Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

KickStarter Psychonauts 2

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
What are you talking about? I never said that the documentary should be the reason for funding the game. When this all started, everyone thought that we will get some short, amateur videos as the documentary, which would had been OK as a little extra. Instead we got dozens of great, professional videos, which for some people worth the money spent alone. That's all, don't try to twist it any other way.

Also, 2,5 millions past. :smug:

Nailed it.

When the whole thing kicked off, everybody expected the game to come out maybe within half a year, and to get 3-4 episodes of documentary we won't ever bother watching.

Instead we got a multi-episode series, documenting troubled production of a gigantic disaster. They don't hold back about anything, which is what makes it great. Its a fascinating insight into game development, and all that for 15 bucks.

Its like Schafer says in the original pitch. Either the game will be great, or it will be a gigantic disaster - either way you all win, because we will document everything. And guess what, this exactly what happened.

I paid laughable money, and in return got a half-decent game, and best gaming documentary to date. Zero regrets.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-12-14-a-peek-under-tim-schafers-fig-leaf

A peek under Tim Schafer's Fig leaf
Double Fine founder talks about skipping Kickstarter for Psychonauts 2 campaign, making a sequel to one of his games for the first time, and the "baggage" of Early Access

Double Fine Productions has launched Kickstarter campaigns for two games: Broken Age and Massive Chalice. Both were funded substantially above their target amount, and both saw release earlier this year to largely positive reviews. They were, by any metric except perhaps timeliness, successful.

Despite that, Double Fine is opting for a different platform for its third crowdfunding effort, turning to new site Fig to raise money for Psychonauts 2. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz last week, Double Fine founder Tim Schafer explained the switch.

"We had a great experience with Kickstarter, but there was this nagging question," Schafer said. "I love the mission of Kickstarter in helping creative people get their works made, and that's what backers want. But with games, especially games with higher budgets, the question is, 'But what if this is a hit and makes a lot of money?' Is it OK to make a lot of money when you got the initial money for free from someone. And how will they feel if you get rich off a game that wouldn't exist without them?"

It probably doesn't hurt that Fig founder Justin Bailey was previously Double Fine's COO, and left earlier this year to launch the new site. Fig's big twist to the crowdfunding formula is that it allows a project's supporters to either back the project in the Kickstarter-like fashion--reaping copies of the game or t-shirts and the like as rewards--or as an investor who would be entitled to a share of the game's eventual revenues.

Schafer said letting supporters share in the potential success of a crowdfunded game was something he had always wanted to do, but until recently, investment laws in the US prevented it from being an option. He added that moving to the new format may help make larger projects viable.

"It seemed like we had hit a ceiling [on Kickstarter], a lot of games having trouble getting past a certain mark," Schafer said. "With the investment portion of Fig, there's a chance to go beyond that."

The way the Psychonauts 2 campaign is set up reflects that belief. Double Fine is seeking $3.3 million as a minimum amount for the project to go forward, and that amount doesn't even include significant amounts of money from Double Fine's own coffers as well as an as-yet-unnamed external partner. (Who apparently is not Markus "notch" Persson, despite the Minecraft creator'sprevious Twitter overtures for a Psychonauts sequel.) Not coincidentally, $3.3 million is how much the original Broken Age (nee Double Fine Adventure) Kickstarter campaign raised in total, after setting a goal of $400,000. Schafer said Double Fine picked that amount for Psychonauts 2's Fig campaign as a way of celebrating its original crowdfunding experiment.

"It was a huge, watershed moment for the studio--I'm going to have to look that up later to see if I'm using the word right--where we realized the power of our community," Schafer said.

That power isn't inexhaustible, but it could possibly be renewed indefinitely.

"People talk about crowdfunding fatigue and then a project like Exploding Kittens comes along and does really well and it's like, I guess it just takes the right project," Schafer said. "There's fatigue for just doing the same thing over and over again, but that's one of the reasons we looked to Fig, because it allows us to add the investment twist to it. With our first campaign, there was a period where we got a lot of hate mail because people thought we were just going to take their money and run and the project was a failure. But all we were doing was making the game even bigger and investing our own money to make that happen. I think slowly that kind of misinformation is being diluted with the truth, which is that we've now successfully crowdfunded two projects, shipped them both, the backers have them and they're great games. I feel like people are starting to see we have a lot of credibility with crowdfunded projects."

