No. Fig investors will get some return, but less than their initial investment.
The numbers that DF published to show that it would be profitable for fig investors were based on the (obviously misleading) idea that Psychonauts 2 will sell as many copies at full price as the first game sold in total, including bundles and sales at $1.
I can only assume investors either just wanted to help get the game made and don't care about making a profit, or are the embodiment of a fool and their money being swiftly parted.
Oh come on. I love DF games (well I just like BA) and I've been a fan of Schafer since his LucasFilm Games days. He is a great creative guy and all, but let's be real. Psychonauts took 5 years to make, lost one publisher then moved to another, Brutal Legend shipped 17 months late. Broken Age, (and I have seen the damned documentary) had problems because clearly Tim didn't have much of a plan or idea going in, and it shows. He didn't budget for the money he had, and had to do a split early release to get the game finished.
Hell even Grim Fandango was half a year late, and that was with cutting a bunch of story and puzzles at the end. Schafer has worked with 5 major publishers on his personal projects since DoubleFine launched. They were dropped by 2 of them before the games released. When those games were eventually picked up by other publishers, they both flopped, Psychonauts made Majesco get out of the AAA game business altogether, and Brutal Legend was a big loss of Activision. Even in this very thread people doubt that this game will make money for Starbreeze, and based on Tim's history I think that isn't an unfair prediction.
I think Psychonauts 2 will be good. Or at the very least I hope it will be, but Schafer has given me no reason to believe that he can release an original game that he is directing on time or on budget. It's one of the reasons that I didn't fund Psychonauts 2 after I funded Broken Age.
And btw, Sony assisted but the remasters are published by Doublefine themselves.
Oh come on. I love DF games (well I just like BA) and I've been a fan of Schafer since his LucasFilm Games days. He is a great creative guy and all, but let's be real. Psychonauts took 5 years to make, lost one publisher then moved to another, Brutal Legend shipped 17 months late. Broken Age, (and I have seen the damned documentary) had problems because clearly Tim didn't have much of a plan or idea going in, and it shows. He didn't budget for the money he had, and had to do a split early release to get the game finished.
Hell even Grim Fandango was half a year late, and that was with cutting a bunch of story and puzzles at the end. Schafer has worked with 5 major publishers on his personal projects since DoubleFine launched. They were dropped by 2 of them before the games released. When those games were eventually picked up by other publishers, they both flopped, Psychonauts made Majesco get out of the AAA game business altogether, and Brutal Legend was a big loss of Activision. Even in this very thread people doubt that this game will make money for Starbreeze, and based on Tim's history I think that isn't an unfair prediction.
I think Psychonauts 2 will be good. Or at the very least I hope it will be, but Schafer has given me no reason to believe that he can release an original game that he is directing on time or on budget. It's one of the reasons that I didn't fund Psychonauts 2 after I funded Broken Age.
And btw, Sony assisted but the remasters are published by Doublefine themselves.
They're starting with an established engine, they know how to create platformers now, and can almost immediately move right onto the more interesting parts instead of just taking years to figure out the basics.
Psychonauts was published in 2005. At this point I'd question whether they really have the collective knowledge to build a modern platformer because they haven't made any since then and they've presumably had a lot of that original Psychonauts staff turn over. Plus platformers have developed quite a bit since then.
Something that plays just like Psychonauts would be fine with me anyhow, I think.
Is Rhombus of Ruin still on track to make its release date? Looking forward to a new adventure in that world.
So how will Double Fine actually make money making this game?
The 20m figure was from a time before modern engines started racing to become more usable and affordable; at that time, I think Tim expected to use their own Buddha engine instead of switching to Unreal, and the tools from that time were generally not as advanced as now.I say this as a big fan of Broken Age: I have no idea how Psychonauts 2 will turn a profit for anyone involved. 8 million plus another 3 million from fig still leaves several million unaccounted for from the 20 million figure given to Notch when he was fantasizing about funding Psychonauts 2.
The first game was mostly made by people who had no experience making platformers, and it didn't have professional gameplay or level designers. Psychonauts 2 has all of those.Hopefully this one is actually a good game. I tried to play Psychonauts via PS4 for the first time last year and gave up at the meat circus. Always felt like it would have made a better animated movie/tv show than a game. Writing, characters, and worlds (minds) were incredible but the actual gameplay was absolutely terrible.
Platforming was a chore because there is a slight delay between when you press x and Raz actually jumps. Most of the time you had absolutely no idea what to do because of obtuse level design and unclear objectives. Common fodder enemies are repetitive and not fun to fight, basically just spam psi-blast to win. They make you grind arrowheads because the currency isn't readily available and to top it all off you need to buy certain items to progress. Lock on sucked too, especially in the den mother fight of milkman conspiracy.
I really, really hate the first as a game but pushed through because the characters were so endearing. Hopefully Double Fine learned from the first games shortcomings and crafts a masterpiece this time. Kinda disappointed this will be digital only though.
Hopefully this one is actually a good game. I tried to play Psychonauts via PS4 for the first time last year and gave up at the meat circus. Always felt like it would have made a better animated movie/tv show than a game. Writing, characters, and worlds (minds) were incredible but the actual gameplay was absolutely terrible.
