How did double fine screw it up?

[Anthony Corrigan]

I was watching this


And it reminded me of the double fine adventure game now called Broken Age and don't understand what happened.

Double fine is not a new company, they know how to make games, they should know how much it costs to make them and they knew what they wanted to make.

They asked for 400,000 and got 3.3 MILLION to make there game yet they are having to cut down on what they are delivering and pushing out the time.

why? and if it can happen to Double fine who should know what they are doing how is anyone going to trust ANYTHING on kickstarter again

 

[krazykidd]

You know when you are really hungry , then go into a restorant and buy more food than you can eat? It's kind of the same thing i think . They asked for a certain amount , got A LOT more , then most likely said , we got all this cash, so we'll add this and this . Until suddenly they realised to went overbudget. It happens all the time.

 

[tippy2k2]

Now, I don't go to Kickstarter and I don't care about it in any way so what I'm about to say may be factually incorrect. I am going off of what I've heard...

They really really really need to have the funds stop at a certain point. Going from $400,000 to $3,300,000 is just a LITTLE bit larger than you were expecting. You can't create a $400K game with a $3.3M budget and not get absolutely crucified by the gaming crowd and so they are forced to abandon the game they wanted to create and instead have to create something different.

Personally, I think you should be able to go 20% past your goal (since shit happens and you might need a little extra money) and at that point, the Kickstarter ends. If you didn't get in on time, tough luck, you'll just have to buy the game when it comes out like all the poor peasants.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Now, I don't go to Kickstarter and I don't care about it in any way so what I'm about to say may be factually incorrect. I am going off of what I've heard...

They really really really need to have the funds stop at a certain point. Going from $400,000 to $3,300,000 is just a LITTLE bit larger than you were expecting. You can't create a $400K game with a $3.3M budget and not get absolutely crucified by the gaming crowd and so they are forced to abandon the game they wanted to create and instead have to create something different.

Personally, I think you should be able to go 20% past your goal (since shit happens and you might need a little extra money) and at that point, the Kickstarter ends. If you didn't get in on time, tough luck, you'll just have to buy the game when it comes out like all the poor peasants.

Actually that's not entirely right, lots of companies use their websites to continue to raise money after kickstarter, which is fine.

Also I partially disagree your initial post, when people put in they want certain things out of the project true and sometimes the stretch goals are what pulls people in, more often its the rewards but either way they should have known what they could deliver and what they couldn't. considering they made there 400,000 in less than 1 hour they knew it would be high and they should have been realistic with what could be achieved with x amount of money. That could have been a second chapter in an extra year or whatever (I don't know what they actually put up). I can understand a new dev getting over there head, but not someone who has been in the industry as long as he has.

Of course maybe the problems that he had with publishers weren't that the publishers were evil, but that he was a poor manager and he couldn't keep up with there basic expectations. If that is the case that would be sad because I had high hopes for some other future projects like fixing the issues with Brutal Legends and releasing a sequel

 

[Tom_green_day]

So they got loads of money more than they were expecting... Is there no way kickstarters can shut off after they get their goal? Otherwise I see lots of kcikstarters going this way...

 

[Tazzman]

Must've lost the money in a casino cause I can't see Tim giving a real explanation of what happened anywhere??

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Simply they got carried away, eye's to big for their belly as the old saying goes. They over estimated how much they could expand the game given the extra funds they received. A problem I think that didn't help was Tim Schafer's desire to create the whole story and game from scratch once the kickstarter was finished. While that allowed them to show the whole design process in the documentary, it properly wasn't the best decision practicality wise, as when the extra money came it looked like the possibilities where now endless. If they already had a solid design documentation in place perhaps they would have been able to expand the original vision in more structured manner without blowing all their budget.

 

[Smooth Operator]

See this is why companies can't give you the full details of what they are doing, you people just spaz out every time.

So here is the basic rundown, feature lists are always bigger then bank accounts, and when they got 8x the starting money they just went 8x on the content.
But at some point it is time to start chopping features because you just haven't got time or money to do everything, and here is where Double Fine stands now... they either chop or release half the game on Steam for that extra extension.

They explained it perfectly fine on their site, the game would be finished in every case but without going for an early release the game would be done with less content.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

it seems like they got carried away and didn't budget correctly. That's the problem when you have a dev go full out without any producers or pubs to stop them.

 

[CriticalMiss]

You know when you are really hungry , then go into a restorant and buy more food than you can eat? It's kind of the same thing i think .

Not really. It's like being really hungry and going to a restaurant, ordering how much food you think you can eat. You end up getting 8 times what you asked for but somehow end up still being hungry even after eating everything.

 

[Entitled]

They screwed up by being too generous and counting their long term plans with the Broken Age franchise as all part of the same game, that the backers are entitled to.