Schafer doesn't anticipate that same kind of backlash this time around for a handful of reasons. For one, Psychonauts holds a unique place among Double Fine's fanbase, so much so that Schafer says he's seen some of the studio's vocal detractors grudgingly support the campaign for a sequel. On top of that, that crowdfunding audience has a much better understanding of how these sorts of projects go, and Double Fine itself has learned much about the transparency and communication necessary for running a smooth crowdfunding campaign.

As of this writing, the Psychonauts 2 campaign has raised more than $2.6 million, with investors representing slightly over half that amount. Of the more than 15,900 backers, 14,750 of them chose to support the project for the standard rewards. They're contributing an average of about $85, enough for a digital copy of the game and some other bonuses. There are far fewer investors involved--just 1,164--but they are putting in closer to $1,200 each.

Crowdfunding isn't the only experiment in alternative funding models Double Fine has embarked on. It has also tried its hand at free-to-play with the iOS game Middle Manager of Justice, as well as Steam Early Access with Broken Age Part 1, Massive Chalice, and Spacebase DF-9. Despite that, Schafer seems less than enthusiastic about pursuing those options further

"With free-to-play, I think there are ways to do it right but it didn't necessarily match with what we like to do," Schafer said. "We like to do premium content in games, something you pay once for and it's really good and worth the money. It's just a natural thing for us. We're not ruling it out for the future, but this is a more natural fit.

"With Early Access, we did it three times with different results. There's just so much baggage with that, and I feel like crowdfunding is something our community responds really positively to, and they feel the most empowered by it. I feel it's something we're going to use going forward a lot."

The company won't be relying exclusively on crowdfunding. It has announced Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin for PlayStation VR, a first-person game set immediately after the events of the original game, and is working on remastered versions of Schafer's old and long out-of-print adventure games Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. It has also left the door open to remastering other classic games, provided the original content creators are also involved to ensure faithful updates.

There's a certain irony to Double Fine's situation at the moment. Although it has long been an indie darling and champion of innovation, the studio's development slate includes two games in a pre-existing franchise and two games that are explicit retreads of Schafer's previous work. In an industry where it seems so common for developers to get stuck churning out an endless string of derivative takes on familiar brands, Schafer had to scratch and claw and crowdfund his way to his first attempt at making a sequel to one of his own games.

"It just seemed like everything had to align, what I was doing and what the team was doing," Schafer said. "I've always wanted to iterate on a game I've made, but we're usually doing something new... It's not just the industry; I've just personally often had something else I've wanted to do. But this is one I've wanted to do for a long time. I've been keeping a Goggle doc open with ideas for it for like 10 years, just putting in every idea I have for a mental world that would be fun to visit. So it's either make this game or that dam will burst."
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Notch is not investing because:

That's before I saw the cost of making a real game.
What a surprise, he is all talk but nothing else. Meanwhile he could fund this whole project from his sidepocket.
 

DosBuster

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
1,861
Location
God's Dumpster
Codex USB, 2014
That was before he was mega rich, he was still rich but 18 million usd was too much at that stage. Especially considering Schafer's games never sell well.
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Notch is a lonely husk of a man living in a large mansion he spent a large chunk of his money on just so he could outbid jay-z and beyonce..
I picture him scooping candies in a bag as a tear rolls down his cheek... While he quietly tells himself that he is happy.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
Clearly Notch is happy than me. I'd love to be a lonely mega rich man living in a large mansion telling myself I'm happy. It's way better than being a poor man living in a small house somewhat happy.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Things are looking up for Fig. The comments Schafer made make a lot of sense to me. I think the current campaign would have done better if they had not initially tried to launch a F2P ARPG a few months ago.

Regardless, they're finally using this platform for what it's designed for: Taking advantage of nostalgia Funding premium indie games with a large enough niche market to get good production values.
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
7,306
Clearly Notch is happy than me. I'd love to be a lonely mega rich man living in a large mansion telling myself I'm happy. It's way better than being a poor man living in a small house somewhat happy.

You live in a house, not apartment? Damn richfag.
 

Mustawd

Guest
There's not a single apartment in my city, man.

YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HARD LIFE!


