Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[Brother None]

What's you opinion on DF's problem by the way? Do you think that they mismanaged their project, or making an adventure game really costs this much. If the latter, how does inXile manages WAsteland 2, when a CRPG needs more work, and you have gathered somewhat similar funds.

They themselves say openly they mismanaged the project. Not much to add there.

These are really low budgets for video games regardless of genre. How well you do with a really low budget varies pretty massively from company to company, experience with lower budgets etc. A lot of video game producers/execs wouldn't even know where to start making a game "for so little". Fans might start realizing the difference, and we might move to a Kickstarter consideration where financial and project management experience counts for as much as creativity, which would make sense to me, that's just how things work; project management is at least as important as creativity. Publishers don't give buckets of money to creative minds, you give the buckets to reliable managers who then keep a close eye on the creative minds.

Wasteland 2's budget is absolutely fine (and separated strictly from Torment's). It started at $2 million, as Kevin's noted, but has been significantly expanded since by several windfalls for inXile. We've recently expanded our office and hired on some new hands as we were operating well under this expanded budget. So, we're good.

 

[J_C]

Good to hear that.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

They should port it to OUYA while they're at it, Double fine are garbage tier studio.

Project eternity and feargus SLAMDUNK! is next.

 

[J_C]

Double fine are garbage tier studio.

 

[evdk]

They should port it to OUYA while they're at it, Double fine are garbage tier studio.

Project eternity and feargus SLAMDUNK! is next.

Depends on how the South Park game will do and what other bones the publishers will throw them.

 

[Volrath]

I find it ironic that the company who started the videogame kickstarter craze will also be the one that ends it.

Are you laughing on yourself? Because you should. I told you before the whatever happens with DF's kickstarter, it won't end the KS craze if the other projects deliver.

So naive.

 

[J_C]

So pessimistic.

 

[Karellen]

One thing I think international people miss out on is that this company has had an absurd number of employees for the U.S. economic situation of the last few years. Their office is in very expensive space and wages there are higher. It blows me away how many people show up in the videos, and theres probably more you don't see. My company has half the number of people it had a few years ago because of cut-backs, but Doublefine seems like the kind of place that is "too nice" to fire anyone. It's too bad the kickstarter money seems like it goes into the company instead of going into just the project. Regardless of what game sales they're receiving, They've used that money to sustain themselves through inappropriate side projects like amnesia fortnight and massive chalice pre-development.

That's actually an interesting point. I'm not a backer of DFA so the only view I have of Double Fine's corporate culture is from the ludicrously bubbly Massive Chalice videos, but they certainly do play up the whole "we're like family and we all love working here" image. Beyond that, though, Double Fine at least used to be some kind of AAA studio, and I'm guessing that they have a lot of staff specialized in stuff like 3D art and asset creation, people you simply have no use for if you made a classic 2D adventure game. So when they had three million bucks handed to them, I can see how it would be difficult, internally, to justify keeping those people out of the project (and possibly laying them off), particularly since they had no evil publisher to blame it on. So, they ended up increasing the scope of the project to bring in more of their people. You could frame that as "making use of the talent" they had in the company if you wanted to be nice about it, but either way they obviously moved away from the sort of skeleton crew team that would actually be appropriate for making games with Kickstarter funding.

I wonder if a lot of established game companies doing Kickstarters will end up struggling with this kind of baggage in the future. Obsidian is probably OK for now since they're still planning on developing for publishers, so they have other outlets for talent that isn't strictly useful for making games like Project Eternity, but it will be interesting to see whether inXile will eventually run into the same problem; Fargo has, after all, talked quite a bit about the virtues of keeping teams together. Double Fine may just be inept at management, but if the Kickstarter model isn't sustainable for projects this large, good management will mean having to do things that aren't very nice or professionally satisfying.

 

[DalekFlay]

They also are based in San Francisco, probably pay everyone $100k or more, and likely enjoy the corporate America culture they were used to when working for a big publisher still today. If you've ever worked in an American office you could easily understand how months could go by with nothing to really show for it.

