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Starbreeze to publish Psychonauts 2, investing $8 million, releasing 2018
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
sleepwalkcapsules
Member
I don't agree with most of the criticism Double Fine and Schaffer gets (the only criticism I think has some merit is Spacebase, but that's still debatable) but I need to remember that the project lead for Psychonauts 2 isn't Tim Schaffer.
So even If you think that Tim doesn't know how to manage, this wouldn't apply here anyway.
So even If you think that Tim doesn't know how to manage, this wouldn't apply here anyway.
exmachina64
Banned
Wow, fantastic news. That's awesome.
Messofanego
Banned
Awesome! Love Starbreeze.
If you want to make lots of money investing, you have to put lots of money up.
You're not gonna get rich throwing 1,000$ at at a project and hoping it makes it big.
And nowhere did the paperwork say profit was guaranteed. The guidance paperwork has strict legal requirements for what it can say and what numbers it can use.
Drillary Clinton
Banned
It's fucking lit let's gooooooo
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.
- 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
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.
Sure, and their videos showing Psychonauts 2 production so far shows that not only do they have a lot of the original team members still on board (or back specifically for this project), they already have a great platformer engine up and running and replicating abilities from the original Psychonauts in an environment that looks a hell of a lot more impressive than anything in the original.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
So how will Double Fine actually make money making this game?
Welcome to game development.
Suburban Thug
Member
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.
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.
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.
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.
Huh I really enjoyed the platforming of the first game. I didn't even mind the meat circus which people seem to hate.
bishopcruz
Member
You can be optimistic, nothing I say is going to change that. I hope it does well. But in their history Doublefine has NEVER shipped a major release on time. Where they excel is in smaller almost proof of concept games such as their Kinect titles. Honestly they are the kings of the quirky game that doesn't overstay its welcome, games like Costume Quest and Stacking are great in that regard. With a clear goal and a smallish budget they can do great things. When they have a big budget and far fewer limits that tends to be when projects get away from them.
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.
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.
I will be honest in saying that I haven't followed this as closely. If Schafer isn't the lead then maybe there is hope it will release on time. So when I say I'll be amazed if it comes out on time it will be a mix of having a grand total of one KS I backed coming in when it said it would (Shadowrun: Hong Kong) and DoubleFine's track record over the years. If Psychonauts 2 was a small game of the scope of Massive Chalice or Costume Quest, I'd have more faith in that part of it. We'll see, and I'll be happy to be wrong. But I know if I was a publisher investing in Doublefine, that history would give me serious pause.
petethepanda
Member
Man, the visuals are shaping up to be exactly what I hoped they'd be.
Personally delays don't bother me. The Last Guardian released on an entirely different generation of consoles and took nearly a decade to get here and is one of my favorite games of all time. If a game takes a while I don't really care if the final product is solid.
CecilRousso
Member
Good thing you don't know the budget for this game then, so you don't have to worry about that.
Crowdfunded games aren't limited to the money they raise in the campaigns. It's the money needed to kickstart the game's development and make it happen.
Double Fine made a deliberate descision to expand the budget for Broken Age and they're not alone in doing that. Brian Fargo at inXile stated in interviews that they did exactly the same thing for Wasteland 2, and that the kickstarter money they raised for that game was far far from enough for the game they ended up shipping.
Suburban Thug
Member
When was the last time you played it
You played literally the worst version of the game. The input lag is horrendous in the ps4 version. I have beaten psychonauts six times and have owned it on almost every single platform it has released on and the ps4 version is by far the worst. The timing in the ps4 version is way off, I played the gog version again just to verify and the control responsiveness is night and day. It is never Mario level of controls but the ps4 version is straight shit. The ps4 version is based on the already bad ps2 port but somehow it is even crappier. The only reason I bought it is because I thought it was going to be a hd remaster, which it is not.
Double Fine should be ashamed to release it in this state. The ps4 version should have been a port of the pc version.
In summary, if you have not yet purchased Psychonauts, stay away from the ps4 version.
You are correct, the meat circus has always been turd, no matter which version of the game you have. It is crazy difficult until you use one specifc power then you can walk through it.
I love the game but the meat circus isn't defendable, in my opinion.
The platforming in Psychonauts is okay, but certainly not enough to carry a game by itself. When its mixed in with general exploration and puzzle solving I think it works quite well. The linear platforming obstacle courses, however, vastly overstay their welcome. DF also made a lot of rookie mistakes like prioritizing the "look" of the geometry over it's gameplay utility, leading to situations where you have no way of knowing whether you can stand on a given surface.
The fact that they've brought in people like Zak who seem to really know the nuts and bolts of platforming makes me very optimistic. He seems very grounded, so hopefully he's a good counterpoint to Schafer.
Finally, while I think its perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of DF's ability to deliver a large project in a reasonable time and budget, I also think its worth keeping in mind that DF has managed to survive some extremely rough periods for the industry that killed off lots of independent developers. That alone makes it wildly unlikely that DF is some kind of hopelessly incompetent fly-by-night operation that certain populations like to make it out to be.
