Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[Azrael the cat]

Day of the Tentacle had good quality artstyle.

Oh really? It looked contemporary bad-quality hipster artsy shit to me.

no, you!

and on a less kindergarten flavored note, broken age does intentionally go for hipster artstyle because it tries to imitate the look/feel of cutout animation, much like south park... and just like with sp, it makes it look like cheapass flash animation.

Yes, and no. There is no such thing as hipster artstyle. This stupid hipster thing is just made up by the retards in society, and used for all shit which just tries to be different from the norm. And yes, BA tries to imitate cutout animation, but it is neither cheap, nor it looks like South Park. If someone looks at the background and the character animation, s/he can see that it was made with great care and a lot of work went into it.

But somehow people how don't like its more lighthearted style equal it with cheap quality.

Not saying I agree with your assessment of the art style, but fuck I'm hating the term 'hipster' right now. Initially it was used to describe a fairly narrow group of inner-city, wealthy, young uni grads in New York and London, who made a big point of rejecting consumerism while living a lifestyle of privilege and conspicuous consumption. I understand why that would irritate people - it irritated me. But now it's this mindless catch-all insult aimed at anyone who wears thick-rimmed glasses, a beard or skinny.

The moronic thing is, people who use the insult still act like the people they're calling hipster are the ones obsessed with fashion and appearance, or that they're going around thinking they're better than everyone else. Guess what? If you're calling folks hipsters, YOU'RE THE ONE BEING OBSESSED WITH FASHION GODAMMIT!!! You're the one walking around thinking you're better than other people based on whether they match your stylistic tastes! You're the one turning up your nose at ideas for being, alternately, too common ('goddamn hipster design everywhere these days!') or too obviously different! By you're own terms, YOU'RE the fucking hipster, not the kid wearing a scarf on a cold day, who's wearing thick-rimmed glasses because thin metal ones make his head look huge, and with a poor attempt at a beard because he has a weak chin!

(on the other hand, if he's riding a gearless bicycle, for any reason other than that he's 'Kenny McCormick'-poor and found it at the rubbish tip, then he's a dick)

If something is aesthetically shit, then call it that and give a proper goddamn justification. But don't be a fucking hypocrite and criticise it for being obsessed with aesthetics.

 

[SuicideBunny]

actually, i'm using hipster as a synonym for pretentious.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Are Double Fine fans (DoubleDrones?) giving BioDrones a run for their money in arch stupidity?

That might be the stupidest comment I've ever seen on a forum. He wants to give more money so they can recycle the same content. Wow.

Actually, I can sympathise with him. Personally, I'm not a fan of game design in crpgs where you just progress from one area to the next without any sense of a 'home city', or revisiting old areas. It strips away the sense of it being a living world. I like to see my actions have an effect upon familiar areas, and I quite enjoy returning to an old area to encounter new content. It gives the feeling that time passes within the gameworld, and that things are happening, rather than a static world in which everything exists solely for the purpose of staying dormant until you come across it (which is true, obviously, but I like to be sold the illusion).

Now that reasoning makes a lot of sense and I can agree with your logic. That being said the first half of his comment is still dumb.

 

[J_C]

actually, i'm using hipster as a synonym for pretentious.

Than call it that, because those terms are not synonyms. (of course BA's artstyle is not pretentius).

 

[Sensuki]

Just watched Documentary episode 16

Pretty woeful sales and it looks like in the end they're going to make almost $0 on the game due to splitting it into two parts.

Serves you right Tim.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

actually, i'm using hipster as a synonym for pretentious.

That's the word I was looking for!

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Pretty woeful sales and it looks like in the end they're going to make almost $0 on the game due to splitting it into two parts.

How does the split cause the nil profit exactly?

And I wish someone could add a consumer perspective to the documentary for those viewers who aren't gamers.

"This experiment bombed in the end because Tim promised classic, and delivered pretentious instead."

 

[Sensuki]

They have to spend all the money they earned on developing Act 2. I'm not sure if they're selling Act 2 separately, but as a pre-order backer I'll be fucking pissed if I have to pay for Act 2 separately (and I didn't buy the game for myself).

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Isn't it rumored that Massive Chalice funds have also been pissed away on this game?

 

[Sensuki]

It's just a rumor, but probably, yeah.

 

[evdk]

Isn't it rumored that Massive Chalice funds have also been pissed away on this game?

Well, their Space Station game, which came later, has more info about it available than Massive Cashgrab, so it looks like it.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Than call it that, because those terms are not synonyms.

the usage of hipster as a certain flavor of pretentious is so common that they practically are.

 

[Whiran]

Just watched Documentary episode 16

Pretty woeful sales and it looks like in the end they're going to make almost $0 on the game due to splitting it into two parts.