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder if a lot of established game companies doing Kickstarters will end up struggling with this kind of baggage in the future. Obsidian is probably OK for now since they're still planning on developing for publishers, so they have other outlets for talent that isn't strictly useful for making games like Project Eternity, but it will be interesting to see whether inXile will eventually run into the same problem; Fargo has, after all, talked quite a bit about the virtues of keeping teams together. Double Fine may just be inept at management, but if the Kickstarter model isn't sustainable for projects this large, good management will mean having to do things that aren't very nice or professionally satisfying.

inXile laid off most of its "AAA staff" after Hunted: The Demon Forge's release. They're just 20-30 people.

 

[ghostdog]

This was a huge wake-up call for all of us. If this were true, we weren’t going to have to cut the game in half, we were going to have to cut it down by 75%! What would be left? How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story? Yikes! Sad faces all around.

God I can't believe their management is so crappy. And what's this about rebooting the art style to be more simple, it's as simple as it gets! How much are they paying this bagle guy ? It's not like he is some famous dude (like peter chan) all he's done is somework on the recent double fine games. This is ridiculous.

 

[AstroZombie]

They themselves say openly they mismanaged the project. Not much to add there.

These are really low budgets for video games regardless of genre. How well you do with a really low budget varies pretty massively from company to company, experience with lower budgets etc. A lot of video game producers/execs wouldn't even know where to start making a game "for so little". Fans might start realizing the difference, and we might move to a Kickstarter consideration where financial and project management experience counts for as much as creativity, which would make sense to me, that's just how things work; project management is at least as important as creativity. Publishers don't give buckets of money to creative minds, you give the buckets to reliable managers who then keep a close eye on the creative minds.

Wasteland 2's budget is absolutely fine (and separated strictly from Torment's). It started at $2 million, as Kevin's noted, but has been significantly expanded since by several windfalls for inXile. We've recently expanded our office and hired on some new hands as we were operating well under this expanded budget. So, we're good.

You could've just said "Brian Fargo can into business and project management" :p

 

[Brother None]

I wonder if a lot of established game companies doing Kickstarters will end up struggling with this kind of baggage in the future. Obsidian is probably OK for now since they're still planning on developing for publishers, so they have other outlets for talent that isn't strictly useful for making games like Project Eternity, but it will be interesting to see whether inXile will eventually run into the same problem; Fargo has, after all, talked quite a bit about the virtues of keeping teams together. Double Fine may just be inept at management, but if the Kickstarter model isn't sustainable for projects this large, good management will mean having to do things that aren't very nice or professionally satisfying.

inXile laid off most of its "AAA staff" after Hunted: The Demon Forge's release. They're just 20-30 people.

Yeah, used to be 90+ people for Hunted, downsized all the way to about 12 prior to WL2. I'd say it's at about 20 in house now, and about 5 or so fulltime working from home.

You could've just said "Brian Fargo can into business and project management" :p

I could have, yes. Lot of credit goes to Matthew Findley as well.

 

[thesisko]

I could have, yes. Lot of credit goes to Matthew Findley as well.

So when is Findley going to publicly apologize for saying "I think these games always wanted to be action games at their heart. I think all those old turn-based games, it’s just that’s all the technology would allow."?

 

[J_C]

One thing I think international people miss out on is that this company has had an absurd number of employees for the U.S. economic situation of the last few years.

I don't know where do you get that from. Double Fine has around 65 employees total, which is not that many for a middle sized studio. Compare it to Obsidian which has around 130. They are working on 3 projects at the same time I assume, which makes 22 people/ project. It is not that many.

 

[Metro]

One thing I think international people miss out on is that this company has had an absurd number of employees for the U.S. economic situation of the last few years. Their office is in very expensive space and wages there are higher. It blows me away how many people show up in the videos, and theres probably more you don't see. My company has half the number of people it had a few years ago because of cut-backs, but Doublefine seems like the kind of place that is "too nice" to fire anyone. It's too bad the kickstarter money seems like it goes into the company instead of going into just the project. Regardless of what game sales they're receiving, They've used that money to sustain themselves through inappropriate side projects like amnesia fortnight and massive chalice pre-development.

Bingo. A lot of waste going on there.

