Broken Age running out of money, releasing in two halves on Steam Early Access
Raising $3.4 million may have been far beyond Broken Age's crowdfunding goal of $400,000, but Tim Schafer has said that "didn't stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money." Facing running out of cash to make the adventure game, Double Fine plans to polish up the first half and release it on Steam Early Access while finishing the rest.
Raising $3.4 million may have been far beyond Broken Age's crowdfunding goal of $400,000, but Tim Schafer has said that "didn't stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money."
Running over-budget on the adventure game, Double Fine plans to polish up the first half and sell it on Steam Early Access while finishing the rest.
"I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it's hard for me to design one that's much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle," Schafer said yesterday in an update for backers. "There's just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is."
Ultimately, the game Double Fine's been making simply needs more money than it had counted on. Time, too: the developer estimated the first half would be finished in July 2014, and the full game in 2015. At the same time, it's reluctant to gut Broken Age or seek extra funding from a publisher or another Kickstarter.
The plan, then, is to finish up the first half of Broken Age by January 2014 with only a few "modest cuts" and put it on Steam Early Access to raise extra cash. It'll then finish up the rest, releasing it as a free update in April or May. Backers will still get earlier beta access.
Steam Early Access is a relatively new service on Valve's platform, selling unfinished yet playable games while development continues. It's the Minecraft model basically, but with the profile and convenience of being on Steam.
It is a little cheeky that Double Fine saved this announcement until after the Kickstarter for its second crowdfunded game, Massive Chalice, finished. It may not have raised that $1.2 million if fans had less confidence in Double Fine.
But, this is an important lesson for would-be backers to learn about the realities of video game development, and surely not the last. Crowdfunding is funding, not pre-ordering. Games will overshoot their budgets, turn out different to the plan, or take longer than expected--especially considering how many developers casually throw grand stretch goals around. The early days of the Kickstarter boom were all dreams and excitement but as the first wave of high-profile, hyper-funded games encounter their first big development hurdles, reality may finally set in.
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Shacknews
replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Broken Age running out of money, releasing in two halves on Steam Early Access.
Raising $3.4 million may have been far beyond Broken Age's crowdfunding goal of $400,000, but Tim Schafer has said that "didn't stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money." Facing running out of cash to make the adventure game, Double Fine plans to polish up the first half and release it on Steam Early Access while finishing the rest.-
Couldn't think of an em-up for Broken Age Alice?
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That is a really impressive looking Newgrounds game
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didnt bother buying it because of the mixed reviews on the broken mechanics. a fear i don't have with a point and click. i'm optimistic about the product, or at least about the part we are getting. what i'm worried about is that it doesnt sell enough to fund the rest of the game despite being good.
if its bad it was my gamble to begin with and at least we might get spared from the rest. its a shorter disappointment or if it works a reminded why i paid for it and someting to look forward to.
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You can't judge that from the God damn art style, they said it's as long as Full Throttle and that's a huge game.
3 million is nothing for a AAA graphic adventure.
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I don't see anything particularly wrong with this. Tim said he designed a game bigger than the scope of the funding. This is good. He also came up with a creative way for backers to get what they funded AND also self publish on Steam. This is a win/win.
If anything I praise them for what they did. Does that mean we get the game later than expected, yes.
But I didn't hear him say well you get 25% of the game we imagined cause the funding while great, wasn't enough" and I also didn't hear him say "can you please give us more dough?"
Developers are artist, in every sense of the word and I have never met and artist that was completely happy with their pieces and its always a work in progress.
Thank you Tim for thinking on our feet, and producing the best game you can.-
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yeah that's pretty much the worst fucking thing you can do
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Me neither. Tim's games are a personal kind of creation too so he doesn't want to rush anything. That's fine.
Their use of kickstarter otherwise is kind of questionable though. I won't do the "we don't have a plan yet" pitches ever again. -
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It's not really the second half, it's perhaps a quarter+ polishing.
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This is probably going to be the #2 problem with Kickstarters (#1 being Kickstarters that never deliver): It takes so long to develop a game that you'll wind up funding it years in advance and likely get bored with the progress of it, which discourages you from funding anything else. To say nothing of the tendency for games to change direction and course - Halo started out as an RTS, FFS. Either developers will be stuck making whatever they promised originally even if it doesn't make sense anymore, or they'll piss off people who expected A and got B instead. Maybe this is less of a problem with games like Planetary Annihilation where the goal is pretty straightforward but for others it's probably going to be a big issue going forward.
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On the upside, Shadowrun Returns is releasing this month!
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I've funded over 10 projects. So far the only BIG delay is Broken Age. Shadow Run looks like it will release as promised. Planetary Annihilation is coming out this month. Leisure Suit Larry released this month and I enjoyed that remake and Divinity Original Sin is coming out soon. Speaking of Original Sin the devs for this game, actually made another game to continue funding of Original Sin even though their Kickstarter went well. Dragon Commander, again this is great news. I liked what I've seen so far and guess what? I bought Dragon Commander also.