Serves you right Tim.

Well, they ran out of money in a big way so even without splitting the game into two parts it wasn't going to make any.

Splitting it into two parts was their solution to try and finish it.

I believe original backers get both parts.

I wouldn't be surprised if Double Fine is dipping into other games funding to finish up this project and treating their income as a single pool of money instead of separate pools allocated to individual games. For example, DF-9's development seems to have slowed dramatically and / or seems to have a very small team working on it. The pace of development is on par with one man / small team projects (rim world, gnomoria) but that could be misleading?

I suspect the majority of money they got for it went to other projects or, maybe, it just didn't sell very well. Which is also a possibility.

 

[felipepepe]

It sold horribly. Six months and a Summer Sale after release, and they still are sitting around 150k across all platforms. When they started this, they were talking about selling around 1M, 500k...

Just think about it, almighty Tim Schafer got over 3M on Kickstarter, while Larian barely got 1M. But D:OS already sold over 250k, and is still on Steam's Top Sellers. It has the one marketing that Double Fine doesn't: good word of mouth. They can have "the legendary Tim Schafer" and all the blind love from fanboys and the press, but their game is just a boring mediocrity no one even remembers 5 minutes after they finish it.

 

[Sensuki]

I'm sure all the old Adventure games did better than that too, right ?

 

[tuluse]

I'm sure all the old Adventure games did better than that too, right ?

Many Lucas Arts games sold 1 million copies. Grim Fandango the game that "killed" adventure games sold 500k.

 

[felipepepe]

Not to mention that you could probably make two or three Lucas Arts games with the money that Double Fine wasted making a 4-hour game...

 

[Aeschylus]

I'm sure all the old Adventure games did better than that too, right ?

Some of them did, but the numbers for games back in the early 90s were quite different. I think the entirety of the King's Quest series (well, 1-6 at least) sold around 2 million copies, which made it basically the biggest hit series ever at the time. Then Myst (~4.2 million copies) happened which changed the landscape a lot, and by the end of the 90s made Grim Fandango's 500k look like a huge failure, when in the early 90s it would have been a smash hit.

 

[likaq]

Blade Runner sold 1 million copies back in late 90's.

I miss good cyberpunk adventure games

 

[Whiran]

It sold horribly. Six months and a Summer Sale after release, and they still are sitting around 150k across all platforms. When they started this, they were talking about selling around 1M, 500k...

Does that 150k number include the 87k kickstarter backers?

If so that means that the game sold 63k units after it was released...

Some of them did, but the numbers for games back in the early 90s were quite different. I think the entirety of the King's Quest series (well, 1-6 at least) sold around 2 million copies, which made it basically the biggest hit series ever at the time. Then Myst (~4.2 million copies) happened which changed the landscape a lot, and by the end of the 90s made Grim Fandango's 500k look like a huge failure, when in the early 90s it would have been a smash hit.

And Riven (Myst II) sold 4.2 million units.

 

[Boleskine]

How much of the Broken Age revenue goes toward leasing office space in downtown San Francisco?

Seriously, though, I can't help but think that a lot of these developers hurt themselves by being in such expensive areas. Would it make much of a difference if a company like Double Fine were an hour or two outside of San Francisco instead?

 

[Irenaeus]

Fuck Myst in the ass with its ugly ass 3D first person graphics

 

[Sensuki]

It sold horribly. Six months and a Summer Sale after release, and they still are sitting around 150k across all platforms. When they started this, they were talking about selling around 1M, 500k...

Does that 150k number include the 87k kickstarter backers?

If so that means that the game sold 63k units after it was released...

I *think* that's KS backers, Early Access and Sales, but I'm not sure. Might be just Early Access and Sales.

 

[J_C]

Yeah, just compare BA sales to the games which were released in the golden age of adventure gaming. Why don't you mention that in this day and age, there are VERY FEW adventure games that sell better than BA?

Just think about it, almighty Tim Schafer got over 3M on Kickstarter, while Larian barely got 1M.

You conveniently forget that Larian invested several million EUROS in the project.

But D:OS already sold over 250k, and is still on Steam's Top Sellers.

And CRPGs are popular, while point and click adventure games are not.

 

[felipepepe]

Just think about it, almighty Tim Schafer got over 3M on Kickstarter, while Larian barely got 1M.

You conveniently forget that Larian invested several million EUROS in the project.

My point is not the money, is the popularity. Think about this: D:OS had 19k backers, but sold over 250k. Broken Age had 87k backers, more than four times the audience, but sold only 150k.

And CRPGs are popular, while point and click adventure games are not.

Yeah, if there's one thing that's popular, it's Ultima-inspired turn-based co-op RPGs.