Location: Lithuania


giphy.gif
 

Grimlorn

Arcane
Joined
Jun 1, 2011
Messages
10,248
Looking at the sales, I would not invest $500 in this project even if I was a fan of the series. You're looking at waiting years to get your investment back if that. Not sure how they would structure payments to investors. Would it be every few months, or every year or what? Most of the "sales" are humble bundle sales. Then there are steam sales. This game isn't likely to hit 700k units sold at full price unless the game is really good. So the game could sell 1.5 million units over a 5-10 year period, but if most of those units are sold during steam sales or humble bundle sales, you're not likely going to be getting your $500 back. Curious how many units Broken Age sold. Probably at best a few hundred thousand.
 
Last edited:

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Hmm? (Old Article - I am just including the updates, Haven't Kept up with the thread)
http://thegg.net/opinion-editorial/...become-worse-than-the-igf-corruption-scandal/

***Update 2 – 2015-12-15 – 00:02 CET***

It´s fun sometimes how small the world can be, because just a couple of hours after that I updated my Fig article yesterday (2015-12-15). Mr. Gerard McDermott made a really good comment about Fig and Tim Schafer´s Psychonauts 2´s crowdfunding campaign (McDermott made that comment on this very article actually). And this is what McDermott said:

“After reading Galfon’s comments below and seeing the image of the date shifting I went through some numbers this morning.

The first 307 backers gave an average of $78.87
Next 11,051 backers gave average $152.80


It is currently $2,663,604 from 16,079 backers. That means last 5,028 backers donated $192.45 each.

Now that set off alarm bells because Shenmue 3 got $6,333,295 from 69,320 backers. An average per backer of $91.36. Then I noticed that only $1,150,759 in rewards have been claimed by 14,905 backers. I looked into Fig’s investing setup. You can register as an investor and share in the profits of the game. Based on my numbers above, there are currently 1,178 investors contributing average $1,284 .72 each.

It has already been suggested that all the gamers who paid for rewards were bait to bring the investors in. Schafer needed to demonstrate that the game would be popular and have a potential for return. That would also explain the big jump in funding amount. He would have taken the early numbers at the time to investors to show them that interest was there. As the number of investors increased so did the average per “backer”. Now about 57% of all the money they have is from investors.

Keep in mind that you have to apply to be an investor. Who are these investors? Hopefully not videogame “journalists” or bloggers again. We’ll know when Psychonauts 2 comes out I guess. Remember that part of the original issue over a year ago was IGF judges investing in award winners. Based on the behaviour of people linked by Patreon accounts we should be concerned any time members of the video game media stand to secretly make money from games they promote.

I stand by my original comments that this gives a lot of control over indie game development to Schafer and his friends. Now we have a platform that can decide which games get funded and they can drive media coverage by allowing media to invest in those games. Now look into who is in the self-appointed Ministry Of Culture that Schafer is part of and how they treat gamers with contempt. If Fig succeeds (and it looks like it will) then these people will have even more control over indie game funding and media coverage than they ever had.

If you thought the politicizing of games and the media corruption uncovered last year was bad then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” – Gerard McDermott, owner GMAC Internet Solutions


Thank god for archive.is and archive.org.

In other words, Fig and Tim Schafer are everything but honest about their business model and the crowdfunding campaign for “Psychonauts 2”. And quite a few of our readers and followers have requested a “in-depth analysis and comparison of the terms from Fig and other crowdfunding sites” (some would also like to get the IRS involved in the case with Fig´s business model). So I will do what I can to fix that as soon as possible. Nevertheless, I will try to reach out to Fig, Tim Schafer and Gerard McDermott for a comment on this matter.

Credit:

Gerard McDermott
The best Gamers


————————————————

***Update 1 – 2015-12-14 – 20:20 CET***

I´m aware of the fact that my Fig article is almost a week old now. However, I felt like I needed to update this article since a fellow reader and follower of us (thank you James!), pointed out something really important in the case with Tim Schafer (and friends) crowdfunding platform Fig. Because it appears as if there are quite a “few” questionable parts to be found in Fig´s “terms of use” and “rewards requirements” texts on Fig´s homepage (as seen in the pictures down below).


In other words, all the money that Fig gets will be counted as gifts?


That sure seems to be the case, yes.


This part looks (and smells) really fishy, in my opinion.

