KickStarter Double Fine's MASSIVE CHALICE - Released... but nobody cares

[tuluse]

I've enjoyed the DF docu. I expect to enjoy a Tim Schafer pnc adventure game. I'm not sure what the problem is with the their first kickstarter other than "I contributed to a kickstarter where the documentary was part of the pitch, but I didn't actually want it" or "I don't like the art style". Both complaints are pretty retarded.

 

[Metro]

Hopefully I can watch a documentary of you enjoying the game.

 

[Cassidy]

Someone should Kickstart a 4x as a spiritual successor of Morten Lindberg's masterpiece. That would end better than this lame cashgrab under a popamoler and also cater to all incloosive needs without harming its setting or premise.

Seriously.

 

[J1M]

Like Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3, I suspect most of us will enjoy the related Codex thread more than the game itself.

 

[Excommunicator]

I didn't know about this. What is this crap? Do they know what they're doing? It looks so poorly thought out. Is there anything original or particularly about this concept in any way whatsoever? It looks like the kind of game you would find on the internet for free.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I hadn't seen this. This game has same sex marriage? How does that work for the dynasty mode, do you need to recruit a surrogate mother or father as well?

There goes away all my interest. I'm sure it's going to be full of ugly Flash graphics as well.

 

[J_C]

New "update" is up.

Spoiler

Million Dollar TeamStream and E3!

Update #6 · Jun 10, 2013 · 2 comments

Hey MASSIVE CHALICE backers!
The response to our support of new languages and PayPal option has been super positive—thank you!
The MASSIVE CHALICE MILLION DOLLAR TEAMSTREAM

MASSIVE CHALICE just cracked $900,000 today! Thanks so much for your support!
We've had such a great time interacting with you guys on our live streams, and we have a lot more planned. But once the campaign closes we’ll need to focus more on making our own awesome game than playing a bunch of other awesome games with you guys! :D!
We’d love to keep doing them, though, so we ran an idea by the higher-ups. If we raise over $1,000,000—and we’re so close!—we feel like we'll have enough budgetary breathing room to commit to a solid schedule of streaming. And so, we present to you the...

We'll play more great games that inspire us, show MASSIVE CHALICE concept art as it develops, answer your questions, and once the game itself starts to take shape we’ll be able to start sharing that with you as well! If we hit a million, we’ll do this every other week on a dedicated live stream from Double Fine HQ. We'll take questions from the stream and get you guys even more involved in the development of MASSIVE CHALICE!
Thanks for your support and thanks for helping spread the word so that we can get to ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Team Update Forum and PayPal Counter

Two small bits of miscellania for you:
We have a new MASSIVE CHALICE Team Update forum! Click here to check it out!
This is where we’ll post game update threads and other content that comes straight from us. Backers will be able to post in those threads, but not create their own threads. This makes it a little easier to keep up with official Double Fine updates and content.
And for those curious how much is being contributed by PayPal backers, We’ve added per-tier and total project counters. It’s a small number right now, but it’ll grow!E3!
Brad and Anthony are going to be in LA for E3, so if you happen to run into them make sure to say hi. They’d love to discuss MASSIVE CHALICE with you!
Sincerely,
Brad and the MASSIVE CHALICE Team :D

BWAHAHAHA! They are not even trying at this time.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm sorry, do they really have to keep saying MASSIVE CHALICE? It's like talking to someone who keeps randomly yelling PENIS and then continuing as though nothing had happened, it's impossible to concentrate on the content.

 

[Jarpie]

New "update" is up.

Spoiler

Million Dollar TeamStream and E3!

Update #6 · Jun 10, 2013 · 2 comments

Hey MASSIVE CHALICE backers!
The response to our support of new languages and PayPal option has been super positive—thank you!
The MASSIVE CHALICE MILLION DOLLAR TEAMSTREAM

MASSIVE CHALICE just cracked $900,000 today! Thanks so much for your support!
We've had such a great time interacting with you guys on our live streams, and we have a lot more planned. But once the campaign closes we’ll need to focus more on making our own awesome game than playing a bunch of other awesome games with you guys! :D!
We’d love to keep doing them, though, so we ran an idea by the higher-ups. If we raise over $1,000,000—and we’re so close!—we feel like we'll have enough budgetary breathing room to commit to a solid schedule of streaming. And so, we present to you the...