If the first half of the story would have been published as "Broken Age", ended with a cliffhanger or oherwise a "To be continued..." card, everyone would have been content with it, knowing that they got a $3 million adventure game, just what they paid for. Then DF could have announced Broken Age 2, hell they could have even launched a second Kickstarter for it, and they could have taken their sweet time developing it from another pile of backer money for a year or two, and people would have bought that too.

That's what any publisher would have done. Activision knew when to split up Starcraft 2 into three separate games, EA knows to write it's new IP plots with sequels in mind, even movie publishers have started splitting stories into "part 1" and "part 2", that they can get away with as long as each part has the production values of a product that people expect.

Instead, even though they are still ready to roll out the part that $3 million bought by January, Double Fine decided to call the two parts one game, promised both of the halves that were costing more than $3 million to all the backers, tried to find a way to fund the whole thing from sales of a single game, and finish it all a few months after the first half.

Cue to everyone complaining about how they "screwed up",

 

[Sight Unseen]

Basically the problem was that even though they initially pitched the idea for a $400,000 game , they never actually had a game which needed $400k to complete. They deliberately started from scratch with their development once the kickstarter ended in order to film the ENTIRE game-making process (they didn't even have a story idea hammered out!) What happened was that when the game's kickstarter inflated from $400,000 to $3,200,000; they scaled their expectations to match that budget. It's not as if they had a nearly working game which cost $400k with 2.8M worth of extra crap tacked on.

When the game earned 3.2M they made a number of decisions which for better or worse changed the way they had planned to make the game. These changes inevitably inflated the cost of the game. Some of these changes were:
1. Deciding to release the game on PC, Mac, and Linux instead of just PC.
2. Having a DRM free option for PC.
3. Going from English only dialog to English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish
4. Going from text-only dialog to fully voiced English dialog.
5. Designing their own game engine from scratch for the game instead of using a rented engine.
6. Going from a dev team of 4-6 people to one of 10+ full time people as well as several part time/contractors/interns/etc.
7. Extending the development timeline for the game from ~6 months to 1.5-2 years.
8. Rewarded Two-player productions (the company responsible for the documentary) with much more money than they had originally planned to make the documentary for (instead of 100k it was something like 600k, forget the actual number)

In short, the game that they will provide will be much, MUCH superior to the $400k game that they originally intended to provide. I think that when the kickstarter earned so much more than it was planned to need, Tim Schafer turned this project from "short low budget adventure game because I want to relive my glory days and make an adventure game again" to " Poster boy showing that adventure games can still be great in this day and age, that there's still a market there that publishers avoid at all costs, and Double Fine's biggest hope to finally gain independance from publishers and make the games that they want." Tim and Double Fine really really need this game to be great because it could potentially be the first step to them becoming independant as a studio and not needing publishers anymore. If you've been paying attention to Double Fine lately, they've been trying their hardest to buy back the rights to their games from the publishers who made them. They really really want to be completely independant, and this game is crucial to that plan.

With all that in mind, Tim came up with a great idea and went a little overboard with it. And now that all the ideas are more or less fleshed out, Tim doesn't want to have to scale back this game which could be his magnum opus. He went over budget, yes, but he's still going to deliver the game that the kickstarter funded, without asking for anymore money from those who decided to support him in fulfilling his dream. He's funelling money from the proceeds of other double fine games (Brutal Legend Steam version, Humble Bundle), and doing an early release version of the game to try and bring in some more revenue.

Rest assured that the game which will come out will be much MUCH bigger, better, and more polished than the theoretical game that was pitched for $400k. It will also be much better than even the $3M game, because Double Fine is basically re-enforcing it with $3-4M of THEIR OWN MONEY. And it WILL come out in full, because Double Fine's reputation, future, and legacy depend on it. If this game never comes out its because Double Fine went bankrupt trying to get it out, which I don't see happening at all.

Also, Double Fine is being completely transparent about all their troubles because they want to show what really happens during the development of a game. If this game had been published by a publisher, this game would either a) have been canned, or b) would have come out with us none the wiser about the budget issues they had c) the devs would delay the release of the game (read: they needed more money to pay their devs to finish the game) so I dont think that games going over budget is unusual or even uncommon, it's just never been so transparent before.

 

[jim1398]

Feature creep. It's really that simple.
They got far more money than they initially thought they would get and so had to vastly increase the scope of the project. Unfortunately, they increased the scope by too much and are suffering the consequences.

why? and if it can happen to Double fine who should know what they are doing how is anyone going to trust ANYTHING on kickstarter again

Except this is the first time they have tried to self publish a game from scratch, so I don't think they do know what they are doing in that regard. That's one of the benefits of having a publisher in charge of the budget, they can help to prevent this sort of thing happening by setting strict deadlines and stopping developers from trying to put everything they want in a game (it's just unfortunate that some of them go way too far with that sometimes...).

