Decline Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

Honestly, the fact that it was just one account only reinforces my point. Most of us were happy to laugh at the horde of /v/-originated Stanley Woo clones in the warmth and safety of the LOL BIOWARE thread.

 

Well yeah. Truth is, if Schaefer only defense would be "The Codex does it too" it would be pretty damning by itself anyway. But I am pretty sure most people who make up his fan base would just write his behaviour off as humorously fending off a troll attack, using his much lauded sharp wit, even though real life is not one of his games and the concerns are serious, the guys asking being assholes notwithstanding.

 

Please give J_C a 'dumbfuck' tag already. Or, at least, an official Double Fine developer avatar.

 

Going on Twitter tirades against random people and (presumably) some sort of fans is stupid as fuck, especially in the way he did it: "You are either living in your parents basement or some old sad guy, not a superstar like me OLOLOL!".
I'm still not seeing this "huge clusterfuck" you and other people seem to be imagining. I'm just seeing a project going overbudget and being delayed (which puts it about on par with ~60-70% of all other software projects) and in line with most previous Double Fine games.
You could've said the same about Psychonauts, Brütal Legend or some of his other games, but he did deliver and most of them ended up being great. I don't see this changing here and expecting an "on time" delivery of every KickStarter is unreasonable based on how most of the software industry works and will only lead to disappointment.

They have the engine and most of the tech done and have shown off several areas of the game (mostly the "cloud colony" and "starship") in the documentary and talked a lot about the game and I'm not seeing all that much wrong with it so far other than disagreeing somewhat with the stylistic art choice and theme they went for.

I have no doubt in my mind that they will release it, seeing what quality it ends up being at that point remains to be seen and would be stupid to judge prematurely. I'm just not sure what people seem to be so pissed over, especially when they haven't even backed the project.

I also find it funny that people on another part of this very forum praise Nintendos CEO for being a human being and not starting to lay off people and go to town instantly upon having the first problems out of similar reasons (projects overbudget, projects delayed: http://nintendoeverything.com/12048...udgeting-hd-games-selling-full-priced-titles/ ): http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...xbox-one-revealed.80070/page-120#post-2746253 and lamenting how there isn't such a person in the whole of the US and when there is they try to crucify him for exactly the same reasons: http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/23/3542530/tim-schafer-speaks-out-against-routine-layoffs

 

http://www.p4rgaming.com/tim-schafe...-million-dollars-from-broken-age-kickstarter/

 

It's a clusterfuck because unlike most software projects this one was overfunded by 800%

 

The stockholm syndrome of J_C itt is almost funnier to watch than this trainwreck of a game/company.

 

People keep saying that and reapeating it won't make it make more sense. They wanted to make a small "mobile phone" Adventure or something like that at a low budget with 3-5 people to start with since that was usually the amount KickStarters got before Double Fine Adventure made all the games the Codex is looking forward to possible and it became a full game instead. I'm not sure how that makes it "800% overfunded". The scope of the project just changed.

This has happened with Project: Eternity, Wasteland 2, Numenera: Torment, Planetary Annihilation, The Banner Saga etc. and keeps happening to "Star Citizen" to a worrying degree.

 

No it wasn't. The 300K game which they intended to do was overfunded 800%. But after they got the money, they made the game bigger, to get it on par with the budget. It's not like they are doing the same barebones, probably short game which they wanted to do from 300K.

It is not stockholm syndrome because Tim doesn't hurt me. It is sweet love.

 

Am I the only one who thinks the whole "oh we're making another type of game" excuse is bullshit?

They never said anything in the campaign about making a small "mobile" game. It was supposed to be an old-school point and click adventure game and a documentary on how it was made. The pitch just kept focusing on Day of the Tentacle/Monkey Island/Grim Fandango posters and jokes, showed Ron Gilbert as well (door closing nonetheless). When the game got more money than it actually asked, Double Fine initially promised just that the game will be ported to as many platforms as possible, translated in many languages, better soundtrack and voice acting. The core game was still going to cost 300k dollars.