Platforming was a chore because there is a slight delay between when you press x and Raz actually jumps. Most of the time you had absolutely no idea what to do because of obtuse level design and unclear objectives. Common fodder enemies are repetitive and not fun to fight, basically just spam psi-blast to win. They make you grind arrowheads because the currency isn't readily available and to top it all off you need to buy certain items to progress. Lock on sucked too, especially in the den mother fight of milkman conspiracy.
I really, really hate the first as a game but pushed through because the characters were so endearing. Hopefully Double Fine learned from the first games shortcomings and crafts a masterpiece this time. Kinda disappointed this will be digital only though.
It's definitely fair to say that Double Fine's previous projects have had major issues around project management and unrealistic expectations. But I also think there are credible explanations to each of the projects you mentioned.
Even if it doesn't excuse the delays and other problems they can still be explained.
- Psychonauts was truly the work of a bunch of amateurs who wanted to make something ambitious. Up until then, all that any of (or most of) the team had worked on were point and click adventure games. Creating a 3D platformer was a completely new challenge for them. I recommend checking out the retrospective documentary to show just how hobbled the tools were they were working with, combined with a lack of experience, it makes total sense why the game took so long for them to make.
- Brutal Legend I'm less familiar with, but it did seem like a clash between Double Fine and EA about the creative direction of the game. There appeared to be a lot of disagreement and distrust between the money people and the creative people about what they wanted to make - as seen by the marketing you could allege was misleading - which probably led to many of the delays and design issues.
- I know you said you watched the Broken Age doc, but I don't think it can be under-stated just how unexpected the entire thing was for them. They went into it expecting to create a tiny game for a tiny budget, and ended up getting a hell of lot more money than they could have ever predicted. When deciding what to do with that money, they had to choose between keeping the original scope (what would they do with all the extra money?) or significantly expanding the scope. Once they chose to expand the scope, they decided to go all-in with a no-holds-barred approach, including investing a whole lot of extra money of their own. It's questionable whether that was the right decision - to expand the scope even more - but I loved the game and I didn't have to pay anything extra for it, so I'm very happy.
Meanwhile, across all of their other recent games they've shown the clear ability to deliver projects in scope and on time. There's a long list of games chock full of examples of projects that weren't poorly managed, including Headlander which was one of my favorites of 2016.
With Psychonauts 2, so far, we have a project that seemed to be planned from the outset with a specific budget and scope in mind, they've continued to suggest they're holding to that scope and budget, and now the 2018 date they originally announced in their Fig campaign over a year ago is still the date they plan to ship on. They're starting with an established engine, they know how to create platformers now, and can almost immediately move right onto the more interesting parts instead of just taking years to figure out the basics.
There's always risk, but I'm pretty optimistic.
If you watched this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjirhAZsZNo&feature=youtu.be you see that Zac McClendon is the lead designer and not Schafer
New footage: http://youtu.be/sjirhAZsZNo
Again, this doesn't mean that for certain Psychonauts 2 will come out late, or go over budget. But it doesn't paint a rosy picture.
When was the last time you played itHuh I really enjoyed the platforming of the first game. I didn't even mind the meat circus which people seem to hate.
Hopefully this one is actually a good game. I tried to play Psychonauts via PS4 for the first time last year and gave up at the meat circus. Always felt like it would have made a better animated movie/tv show than a game. Writing, characters, and worlds (minds) were incredible but the actual gameplay was absolutely terrible.
Platforming was a chore because there is a slight delay between when you press x and Raz actually jumps.
When was the last time you played it
When was the last time you played it
When was the last time you played it
And I know that is the story for Broken Age, but you know what, it doesn't excuse it. It coming late, that could be expected especially with the increase in funds. Wasteland 2, PoE, and Torment have all come out later than initially projected. Them running out of money is the point where I, as a backer, finally understood what Schafer's main problem was. He simply couldn't rein himself in. He couldn't effectively plan out a full project based on a budget and work from that. That is not what he is good at, and it showed a LOT during the whole BA affair. Of all of their missteps Broken Age was their biggest, by far.
I don't agree with most of the criticism Double Fine and Schaffer gets (the only criticism I think has some merit is Spacebase, but that's still debatable)
Spacebase was a misjudgment in the potential popularity of the concept. They released the game as Early Access, with the idea that they would add gameplay features with the money sales would bring in. The problem was that nobody bought it, and a building/management sim needs a lot of iteration before it actually starts becoming fun (and I actually had a bit of fun with it, but there wasn't much there). They continued paying the team working on it out of their own pocket in the hopes of attracting more players, but sales never improved and they just couldn't afford to continue to pay a team for building a game nobody was playing. It's sad but the reality of Early Access. They tried, but if nobody buys it there's no money to make a game. The biggest problem was that this game came right in the wake of the Gamergate/Broken Age shitstorm, and the amount of people complaining about the game far outweighed the number of people who actually bought it.