And I have read through the text just now, and even though I´m no lawyer. I still have to admit that the terms of use and rewards requirements looks really fishy. Just take the following parts for example:

“FIG IS NOT A REGISTERED BROKER-DEALER, FINANCIAL ADVISOR OR FUNDING PORTAL”That sounds really safe and reliable for sure…

“Contributions should be considered a gift or donation rather than a purchase”In other words, every single cent that Fig gets will be considered as a gift? (is this an attempt to take away the consumer rights?).


Tim Schafer is out on really thin ice if all of this is true.

I can´t say that I trusted Fig or Tim Schafer before, but this made me trust Tim and Fig even less. And “if” it´s true that he tampered with “Psychonauts 2´s” crowdfunding campaign (as seen in the picture above). Then it´s going to be yet another scandal on his “I messed up” achievements list.

Credit:
James
Motherfucking Deadpool
 
Last edited:

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
What the fuck?
It has already been suggested that all the gamers who paid for rewards were bait to bring the investors in. Schafer needed to demonstrate that the game would be popular and have a potential for return. That would also explain the big jump in funding amount. He would have taken the early numbers at the time to investors to show them that interest was there. As the number of investors increased so did the average per “backer”. Now about 57% of all the money they have is from investors.
Backers and investors were bringing in the money at the same time, generally at a similar pace. There was no "bringing the backer numbers to investors first".

Now we have a platform that can decide which games get funded and they can drive media coverage by allowing media to invest in those games.
Yeah, that's why their second campaign failed. They didn't want their project to succeed. Makes sense.

these people will have even more control over indie game funding and media coverage than they ever had.
When did Fargo, Feargus and Tim turned into a mustache twirling cartoon villain? Today the indie scene, TOMMORROW THE WHOLE WORLD!

Fucking retarded!
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,089
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Backers and investors were bringing in the money at the same time, generally at a similar pace. There was no "bringing the backer numbers to investors first".

The first 307 backers gave an average of $78.87
Next 11,051 backers gave average $152.80


It is currently $2,663,604 from 16,079 backers.That means last 5,028 backers donated $192.45 each.

Can you demonstrate how the above numbers do NOT prove your words to be false?

And even if you can, there's still the strange thing that later backers are putting MORE money into this than the early backers.

There IS a reason to look closer into this.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Backers and investors were bringing in the money at the same time, generally at a similar pace. There was no "bringing the backer numbers to investors first".

The first 307 backers gave an average of $78.87
Next 11,051 backers gave average $152.80


It is currently $2,663,604 from 16,079 backers.That means last 5,028 backers donated $192.45 each.

Can you demonstrate how the above numbers do NOT prove your words to be false?

And even if you can, there's still the strange thing that later backers are putting MORE money into this than the early backers.

There IS a reason to look closer into this.
Since Fig doesn't offer charts, I can't show you, but I check the investor and backer money each day and they are almost growing at a similar pace. Right now investors put in 1,4 million and 1,3 million for backer. But they were a similar number all the way. If what the guy wrote would be true than the pledging trend would have looked liked this:

First, we would have seen only backer money, and then after it reaching let's say 1 million, suddenly investors jump in and would put in a million. Instead, we see investments and pledges increase at a similar rate.

And the most important thing is:

I DON'T FUCKING CARE, JUST GIVE TIM MONEY, I DON'T CARE IF IT IS CHEATING, MONEY LAUNDRING, SELLING YOUR CHILD TO SLAVERY. I COULDN'T CARE LESS HOW THIS FIG SHIT WORKS AND HOW DOES TIM RAPES YOU! JUST GIVE HIM TO MONEY TO MAKE PSYCHONAUTS 2! BECAUSE I LIKE PSYCHONAUTS THIS MUCH!

I DON'T CARE IF THE VIDEOGAME INDUSTRY, OR THE INDIE SCENE DIES, I HAVE ENOUGH GOOD GAMES FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. IF WE GET PSYCHONAUTS 2, IT IS AWESOME, IF DOUBLE FINE GOES BANKRUPT, WELL, I SURVIVED WORST TRAUMAS IN MY LIFE!!!!!!444444
aCBPI37.gif
 

Renegen

Arcane
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
4,062
J_C's mental landscape is starting to look like a senior Nazi official in 1944.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom