uh
hm. well that's a bit disconcerting. they made like 8 times what the initially asked for and STILL ran out of money?
[QUOTE=postmanX3;41287046]uh
hm. well that's a bit disconcerting. they made like 8 times what the initially asked for and STILL ran out of money?[/QUOTE]
This is bullshit. I've seen entire MMOs Kickstarted for 20X less than what they were INITIALLY ASKING FOR. They didn't need 8 million dollars for a point and click game. I doubt the budgets combined of every Telltale game amounts to 8 million dollars (minus licensing).
[quote]Schafer and co found that Act 1 of the game wouldn’t be ready until July of next year, pushing the full game off into the distant reaches of 2015.
[/quote]
So much for that fall 2012 release.
[quote]designing a game so big that it would need even more money...as funds just didn’t allow for that kind of scope.[/quote]
Wasn't that the point of the kickstarter? They far surpassed their goal, I'm calling this a scam or a very poorly managed project.
schafer what are you doing man
[QUOTE=Alex_DeLarge;41287151]This is bullshit. I've seen entire MMOs Kickstarted for 20X less than what they were INITIALLY ASKING FOR. They didn't need 8 million dollars for a point and click game. I doubt the budgets combined of every Telltale game amounts to 8 million dollars (minus licensing).[/QUOTE]
yeah. like, what are they even spending that money on? not to mention double fine isn't some group of poor basement-developers, they're an established company with several released games under their belt that ought to be producing some capital.
this situation reeks of poor planning and maybe a bit of vapourware too. i mean i guess they're promising half the game by next january, but i'm pretty sure this game was supposed to release sometime this or last year.
considering double fine is basically the poster child for kickstarter, they're setting a terrible example
[editline]2nd July 2013[/editline]
oh yeah and duouble fine just had ANOTHER kickstarter, too.
good thing they didn't tell us they blew through their first couple million until after that second kickstarter, huh? gosh i did think it was pretty cheeky of them to kickstart a game before they'd even finished the first one they announced
[QUOTE=postmanX3;41287425]yeah. like, what are they even spending that money on? not to mention double fine isn't some group of poor basement-developers, they're an established company with several released games under their belt that ought to be producing some capital.
this situation reeks of poor planning and maybe a bit of vapourware too. i mean i guess they're promising half the game by next january, but i'm pretty sure this game was supposed to release sometime this or last year.
considering double fine is basically the poster child for kickstarter, they're setting a terrible example[/QUOTE]
not to mention they had another successful kickstarter end a few weeks ago, mind you it's the same studio
[QUOTE=postmanX3;41287425]
oh yeah and duouble fine just had ANOTHER kickstarter, too.
good thing they didn't tell us they blew through their first couple million until after that second kickstarter, huh? gosh i did think it was pretty cheeky of them to kickstart a game before they'd even finished the first one they announced[/QUOTE]
To be fair, that was an entire group from DF that isn't working Broken Age.
Still, this just reeks of poor budgeting, which is something DF has been guilty of before.
[QUOTE=postmanX3;41287425]
oh yeah and duouble fine just had ANOTHER kickstarter, too.
good thing they didn't tell us they blew through their first couple million until after that second kickstarter, huh? gosh i did think it was pretty cheeky of them to kickstart a game before they'd even finished the first one they announced[/QUOTE]
Tim Schafer isn't involved with Massive Chalice. That project is being led by Brad Muir's team.
The fuck, how do you overspend more than 8x the original budget?
Kind of weird Double Fine decided to kick start like 3 games at almost the same time, getting more than they asked for, now this?
[QUOTE=Novangel;41288601]The fuck, how do you overspend more than 8x the original budget?[/QUOTE]
"FUCK! Look at all this money! We can do THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS now."
"Jesus Christ, YES! Let's add THESE and THESE and THESE features"
"Holy shit! The story will be much bigger, longer and better now!!!!"
More or less.
Knights of the Force all over again, only with lots more money, and less trojans
Welcome to game development folks. You cannot make make a game and expect to be able to pay a team for only 2 million.
But you can, they're just terrible at budgeting and deciding when to stop.
[QUOTE=Novangel;41293206]But you can, they're just terrible at budgeting and deciding when to stop.[/QUOTE]
Except you can't. Overhead and salaries in game development are hell. Double Fine employs around 60 people. If their salaries are even 40000 a year they've burned through 2.8 million, over half of what they got from Broken Age and Massive Chalice alone. Combined with the fact that we're halfway through year two of development they've likely spent closer to 4 million on salaries alone. This is without accounting for overhead and other costs.
[QUOTE=darkrei9n;41295674]Except you can't. Overhead and salaries in game development are hell. Double Fine employs around 60 people. If their salaries are even 40000 a year they've burned through 2.8 million, over half of what they got from Broken Age and Massive Chalice alone. Combined with the fact that we're halfway through year two of development they've likely spent closer to 4 million on salaries alone. This is without accounting for overhead and other costs.[/QUOTE]
they prolly have other sources of income with which to pay salaries than the kickstarter money for the development of broken age
[QUOTE=darkrei9n;41295674]Except you can't. Overhead and salaries in game development are hell. Double Fine employs around 60 people. If their salaries are even 40000 a year they've burned through 2.8 million, over half of what they got from Broken Age and Massive Chalice alone. Combined with the fact that we're halfway through year two of development they've likely spent closer to 4 million on salaries alone. This is without accounting for overhead and other costs.[/QUOTE]
Then why is the budget $400,000? I'm sure they thought at least the salaries through, the money is probably partially paid by the Kickstarter.
Posted in the other thread:
Does everyone seriously forget that kickstarter is nothing more than a baseline donation drive and not a preorder? This is why folks. It frustrates me to no end to see tons of people throwing money at kickstarter thinking its a pre-order when it is not at all and nothing more than a donation drive to... KICKSTART (!!!) a project!
Also please remember that Double Fine explicitly said that the money would go twoards the game and a small amount to the documentary they are filming to chronicle their progress, whether they succeed or fail.
Kickstarter isn't a guarantee. So far, double fine are doing exactly what they promised to do. Instead of outright failing though and giving up at this road bump they are looking to other options, which is smart.
[editline]3rd July 2013[/editline]
Also please keep in mind they haven't ran out of money yet. They just did projections of how much it would cost and how long it would take, and realized that their budget for the game wouldn't cover all of it.
In other words, Act 1 isn't set to release till July next year, but by that point the coffers would be dried up so they are releasing on early access next Jan to keep the funding going till the last stretch. Why is this that big of a deal? "Oh no, a game with a larger than expected budget costs a larger than expected amount of money!". Even if they only made their $400k goal they likely would have ran into the same issue, but with a game with much lower standards of quality. So their solution is to release an early access title that is highly complete and polished of the first act of Act 1, rather than going broke. So what?
Lets also all completely ignore Planetary Annihilation doing the exact same thing, but everyone was cool with that because Uber Entertainment was "nice enough" to leave us in complete ignorance as to their financial situation so we just assume things are going dandy when they could be in a bad spot too.
[QUOTE=Novangel;41293206]But you can, they're just terrible at budgeting and deciding when to stop.[/QUOTE]
You can only estimate these costs at first. During the course of the project you really discover how much it costs to actually develop the whole thing. This is a common issue in the game industry, not just with DF. The fact they're sharing this with us is commendable, normally you don't get such a detailed insight on how professional game development progresses.
We backed an adventure game by Tim Schafer, and we're going to get one. Previous DF titles had plenty of budget issues too, but that didn't stop them from delivering did it?
Watch the damn documentary
[QUOTE=postmanX3;41287425]yeah. like, what are they even spending that money on? not to mention double fine isn't some group of poor basement-developers, they're an established company with several released games under their belt that ought to be producing some capital.
this situation reeks of poor planning and maybe a bit of vapourware too. i mean i guess they're promising half the game by next january, but i'm pretty sure this game was supposed to release sometime this or last year.
considering double fine is basically the poster child for kickstarter, they're setting a terrible example
[editline]2nd July 2013[/editline]
oh yeah and duouble fine just had ANOTHER kickstarter, too.
[B]good thing they didn't tell us they blew through their first couple million until after that second kickstarter, huh?[/B] gosh i did think it was pretty cheeky of them to kickstart a game before they'd even finished the first one they announced[/QUOTE]That had been well known for months.
[QUOTE=Eric95;41300520]Watch the damn documentary[/QUOTE]
To be fair, a lot of people can't :v:
Its backer-only.
[QUOTE=darkrei9n;41291521]Welcome to game development folks. You cannot make make a game and expect to be able to pay a team for only 2 million.[/QUOTE]
They had 8 million dollars. Nearly a fourth of the total budget of Half Life 2, along with the development of the Source Engine. Think about that for a second.
These guys are using an engine that already exists, a couple voice actors. maybe a dozen programmers, a couple artists and whatnot. I have no fucking idea how they spent that much money. It's just insulting when some huge game developer uses Kickstarter and gets ten times the amount when truly innovative titles fall short of their goals, let alone making twice the amount they asked for (which is usually very low, around $50,000). Kickstarter was made for garage developers, not Tim Schafer.
[QUOTE=Alex_DeLarge;41302842]They had 8 million dollars.[/quote]3.3 million before backer rewards, ~2.6 million afterwards. 15% of that went to 2PP for the documentary for an actual budget of 2.2 million dollars initially.
[quote]These guys are using an engine that already exists,[/quote]The engine was more of a framework. They've done a huge amount of custom work which they'll release for free, if I remember correctly.
this is why publishers are necessary if you're a large team making a multimillion dollar game
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