We'll play more great games that inspire us, show MASSIVE CHALICE concept art as it develops, answer your questions, and once the game itself starts to take shape we’ll be able to start sharing that with you as well! If we hit a million, we’ll do this every other week on a dedicated live stream from Double Fine HQ. We'll take questions from the stream and get you guys even more involved in the development of MASSIVE CHALICE!
Thanks for your support and thanks for helping spread the word so that we can get to ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Team Update Forum and PayPal Counter

Two small bits of miscellania for you:
We have a new MASSIVE CHALICE Team Update forum! Click here to check it out!
This is where we’ll post game update threads and other content that comes straight from us. Backers will be able to post in those threads, but not create their own threads. This makes it a little easier to keep up with official Double Fine updates and content.
And for those curious how much is being contributed by PayPal backers, We’ve added per-tier and total project counters. It’s a small number right now, but it’ll grow!E3!
Brad and Anthony are going to be in LA for E3, so if you happen to run into them make sure to say hi. They’d love to discuss MASSIVE CHALICE with you!
Sincerely,
Brad and the MASSIVE CHALICE Team :D

BWAHAHAHA! They are not even trying at this time.

Have they told anything concrete about the game or at least anything new?

 

[J_C]

Not at all. But they will stream a lot of walkthrough of them playing older games. Sigh...

 

[Metro]

J_C if you don't start hyping this I'm going to LEAVE THE CODEX FO'EVAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

 

[DeepOcean]

Those are the most inane updates I ever seen in a kickstarter campaign, it is a pity because the concept is good but it is obvious that the team behind it are half-assing the campaign and making shit as they go...

 

[Zed]

I just removed my pledge. This Kickstarter is a fucking farce.

 

[Sensuki]

When I did that I went and made a post in their backer forums as well. It needs to be unfounded.

 

[Borelli]

This kickstarter is a perfect example of "too early". It should have been left cooking for some time until they get a gameplay demo,trailer or at least some art that isn't marker on a whiteboard.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Well, at least they aren't getting millions in under 24 hours. Still, Double Fine is basically becoming the Apple of Kickstarter. Fo' shame, Tim Schafer.

 

[Infinitron]

It's kind of sad that Double Fine, the company that popularized Kickstarter, have completely ignored how it's developed over the past year. Do they not see how poorly their campaign compares with Obsidian's and inXile's? They must have some kind of weird insular company culture.

 

[Excommunicator]

This seems symbolic of the way chance and serendipity seem to drive this industry. Do these designers truly understand what they are doing or are they simply in the right place at the right time, ready to take the full credit for it when all goes right?

 

[evdk]

It's kind of sad that Double Fine, the company that popularized Kickstarter, have completely ignored how it's developed over the past year. Do they not see how poorly their campaign compares with Obsidian's and inXile's? They must have some kind of weird insular company culture.

They have weird insular fans, more like. Why bother with adapting your model, when the old one rakes enough money from your faithful. "Trust us. it'll be cool (as soon as we'll decide what it is)" is a profitable business model for them, so why change?

 

[HanoverF]

I can't help but thinking, is this how thin their pitches are to publishers? Maybe that's why they fail so much.

 

[evdk]

I can't help but thinking, is this how thin their pitches are to publishers? Maybe that's why they fail so much.

That depends on whether they are using the correct buzzwords.

 

[Trash]

Absolutely nothing on direction? Concept art? Ideas? Gameplay concepts? Anything?

 

[Karellen]

I can't help but thinking, is this how thin their pitches are to publishers? Maybe that's why they fail so much.

Not that I disagree with having better pitches, but I truly fail to see which of the successful Kickstarters provided substantially more information. Actually, a lot of them had less. If you look at successful pitch videos, they're composed of namedropping, some pandering, comedic "Take that!" zingers about the traditional publisher model to appeal to the bitter hardcore gamer, and then maybe some really vague descriptions of which games (often quite dissimilar) the game is meant to resemble. Gameplay footage? Mockups? Concept art? Design documents? You don't get any of that, you get people who talk to you to tug at your heartstrings, and subsequently your purse strings.