Spacebase was a failed project (definitely not a scam, and not actually a project Tim Schafer was working on), and they even ended up giving everyone who bought it free games as compensation, without being obliged to do so. And the only reason they actually put a team on making Spacebase for Early Access was because, again, the fans voted for it during their gamejam sessions (Amnesia Fortnight) they used to do back in the day. Sadly the number of people voting for it didn't compare to the number of people buying it. Unsurprisingly, given the weird hate of the gaming community, they have backed off from public Amnesia Fortnights as well these days.
Starbreeze is investing 8 million, I assume they care a lot about making a profit.
Yes that's what I said.
Just wanted to say something about this, because this is something that gets repeated a lot.
The 'Double Fine ran out of money and had to split the game' narrative isn't the whole truth. Far from it. They were designing the game, realized the story the arrived at would be too long for the size of the game they could make with the money they got, and they had a couple of options:
1) Cut back the story, and release a game roughly the size of part 1 (which would mean bringing the 'switch' of part 2 (avoiding spoilers here) would come much earlier and reduce the amount of sets dramatically. Which could have worked, but it wouldn't be the story they wanted to tell. This is the option that most developers end up choosing (or negotiating more money with their publisher, which was more complicated this time given that the fans funded this game (and remember that this was the first time something like this happened on this scale).
2) Make part 1 as it ended up being, end on a cliffhanger, and leave the rest for the sequel that everyone would have to pay for again. They obviously didn't want to do this and they didn't.
3) Do what they finally ended up doing: release part 1, use the sales of part 1 to help fund the rest of it, and release the second part of the story later as an add on to the full game. Everyone who already backed the game didn't have to pay again and would get part 2 as well, and everyone who bought part 1 at this later point, when it released, would get part 2 for free as well.
And then, and this is very important, they laid these questions out before the community and let them voice their opinion/vote for it. And the community responded very heavily in favor of the third option (which was also of course super fair, and nobody was scammed out of anything). The press made a headline out of 'Broken Age split into two games due to money issues, using sales of first half to fund second half', without any context, without any mention of the fans actually voting for this option themselves. This started a huge backlash against the game amongst people not familiar with the community, and it turned insane very quick.
Spacebase was a failed project (definitely not a scam, and not actually a project Tim Schafer was working on), and they even ended up giving everyone who bought it free games as compensation, without being obliged to do so. And the only reason they actually put a team on making Spacebase for Early Access was because, again, the fans voted for it during their gamejam sessions (Amnesia Fortnight) they used to do back in the day. Sadly the number of people voting for it didn't compare to the number of people buying it. Unsurprisingly, given the weird hate of the gaming community, they have backed off from public Amnesia Fortnights as well these days.
Apart from Spacebase, every game they made turned out to be a success in my eyes. Unlike anything else for sale in the industry. Their games aren't for everybody, and given how they all try to do something very different they're all flawed (but never in such a way that I don't end up absolutely loving them), but for the crowd that enjoys it there's nothing better. And even if someone doesn't like them - which is entirely fair - the narrative that Tim Schafer is incompetent, a hack, or a scam artist is simply uninformed Gamergate nonsense.
Poor poor Schafer. He completely bungled the budget for his game, and then was pressed into making a tough choice. Yeah, he gave the choice to the community, that still doesn't change the fact that with roughly 9 TIMES their original planned budget they couldn't actually complete a game that they felt would make people happy. And let's be honest, it's not like Part 2 had a ton of new sets and art. It wasn't even WRITTEN yet by the time Part 1 came out. It's also something that honestly hurt the game as a whole, and my experience with it. I spent over a year dodging spoilers because I wanted to play the whole thing as one product as it was meant to be.
I know the story, it didn't bother some people. That's fine. It did me. It's also again, part of a pattern with Schafer, you can defend him on this all you want, but again, this has been a consistent problem with him.
Poor poor Schafer. He completely bungled the budget for his game, and then was pressed into making a tough choice. Yeah, he gave the choice to the community, that still doesn't change the fact that with roughly 9 TIMES their original planned budget they couldn't actually complete a game that they felt would make people happy.
There I'm talking about fig investors.It sounded like you were saying the opposite:
As has been stated repeatedly, they didn't spent ~5m making the game they expected to make with 400k; due to increased funding, they rescoped and went for something larger. Due to unusual factors (primarily choosing a unique artstyle and toolset), it was much harder than usual to estimate the cost of their plans early on. As for writing, it's not that the story wasn't written, it's that the specific lines which required acting and animation weren't.Poor poor Schafer. He completely bungled the budget for his game, and then was pressed into making a tough choice. Yeah, he gave the choice to the community, that still doesn't change the fact that with roughly 9 TIMES their original planned budget they couldn't actually complete a game that they felt would make people happy. And let's be honest, it's not like Part 2 had a ton of new sets and art. It wasn't even WRITTEN yet by the time Part 1 came out. It's also something that honestly hurt the game as a whole, and my experience with it. I spent over a year dodging spoilers because I wanted to play the whole thing as one product as it was meant to be.
I know the story, it didn't bother some people. That's fine. It did me. It's also again, part of a pattern with Schafer, you can defend him on this all you want, but again, this has been a consistent problem with him.