I find it pretty sad that a lot of people have been crying doom over this though. The simple truth is, this happens constantly in many industries and especially the games industry. Things go over budget and over schedule. How many games get delayed? How many games have content cut? The only real difference here is that Double Fine have been pretty transparent about it all (which was the entire point of the documentary) and now suddenly people are acting like they really screwed up, when in reality all they have really done is reveal what goes on behind the scenes with a large proportion of games.

 

[chikusho]

Double Fine did not add things to $400.000 game.

They asked for 400.000 to make "a point and click adventure game."

When the kickstarter went up, they had no plans for a game, other than that it would be just that.
The plan was to let the kickstarter gauge interest and then develop the game with whatever funds they could raise.

They got over 3 million, started working with that figure in mind, possibly wrote a really good story and fun ideas that went a bit beyond the original budget and rather than cut the game short and make it shitty they found a way to get more funds through pre-orders.

They screwed up nothing.

People just like to *****, as is the internet way.

snip

Expertly put.

 

[zerragonoss]

I would just like to point out that as far I could tell they did not go over budget. They projected they would with their current goals, and decide on another way to make money rather than cutting out a lot of the content they wanted to make. This may or may not be a good decisions, but it does not mean they mismanaged their money, or had not idea what things will cost. It implies just the opposite.

 

[Entitled]

I would just like to point out that as far I could tell they did not go over budget. They projected they would with their current goals, and decide on another way to make money rather than cutting out a lot of the content they wanted to make. This may or may not be a good decisions, but it does not mean they mismanaged their money, or had not idea what things will cost. It implies just the opposite.

Exactly. Even in the latest note to backers, they pointed out that they would still do have the chance to cut out some of the planned content, and just release a $3 million gam, they just decided not to do that.

 

[Fox12]

Now, I don't go to Kickstarter and I don't care about it in any way so what I'm about to say may be factually incorrect. I am going off of what I've heard...

They really really really need to have the funds stop at a certain point. Going from $400,000 to $3,300,000 is just a LITTLE bit larger than you were expecting. You can't create a $400K game with a $3.3M budget and not get absolutely crucified by the gaming crowd and so they are forced to abandon the game they wanted to create and instead have to create something different.

Personally, I think you should be able to go 20% past your goal (since shit happens and you might need a little extra money) and at that point, the Kickstarter ends. If you didn't get in on time, tough luck, you'll just have to buy the game when it comes out like all the poor peasants.

Actually that's not entirely right, lots of companies use their websites to continue to raise money after kickstarter, which is fine.

Also I partially disagree your initial post, when people put in they want certain things out of the project true and sometimes the stretch goals are what pulls people in, more often its the rewards but either way they should have known what they could deliver and what they couldn't. considering they made there 400,000 in less than 1 hour they knew it would be high and they should have been realistic with what could be achieved with x amount of money. That could have been a second chapter in an extra year or whatever (I don't know what they actually put up). I can understand a new dev getting over there head, but not someone who has been in the industry as long as he has.

Of course maybe the problems that he had with publishers weren't that the publishers were evil, but that he was a poor manager and he couldn't keep up with there basic expectations. If that is the case that would be sad because I had high hopes for some other future projects like fixing the issues with Brutal Legends and releasing a sequel

This seems to be a running theme with schaefer. He said psychonauts 2 would cost 9 million, and the minecraft guy said he would gladly front the bill. Then schaefer announced that, no, actually it would cost twice that much, oops. The deal then fell through. He seems like a good artist, and a poor businessman. Most people don't realize he had to scrap half of Brutal Legend, and he didn't get to tell the entire second half of the story. He assumed, for some reason, there would be a sequel, but that obviously didn't happen. That's what happened here. He designed a large game, realized he couldn't tell half of it, and now he's having to find alternative ways to fund the other half. I love his games, and I think he would be a brilliant employee at someone elses company, if he had some executive oversight to keep him in check. He's basically admitted he can be pretty lazy, and it almost got them in trouble when they started the company.

I know saying he needs corporate oversight sounds like we're "keeping the artist down, man," but I think he could really use some organization. Love his games, love his company, and I will buy both Massive Chalice and Broken Age, but the man does exasperate me sometimes.

 

[Something Amyss]

You know when you are really hungry , then go into a restorant and buy more food than you can eat? It's kind of the same thing i think . They asked for a certain amount , got A LOT more , then most likely said , we got all this cash, so we'll add this and this . Until suddenly they realised to went overbudget. It happens all the time.

Gee, if only they were professionals or something.

 

[Something Amyss]

why? and if it can happen to Double fine who should know what they are doing how is anyone going to trust ANYTHING on kickstarter again

Maybe you shouldn't trust Kickstarter projects. Maybe you never should have.

And maybe this is why Publishers were reticent to give more for big projects to DF.

 

[Zeh Don]

Er, aren't they splitting the game into two parts, using their own internal funding to cover the cost of the additional development in order to provide the best game experience?