Like I said earlier. No game coming would be a disaster. That these projects are living breathing things, is a given. So..I'm OK with them taking their time, its not like I or anyone else on this site doesn't have a massive backlog to play anyway while it ships.
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I might, might consider chipping in for X-Wing / Tie 2 - but I'd want the original developers or close to it. but for the most part fuck kickstarter. Why should I gamble my money? Even trustworthy people with sensible goals are having issues (Tim Shafer) what the fuck happens when people start making ridiculous promises and just pulling shit directly out of thin air for more funding (I won't say, I'm sure people know who I'm talking about)
I literally had no idea FTL was a kickstarter game! People on shacknews posted how good it was, I bought a copy and loved the shit out of it, no idea I could've kickstarted it. Developers got money from me, I didn't need to gamble, win win.
Maybe I'd kickstart Ninja Theory games too :( -
Honestly I think if it's a real indie project it's fine. They want to finish their game to get their business rolling. The thing is Doublefine is not indie whatsoever and it really really fucks with the dynamics here.
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Tons of employees, tons of prior publishing contract work... they're about as indie as Valve or Nintendo. They just don't make any money so they're hitting the indie money tree.
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Well, I'm sure Nintendo has roughly 65 employees and is in a comparable financial standing, right? Guys?
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Doublefine totally has an equivalent number of staff, financial access and clout as Nintendo.
bigbeefsandwich was totally right.
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Isn't Valve technically indie? They're not owned by anyone, and their projects are internally-funded (or has that changed?). I would definitely say that Nintendo is NOT indie: http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=NTDOY
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independent and indie are not the same thing lol. indie is like garage development startup and no well established company should be claiming it.
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At the very least, there is a clear difference between an established company with dozens of employees that has shipped several critically-acclaimed, if financially-unsuccessful titles and a few dudes in a basement who came up with what they think might be a cool idea for a game.
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Eh, too many people use "indie" as an abbreviation for "independent" to just discount it as wrong. I think the definition is nebulous, at best.
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So indie just means broke now?
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its a investment in a game that might not be done otherwise, its about as risky as you want it to be.
want a secure bet: take a developer with a proven trackrecord, structured picth and clear vision, ideally with a working prototype or demo if they are a ne studio.
its ok to be reluctant, but if you want a point and click adventure game made by tim schaerfer its the only way you are ever going to get it.
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Part of me wonders whether Kickstarter is going to be a passing fad soon. I heard recently LSLR was the first released game and thought that had to be a mistake. That is seriously true? We've heard of tons of these things and it's the ONLY one actually released?
Going to be a lot of disappointed backers in a year or two.-
It's not even close to the first game released. FTL was a KS game, IIRC and I'm sure there are others.
Maybe it was the first at a certain budget level? -
It will be if devs plan to use 2 times the budget they receive which is often more than double what they originally asked for.
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Kickstarter only took off for games about a 1-1.5 years ago. A lot of them out coming out around now. LSL just came out, Shadowrun comes out next month, Wasteland 2 and the next Divine Divinity game come out in the fall. There's probably stuff I'm leaving out as well.
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I've been following the development pretty closely and watching the documentaries as it goes... I'm not worried at all. The game already looks great, the design is done, the engine work seems to be done... all they have to do now is finish up the art and just get the design into the game and polish it. I think the amount of work they have done up until this point is more obvious when you watch the documentaries. The tricky part of making the game is done, now it's more of just the grunt work.
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Just watched the trailer, hadn't seen any media on this before. Looks really quite good, fucking awful awful awful name though. Any "Age" in the title of a game just instantly makes me associate it with bad (I don't know why, I didn't say it made sense)
I might get it when it comes out, looks good, what an awful name. -
The new timeline doesn't make any sense!
"We think we need till middle of 2015 for the whole game! The first half could be done in a year and the second half a year after!"
"With modest cuts we can get the first half out in 6 months and the second half out 6 months later!!"
Yeah right! How does that make any sense. They are fucked! They are going to have more cost overruns and it's going to delay more.
They just need to be honest and say they are totally going to run out of money -
i doubt any backer will be bothered much but for people complaining about scams or some shit: doublefine approximately pumped another 2 million of their own money made by sales of psychonauts and the two humble bundles into the project after they overshot with their design.
the gamble they are making is basically that they want to deliver the best possible product on their own terms. at this point they could have cut the game down or peddeled it off to a publisher who would have taken it with strings attached an fucked them and the backers over for a chump change (they already paid ca 5 millions).
as a backer not much changes. you get a polished first half of the game and can decide if you want to play it now or later.
worst case scenario? : they crash and burn with this.
but if the game is actually good, then it going to get good reviews and sellas pretty much like an episode of walking dead or any other episodic game. -
I feel like maybe if you get nearly 9 times the funding you thought you needed that still going over budget is a pretty huge fuckup.
