up any of their slack. Those who aren't, and still want the game when the first half is finished, are the ones that have to pay up. This is more in line of preorders to me (and I guess kickstarter would be pre-preorder), except you get half the game right away. And some games have been in preorder status for 9 years.. I hope this game doesn't go down that road of course.

The definition of dodgy is btw what you stated above, but the context is different. Dodgy here would be to do something wrong, so you start avoiding the fans, media, the outcome (thus the word "dodging"). But thats the exact opposite of what Tim is doing. He's facing the problem head on. The word doesn't fit the situation in any way. Call him stupid or dumb all you want, because I agree he did a stupid thing with the budget. But dodgy (or even worse: "scam" and "greedy, like someone mentioned) is not what this is. Not even close.

edit: Well, you could use it in the context of "unreliable"..I don't see why you couldn't just used that word directly if thats what you want to convey though. And whether hes unreliable or not remains to be seen when the product finishes (or not).

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

Okay, so I love Double Fine's stuff, but this does kind of prove that they're completely incompetent when it comes to money management. I'm now kind of glad I ended up not giving to either of their Kickstarters, and I'm not going to be buying any of their games prior to release any time soon.

 

[Entitled]

Imagine being a project head in any other industry, asking for a working budget of $400,000. The CEO was having a really nice day so he gave you $3 million. And a few months later you come back to his office saying you've gone over budget and are already half done.

Think you'll still have a job?

Even better. Imagine asking for at least 400.000, and upon recieving $3 million, actually release a $3 million product on the market to make even more money that would help making your ideal project even more grandiose.

 

[Entitled]

They asked us for support. We gave them support to make that game. They've failed to deliver on that promise, and now they're going to sell the half finished version

So, by first releasing a $3 million "half-finished" game, they "failed" their goal to make a full game that was planned to be much shorter than that to begin with?

Would you say the same thing if they would declare the January game to be the full "Broken Age", and then use it's profits to release a second "full game" called Broken Age 2?

 

[MetalMagpie]

Is it really that hard to work within a given budget?

Speaking as a software developer, it is incredibly hard! We want to do things right. We want to add loads of cool features. We want to test it properly. But all of that takes time, and developer time costs money.

That's why we have managers. To keep us at least vaguely on time and on budget.

To compound it all, it's incredibly difficult to estimate how long a software project will take. So even with the best management in the world, they tend to run over by at least a little bit.

But this is more than a little bit. I sense someone was a bit over-optimistic with their spec. :/

 

[Nikolaz72]

For shame. 8 x your needed budget, poops out only half a game. Sounds like some classic development hell mismanagement. The rest of the product will be a free release but this still smells.

Actually this has nothing to do with that, this is just crappy journalism. It seems Andy made everyone think that they are only gonna get half a game, when really they are gonna get the entire game but in two parts. (Backers get both parts without paying extra, and so does everyone else. They just have to pay it in two rather than in one)

Hence nothing is wrong here, if they had not said a peep, nobody would have complained. But the internet is able to take the most clearest of explanations on what seems, at least to me to be a perfectly win/win solution, and mutate it into dodgy fraud.

 

[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.

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.

Ehm, i do not really agree with you. Saying its a scam, is indeed stupid, seeing as he didnt just run away with the money.
Greedy? Maybe. But it seems more like "i want to do more than i have the resources for." It is a kind of "greed" but not what people usually mean.
Dodgy - now, this is the point i do not agree with you. It is kinda dodgy. Because if everything was 100% transparent, someone would notice that "Oi! We will run out of money soon!".

No, i do not believe that it is a scam. I also believe that everything will turn out just fine. Doesnt change the fact that this should not happen, it should have been prevented.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

The problem that I think most people are missing is that getting the rest of the game is not guaranteed. I didn't back the Kickstarter, and I'm not going to plopping down money for Steam Early Access either. Backers won't put down money for Early Access because they'll already have the game...so who exactly is supposed to be buy it?

I mean, if they were considering cutting 75% of the game or reducing the art assets a lot, who much money do you think they need? Another 3 million? Let's say they sell it for $20 for early access...well, Steam takes 30% of that off the top, leaving them with $14 per Early Access key sold. That means that they would need to hit about 215,000 units sold assuming essentially zero other costs get incurred (ie- marketing for the early access to get as many users to buy in as possible). That's almost 2.5 times the number of original backers! If he can't get those kind of numbers, then he might not EVER finish the game properly...

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

if everything was 100% transparent, someone would notice that "Oi! We will run out of money soon!".

Now, I do agree that their money management skills are lacking, but I think that's pretty much what just happened. They realized they didn't actually have enough money to make what they wanted to make, and then discussed whether they should cut the game down, or just release the first half of it to grab a little extra non-backer revenue they could use to finish the second half how they wanted to. This is their decision.

 

[FloodOne]

Call me an asshole, but I hope nobody buys the Early Access and this project falls flat on it's face.

 

[Harry Mason]

I really don't understand the anger about this. I mean, I do, because people love being angry about things, but I think people have entirely the wrong attitude about Kickstarters.

The point of Kickstarter is flexibility that publishers don't offer. This setback is something that fits squarely within the category of being flexible.

The thing that we should really be paying attention to is the fact that this game IS GETTING MADE. People in this thread keep saying "this is exactly what a publisher would go through." No it fucking isn't. A publisher would have canceled this by now. They wouldn't even have have picked it up.

A large budget 2D Adventure Game by Tim Schafer is something magical. Not rare, but impossible. It's like a Unicorn. The spirit of Kickstarter is precisely that. If someone is breeding a Unicorn and there are setbacks, you should quit complaining because SOMEONE IS BREEDING A GODDAMNED UNICORN. If you're really a Unicorn fan you should be happy it's happening at all. If not, then why did you back the Unicorn?

I understand holding developers accountable, and I recognize that Tim mishandled the budget. But when we rise up in anger over this stuff we are acting exactly like big publishers, and if the attitude flying around this was the deciding factor, Broken Age would be cancelled. This is why we can have Call of Gears of Bland IIX, but can't have Psychonauts 2. This is why we can't have nice things, because nice things come from artists and artists need patience and understanding. Anyone who is actually a backer can watch the documentary and see that Tim isn't smoking $100 bills and drinking cognac in an armchair. He's a geek with a huge vision, and instead of embracing all the bumps in the road people are yelling about things that barely effect them.

Christ, people JUST NOW stopped bitching about Reaper Bones...

 

[Sutter Cane]

I love how everyone is acting like this is the first example of any piece of entertainment going over-budget in the history of mankind. Shit happens sometimes. I mean what's the alternative. I mean would you rather see a statement coming from double fine saying "Well we ended up going over budget so no one's getting the game at all." Honestly this is a much better alternative.