I'm starting to suspect that it's actually deliberate. It's not like these people, who are industry veterans, are ignorant of how to make technical demos and concepts that actually explain what the game is like. They just don't want to. There are some good reasons - one of which that it's probably a good idea not to paint yourself into a corner with the game design until you know how much money you're getting - but, really, why waste the time and effort if you don't have to? You need a demo and a design doc when you go before publishers because you're asking them for tens of millions of dollars. With Kickstarter, people are asked to part with twenty bucks.

You could say that a demo would still be a bonus, that it would prove that they are actually for real, and make people pledge more. But actually it's probably the opposite. It's much like the reason why game demoes are on their way out. The more information you have about the game, the more likely you are to decide that it's not worth your time and money after all. Remember how people freaked out about the ugly, bland mock-ups and concept art for Project Eternity? For a while there, people at Obsidian may have actually thought that the public actually wanted to see what the early development process of the game was like, but all it really did was shatter people's illusions that games emerged full-formed out of a magical development engine running on unicorn farts.

You're better off not shattering such illusions. If you look at the DoubleFine forums, it's full of people suggesting all kinds of pie-in-the-sky ideas - not just the same-sex marriage thing, but every sort of ludicrously fiddly narrative or micromanagement element, most of which actually work contrary even to the few scraps of information there are about the design goals of the game. As long as the pitch is sufficiently broad and vague, people will fill in the blanks with whatever they like, and be happy. I know when Project Eternity was pitched, from their video I thought it was going to be more like Planescape: Torment and less like Icewind Dale. I suspect it's because I wanted it to be more like Planescape: Torment. That doesn't mean they said it was going to be like Torment, just that they had the good sense not to be clear about it.

 

[kris]

I can't help but thinking, is this how thin their pitches are to publishers? Maybe that's why they fail so much.

Not that I disagree with having better pitches, but I truly fail to see which of the successful Kickstarters provided substantially more information. Actually, a lot of them had less. If you look at successful pitch videos, they're composed of namedropping, some pandering, comedic "Take that!" zingers about the traditional publisher model to appeal to the bitter hardcore gamer, and then maybe some really vague descriptions of which games (often quite dissimilar) the game is meant to resemble. Gameplay footage? Mockups? Concept art? Design documents? You don't get any of that, you get people who talk to you to tug at your heartstrings, and subsequently your purse strings.

Others might not have substantially more information, but they did have some information. but more importantly, they revealed information in their updates. I think this could have been a cool Project, but I got the feeling they are not even sure themselves were they will take it.

You're better off not shattering such illusions. If you look at the DoubleFine forums, it's full of people suggesting all kinds of pie-in-the-sky ideas - not just the same-sex marriage thing, but every sort of ludicrously fiddly narrative or micromanagement element, most of which actually work contrary even to the few scraps of information there are about the design goals of the game. As long as the pitch is sufficiently broad and vague, people will fill in the blanks with whatever they like, and be happy. I know when Project Eternity was pitched, from their video I thought it was going to be more like Planescape: Torment and less like Icewind Dale. I suspect it's because I wanted it to be more like Planescape: Torment. That doesn't mean they said it was going to be like Torment, just that they had the good sense not to be clear about it.

didn't see this first, as for below, I was about to say something similar. I disagree about P:eternity, it was pretty clear in how it would be like a new Baldurs gate and the truth is that torment is pretty similar to that apart from focus.

That makes me consider another thing. I suspect some projects intentionally avoid giving information just to avoid upsetting potential donators. Be as vague as possible and you might get a bigger and wider audience. Just ride out those 30 days with "We are thinking about it" comments and promises of being incloosive for whatever a donator want. For another truth of the matter is that there is a lot of people out here who donate and have strong demands and views for what should be in the game. that includes the codex posters "Turnbased!" "No faggots!". This project in contrast for example "new torment" have no real connection to a previous title.

 

[Metro]

Absolutely nothing on direction? Concept art? Ideas? Gameplay concepts? Anything?

Butt sex confirmed. So there's that.