Last year. Hell my first play through with Psychonauts back in the day was on the lesser PS2 version at that. I actually didn't have much trouble with the meat circus and actually had more problems with some of the other levels mores so but not so much from that platformer mechanics.
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.
This is why they started releasing the documentary episodes for free, so that kind of information wouldn't just be limited to backers, and that's why they're taking a more private approach in showing the ins and outs of development this time (showing less, and what they do show they make available for free for everyone this time).
The press was insane in handling Broken Age. Every hiccup, every problem was enlarged, and often provided without context. Hell, most regular gamers have no idea how game development works, and treated like any of this was uncommon - not knowing that this happens for almost every mid-size/large game. The insight Double Fine showed in how difficult it is to make games is unparalleled, and it ended up biting them in the ass - with certain clickbait articles portraying them as far more incompetent than they ever were, and that narrative getting spread and enlarged in gamer communities. You can see the effects this had on the team in the documentary and it's absolutely heartbreaking.
It's been said before and apparently needs to be said again, but Broken Age's development wasn't any more or less troubled than your average game. The only difference being that this time there was an insight in how that all worked for outsiders like never before (which is the very reason most developers protect themselves against that sort of stuff leaking out through NDA's, and you only hear those stories starting to come up when studios go bankrupt and former employees can talk about it more freely). I think people hammering against Double Fine for these things would be very surprised if they ever got the chance to have a similar non-puff piece look into the development of the games of any similarly sized studio or larger.
The backlash against Double Fine was way overblown, and largely undeserved, especially given the insane amount of effort they put into communicating towards the fanbase and working according to their wants and needs. Their biggest fault was underestimating the power of Needless Internet Outrage Culture on the internet. This was heavily enlarged by Tim Schafer often and openly speaking out against Gamergate and defending Sarkeesian (both online and in public, while hosting GDC), in a time where many even on Gaf were still defending Gamergate and attacking Sarkeesian. This just caused many of that section of gamers to keep repeating the narrative that Double Fine was either scamming or heavily mismanaging money, and it's still something that people keep repeating without knowing the full story - completely ignoring that Double Fine is almost the only old-school mid-size studio from the old X-Box days still succesfully operating today, while still making purely original, non-external IP-based games with very quirky/outside the mainstream market styles. That's a huge achievement that somehow keeps getting completely ignored in all this.
And let's not forget, they were also blindsided by the insane amount of attention their kickstarter got. Their original intention was to make a much shorter flash-like game without voices, basically an expanded version of their 'Tim hosts GDC' gag point & click adventures they made for their website before. The amount of value people got for their donations ended up being insane - if only because of the production quality and sheer depth (and amount of hours!) of documentary material, never shying away from the hard stuff to portray a more promotional friendly version of development, as well as the very in-depth development insight on the forums and the (I think, at least, although it could never be to everyone's tastes) very high quality of the game itself. I can't think of any other gaming kickstarter that delivered as much as the Broken Age one, even if it took a while.
Sorry for the wall of text, but the amount of misinformation around Double Fine still getting spread has hardly subsided after all this time. You may not like their games and that's completely fine, but they're extremely hard-working, good people over there. A unique, open and honest voice in an industry that sorely needs it.
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.
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.
eot
Banned
Spacebase was released in an embarrassing state. Of all their games, that is not the one to make excuses for. It didn't fail because of Early Access, it failed because Doube Fine screwed it up. The fact that they felt obligated to compensate their fans who bought the game is a testament to that.
NoPiece
Member
USC Trojan
Banned
Excited that the game is being made. I loved the first one.
Scared for all those involved as I don't see it selling very well...like the first one.
Scared for all those involved as I don't see it selling very well...like the first one.
bishopcruz
Member
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.
sleepwalkcapsules
Member
I 100% agree with you.
Double Fine never ever did something with malicious intent. What they did ""wrong"" was interpret Early Access in a different way that most people see now. And to be honest, I think they interpreted it the way it should be (as an outlet to give risky games a chance). But most people don't seem to understand that Early Access (and Kickstarters too) are supposed to be risky.
And I totally forgot that they gifted a game for the buyers. They did way more than they were obligated to in this situation.
sleepwalkcapsules
Member
They completed the game.
I paid 15 dollars and nothing more and got the complete game.
Edit: sry for double post
CecilRousso
Member
I think you would have a much easier time with this, if you were actually interested in trying to understand the project management for the game, instead of ejecting to the easier "lol, they ran out of money" way of thinking.
In short, about the desicion: The documentary shows them building the tools and 1-2 areas of the game as a vertical slice, to be able to judge production pace, and after that take assess the scope of the game. Which is not as much "pressed into a tough choice" as it is normal project management when you work with as many unknown variables as Double Fine did with this project. And them starting from scratch with said unknown variables being a part of the pitch for the project.
You can of course discuss certain descisions within the design of the game that might or might not have made some things more difficult, and I'm sure Tim Schafer has done that himself, like any project leader does (or ought to do). But if you're stuck on them actually being in that position that they discussed which way to go, and them expanding the budget, then you're really not getting it. Still.
There I'm talking about fig investors.
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.