 

[LizardKing]

This is not surprising. All signs were there.
I already got my 20$ worth of entertainment watching them fuck up this project.
The game looks shit anyway, so it's not a big loss if it never gets released.

 

[evdk]

This is not surprising. All signs were there.
I already got my 20$ worth of entertainment watching them fuck up this project.
The game looks shit anyway, so it's not a big loss if it never gets released.

I don't really think the game will be bad, it's just the whole creation process has been absolutely poisonous so far.

 

[Duraframe300]

One thing I think international people miss out on is that this company has had an absurd number of employees for the U.S. economic situation of the last few years.

I don't know where do you get that from. Double Fine has around 65 employees total, which is not that many for a middle sized studio. Compare it to Obsidian which has around 130. They are working on 3 projects at the same time I assume, which makes 22 people/ project. It is not that many.

Obsidian does NOT have 130 It's more around 100-110 atm. If you think Linkedin, the number on the page isn't accurate, but arbitary. Click on *See all* to see a accurate one.

(It's how I know if someone joins/leaves)

 

[FeelTheRads]

(the money from which they are going to use to finance their first game => financial mismanagement 101)

Whether that would happen or not, it's still hilarious how people donated to Massive Chalice.

"Yeah, we can totally make a strategy game with 725k, but we need 6 million for the adventure game." No fucking red flags here.

 

[Dexter]

Next people are going to tell me that Project: Eternity will be coming out in April 2014 and won't be moved back to sometime in 2015 or so (also see the South Park game).

I totally expected project delays for a lot of the games and this isn't any different even though their plan to fund the rest of the game with game earnings is somewhat curious.
This is how this shit works, and I'm sure we will see our share of failures and disappointments, but I don't believe this to be one of them.
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/bu...le_it_projects_on_time_on_budget_and_on_value

Psychonauts was set to release in 2003 and came out in 2005. Brütal Legend was overbudget, delayed and changed publishers.
The difference is when it's behind a publisher you often either don't even get to see it (Aliens RPG) or can only speculate as to what the fuck is going on (see for instance games like Prey 2, the new Thi4f and similar troubled game projects, changing studios or project leads half a dozen of times and starting over).

The fact is that Double Fine have offered me a bunch of very entertaining and fresh games for what they are (Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Stacking, Brütal Legend) and I'm still very hopeful for the outcome of this one.
No question, the "Massive Chalice" thing was a bad move and I haven't pledged for that and one of their last games, "The Cave" also kind of sucked.

And the documentary is still great, looking forward to the next episodes.

 

[Infinitron]

Dexter I'm fairly certain PE won't be moved as far back as 2015. I mean fuck, Wasteland 2 is definitely coming out this year. It's been proven you can make an RPG in under two years, with a lower budget than what PE has.

 

[Jarpie]

Dexter to be fair South Park RPG haven't been (as far as we know) delayed because of Obsidian but due THQ going bankrupt and getting new publisher who most probably wants to time the release to when new South Park season starts which will give both lot more visibility.

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

No, it hasn't been proved because neither Wasteland 2 or Project Eternity is out yet.

 

[Karellen]

(the money from which they are going to use to finance their first game => financial mismanagement 101)

Whether that would happen or not, it's still hilarious how people donated to Massive Chalice.

"Yeah, we can totally make a strategy game with 725k, but we need 6 million for the adventure game." No fucking red flags here.

I somewhat look forward to Massive Chalice, actually. Turn-based tactical RPGs are a genre in which the advancement of graphics and technology has almost uniformly brought about decline, so I'm quite pleased they didn't get that much more than their funding goal - with any luck, it'll mean they won't waste time and money on pointless extra features and concentrate on making a functionable core game mechanics. With the amount of money they got for Massive Chalice, they should have less pressure to deliver a game with high production values, too. I suspect that Double Fine would have had much less trouble delivering a decent adventure game if they'd gotten less than half the funding they received; that way, Schafer wouldn't have gotten any stupid ideas about trying to make another Grim Fandango. Perhaps they'll be humbler this time around and just try to make a decent game.


Of course, it could end up terrible anyway. In which case, too bad. It's not like I backed it.

 

[CSM]