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Not if you are adding stretch goals. It originally was going to be a minimalist non-voiced game. It's hard to take into account physical goods, amazons cut and know exactly how smooth development is going to go. They've been pretty damn honest and transparent about it if you watch any of the videos.
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amazon's cut is defined beforehand, so thats pretty easy to take into account 2.9% +$0.30 per transaction over $9.99.
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It was originally going to be a cheap little Flash-based game, once they got far more than they were expecting they upped the scope. Maybe a little too much, but that's how these things work.
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Played maybe 15 minutes of LSL Reloaded and it was ghetto as fuck.
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I guess I'm the only one that feels the animation looks really bad. It feels very shoestring, which it is.
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i mentioned above that they already pumped additional 2 millions of their own money into it. they are betting the studio on this. its an original franchise, their own game, surrounded by hype and hey absolutely have the capabilities to deliver a great game that resonates. they would be stupid to gimp and cripple it.
they are absolutely doing the right bet as a studio. if this fails they are going to do contract work on shitty games.-
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the game comes out on multiple platforms. if its good and receives hype. its going to sell good enough and in the process has basically funded a much cheaper sequel because asset, engine and other tools already exist. if you are going to make bets do it on your own terms. if its their own game they will make long term money from it, from digital sale down the line etc.
look how an ancient game like psychonauts (which is a adventure in disguise) sold over time.
also they arent going to burn the studio. they have small teams with different games so they are hedging their bets and chances are they are going to do contract work if the game bombs.-
I think they have something like 4 games in development right now. They should be ok if one game flops assuming that the other 3 do ok.
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Full Throttle wasn't extremely short, what the hell?
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makes you wonder what they would have released had they just gotten the 400k.
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I have no problems with this. I would be more upset if they decided to go with some kind of publisher after having done their Kickstarter thing. Or if they had started another Kickstarter for a second round of funding. Neither one of those would have gone over well. This pseudo-episodic approach is probably the best way to go without sacrificing Tim's vision for the game. I respect the fact that Tim isn't willing to sacrifice the idea of what he thinks this game should be. This is a key game for DF, this will be probably the biggest and most publicly seen revival of the Adventure Game genre. Also the success or failure of this game could have a huge effect on Double Fine's future. They have to get this done right.
I thought the trailer looked amazing. It seems to be a bit polarizing though because some of the reactions to it have been fairly negative. Maybe I liked it so much because I've seen the background of what is going into the game, and I know it will be great? Not sure. Either way, I can't wait to play this game. -
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I guess I'm a little confused by the wording of things. Is he saying "Hey, we've gone over budget because I made too much game" or "We're going to go over budget if we finish what I've thought up"?
Because if it's the latter, couldn't they find a way to give it an honest conclusion given the appropriate budget and hope that it is successful enough to merit continuing the story in a sequel?-
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The way I read it, too much game and doesn't want to cut it and give a game hes not comfortable with. So he came up with a way to give the backers the game they help fund and find additional monies to make the game he envisioned.
In my mind, this kind of thing happens on a regular basis, except this time it happened with a crowd funded project.
What I think he should have done instead of announce what he did, was ask the backers if his idea was suitable. If they all agreed yes (or majority) then the plan could have gone though, rather than just making the statement.-
I would wager that "on a regular basis", a development studio would have to appeal to their publisher for the extra funding - which would not always be guaranteed. The result of which would either be the granting of additional funds or the request to cut content.
After seeing the goddamn crippled title that was Obsidian's "KOTOR 2", I'm really thankful that Doublefine has the ability to attempt additional fundraising to finish the game as per Tim's design instead of... well, making reductions in content.
So while I'm surprised that Doublefine even has to appeal for more money, I'm glad that Doublefine isn't going to cut corners. Doublefine has yet to release a game I haven't wholly enjoyed and I look forward to playing Broken Age as Tim has designed it, cuts or reductions made in content.
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This is a great test for all of those armchair publishers out there.
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I expressed my disappointment in their extreme lack of budgeting skills. It's not like they blew it by a few thousand or a few hundred thousand. The budget is supposedly $6 million and they managed to get a few million from Brutal Legend and the humble bundle...but it wasn't enough.
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I'm just reading through this, thinking of all the people who say "They should have developed it for longer" or complaining that "it feels like they cut a hell of a lot" about released games, and I'm just laughing.
This kind of stuff happens all the time, you just don't hear about it because it happens behind closed doors. Normally the only options are to cut out a large chunk of the game (And potentially end up with something terrible) or hope upon hope that your publisher agrees to give you more time and money to do it properly. DoubleFine have more options available to them, so they're exploring them.
I think the main issue that DF have been facing is that they didn't have a solid plan (If any) to begin with. It was noble in spirit; follow the production of the game from concept to completion; but it meant that they didn't have any clear points of data they could extrapolate from to get a solid estimate of time or costs. -
How has Tim Shafer gotten this far in his career and still not mastered a development budget?
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Kind of explains why publishers weren't keen to back his endeavors.
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