I never trusted the "they were going to make a shitty iOS game" idea. The pitch promised something on a equal level to Monkey Island and DotT, anything else sounds like a scam.
I mean, look at this: http://neurotech.imgur.com/
You have something from 50 to 100 background images for a typical LucasArts adventure game. You're not going to suddenly make 800 background images with all new puzzles and characters just because you have 800% more than you asked for initially. The game should technically still have the same scope.

 

Do you think that that the game which they would have made for 300K and for 3 million is the same? They are not making another type of game. We are talking about point and click adventures in both cases. But it is sure as hell that when they saw that money, they changed their plans and wanted to make a much bigger game with better graphics and stuff.

 

It doesn't particularly look particularly expensive to me. And it's not like they're doing something new with the gameplay, what's the point of it being old school then?

 

Then it is a "huge clusterfuck" because Tim can't do math and after receiving 800% more money decided to make a game 1600% bigger. And buzz is right, at no point it was sold as a small iOS adventure, but as a full blown classic adventure game.

 

I agree with J_C that the scope of the game have changed and they wanted to do something better/bigger.
Problem is it looks like a "400k" game , even if you like the graphics (they may have style but are simplistic, the animation too and P&C gameplay is nothing revolutionary).
So basically the game does not look more "technically" advanced than a Daedalic games.
If Broken Ages is much better than a Daedalic adventure game,it would then mean that what cost huge money in an adventure games is making a good story/puzzles.
It may be true but it's hard to believe.

 

It's not just about the delay, or even their financial woes. It's not out of the ordinary to have these kinds of problems in a non-trivial software development project. Thing is, I'm more than certain a grand majority of the backers would've been happy with the game having Daedalic-like production values, with Schafer's script and puzzle design. With the figures quoted from Daedalic's founder, even adjusting for DF having significantly higher costs due to being situated in San Francisco, they shouldn't have needed more than a million to make a game of a scope comparable, to, say, Deponia. Of course, Daedalic are very experienced in developing PnC adventure games, so DF would likely have more overhead in getting used to new tools and pipelines.

Still, they had all the money they needed to buffer for these kinds of problems, and still managed to piss it away on pointless crap like developing their own engine, and the end result doesn't even look particularly good (worse than Daedalic's games, imo). So basically, they had possibly the easiest job out of all the high-profile game kickstarters - way easier than InXile or Obsidian or David Braben or the Planetary Annihilation people - and managed to fail rather epically anyway.

But that's all really just run-of-the-mill incompetence. The real reason some people are mad at them, is that they're the posterboy for kickstarted game development, and their fuckups likely affect the whole model in a major way. Also, the timing of this announcement in relation to their other kickstarter, and the quality of that kickstarter, are really shady, intentionally deceptive even. At this point I would not be surprised at all if they use that money to finish Broken Age and try to fund MASSIVE CHALICE from other sources - which makes them all but well-meaning scammers.

To be fair, I think he's trolling at this point. Nobody can be that stupid and still manage to breathe on their own.

 

I'm almost certain that is the case. I was thinking about this from the very beginning of their 2nd kickstarter. It is morally ambigous as hell, no need to deny that.

 

Daedelics engine only costs 35 Euro's to develop with, and would have required minimum R&D for them to get started on it. Throw in Schafer's script, and some awesome artists, and they could have had the game complete by now.

 

And guess who will be going back to the sanatorium...

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So how do you imagine that 300k would have looked? Think hard about it.

 

How would have looked? Who knows? Maybe they would have used another engine. But it is not about the graphics, it would probably have been much shorter. Maybe with one charachter, not 2, less enviroments, less puzzles, no voice acting, some cheap licenced music etc.

 

Right, but that's all they needed to do... more rooms, more puzzles, more characters. They didn't have to go for production value on top of that.

 

No doubt about that. Maybe they were afraid that if they don't increase the production value, some retards would have been butthurt for making a cheap ass looking game when they got 3 million.

 

Hopefully he'll visit a dentist along the way. After all, he could Kickstart his own dental plan, people are obviously willing to pledge for anything, as long as it has the DF logo.

 

Now that I look a bit closer, his teeth seem a bit vampire-like somehow.