You are probably right, and I am likely exagerrating.random_bars said:I see this all the time but I really don't think I've seen any evidence that it's actually true. Sure, having multiple projects has seemingly helped keep the lights on at Double Fine: getting a game cancelled means they have to find new work for a quarter of the company, not the entire company.Mr. GameBrain said:We've already seen how well this sort of strategy works with Double Fine.
Psychonauts and Brutal Legend were commercial failures (despite being good games in their own right), but their XBLA games have performed extremely well.
But the games themselves? I don't think they've made anywhere NEAR the impact that Psychonauts or Brutal Legend did. I personally don't think they were nearly as good as those games either. And in terms of popularity, I'm sure they sold enough to make a little profit but they didn't exactly drown the company in money, and they certainly didn't take off like some other similarly sized games have (Bastion comes to mind).
The Kickstarter project definitely DID kick off in a big way, but Costume Quest, Stacking and Iron Brigade? I don't think so, really, and I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise (apart from people parroting your words on forums and stuff). Seriously, you might well be right, but what makes you think so?
But I should imagine they were successful to a good degree, else they would have stopped after their first XBLA release.
I think due to the size of their company, (the money troubles they mentioned at the start of their documentary due to the cancellation of a project), the labour fees were sapping into those profits a bit.
That being said though, had their retail projects beforehand had been more successful, they probably would not have needed a kickstarter. (I guess publishers don't have a lot of faith in them, and those projects had some real tough problems to get through (Brutal Legend for instance, they had a massive problem with their original publisher Activision, who dropped them mid-development, which prompted lawsuits on both sides, especially when EA picked the game back up))
Taking that into account, and the fact that the development time for the XBLA games was much shorter, its not suprising the quality took a bit of a hit.
I still think smaller teams with good sized budgets and a couple of years of development time will be the best way forward for the industry.
(Especially a nice marketing budget. Enough to get noticed and to be played around with, but not too big to be a waste of resources (A lot of "AAA" companies must waste a ridiculous amount of cash on advertisements that they couldn't even measure the success of. Cash that probably could fund several smaller projects! XD)
I don't really know though. I guess I want to believe that building a good portfoilio and fanbase in the long-term leads to eventual financial success. (Being a wannabe game dev, I have to believe that! XD)