Doouble Fine's new adventure

[Jonas]

OTP isn't the kind of company that would gather around a sub-$50,000 project.

Game development is insanely expensive, and I'm coming to find most of that is salaries. The average monthly entry-level wage for a person with my educational background in Denmark is just over $5300. That's $63,600 in one year, and I'm just a game designer - programmers usually get significantly more, and I believe artists and particularly animators do as well. Now, this is the games industry, so I'm willing to work for less, and if it's my own company I'll take a further hit, but I'm just trying to demonstrate what a non-starter a sub-$50,000 budget is.

OTP is owned by 6 people, and we don't have all the positions on a development team filled (we're a producer, a designer, a writer, two programmers, and an animator). We couldn't even keep a project going for 3 months on a budget like that, not if we all want to be able to make rent at the end of it. Frankly I'm astounded that Doublefine figured they could stretch $400,000 to half a year, it's not my impression that they're a tiny company. Not huge either, but certainly not tiny. I know shit isn't so expensive in the US, but still.

Anyway. For $24,000, a couple of guys can make a cool little indie game in 3-4 months. That's not what OTP is about, we'd either need a couple million to get started, or we'd have to work for free. We tried that last one, it didn't turn out the way we'd hoped

[bobby 55]

When I win this super lottery tonight I'll sling ya a couple of mill. All I'll want in return is the title Head-Kicker.

[gamer0004]

@Jonas: you mean you rather make big and deep and complex games (like DX, TNM) rather than smaller, shorter, simpler games? Those would be the games I'd want to develop too (if I had the time and skills). But yeah kickstarters are not suited for every project. Games requiring so much time and effort would be impossible to fund through a kickstarter without a really big name behind the project.

[AEmer]

I assume it's because Schaefer and company handle the overhead investment themselves, that 400k is enough. 100k is certainly enough to film a good documentary, so the remaining 300k will probably be split as salaries, with a single programmer, a single writer, and the rest going to artists (8?).

Presumably, Schaefer won't take a dime off of the project for himself.

In that time-frame, you could quite easily produce monkey island 3.

[gamer0004]

It's only a small side project AFAIK, not the whole team is involved. Tim Schafer + Ron Gilbert will probably write the dialogue and plot, so that only leaves some programmers, artists, composers, sound managers (?) and voice actors.

[AEmer]

I don't think they can necessarily afford voiceacting; but I agree with you otherwise.

A single programmer is more than enough to make a point and click adventure; all the money can go into content.

[gamer0004]

They wanted to have it voiceacted AFAIK, but right now it's raised almost $1.6. Which is a shit ton of money for, well, not yet doing anything. I'm pretty sure they can get it voice acted for $1.6. In multiple languages.

It's an interesting phenomenon. I guess it also proves that what many gamers have said is true: you don't fight piracy with treating customers like shit, you fight piracy by offering those who pay a great experience. I enjoyed the experience of seeing this thing go through the roof and to be part of a group of gamers happy to fund something if it has the potential to be amazing.

[AEmer]

You're right. That'll do it. I'd argue that 1.6 million$ could potentially make the project very distinct.

I don't know what avellones name is worth, but it's a lot too. If he said he were doing a new infinity engine-like game? He could raise a million, easy.

I get why people find it more than a curiosity now. 1.6 million is very generous. Enough to make a psychonauts, no question. Jon Blow could probably finance any future games in this fashion.....if he needed to.

In fact, most games prior to 95 could be remade in hi-def for that amount of money...interesting.

[Jaedar]

Avellone+Tim Cain would be worth a lot of money indeed.

[gamer0004]

I get why people find it more than a curiosity now. 1.6 million is very generous. Enough to make a psychonauts, no question. Jon Blow could probably finance any future games in this fashion.....if he needed to.

In fact, most games prior to 95 could be remade in hi-def for that amount of money...interesting.

Tim estimated a sequal to Psychonauts at $20 million, so $1.6 won't cut it.

[AEmer]

that seems to be a bit much, but if that's his estimate, fair enough...

[Jonas]

I seriously doubt that's what Psychonauts actually cost to make. If he says a sequel would cost $20 mio, then he's probably estimating modern graphics or something.

[gamer0004]

He said someone's guess that Psychonauts cost $12 million was "not far off". He also said Grim Fandango cost $3 million in 1998 dollars. So yeah their games are expensive to make. Psychonauts was apparently one of their most expensive games to date; Stacking, Costume Quest and Iron Brigade cost about $2 million.

[Jonas]

All right, yeah I can see Psychonauts costing around $12 million come to think of it. It's actually a pretty big game with a lot of different game systems and a lot of cutscenes.

[Duke Floss]

Well, it also looked like funding the project gave you a copy of the game.

If this actually works, and more companies follow suit this could actually be the most incline the games industry has seen in a long time. Unlikely, but a man can hope.

I dunno. I think all this proves is that it's worthwhile to invest in personalities, and if you're famous and you've managed to create an image for yourself that people associate with the games you've made, you can get money. Sure the games you've made need to be good, people have to love what you do and what you stand for, but it's not enough to just be a great game developer.

This works because everybody knows who Tim Schafer is (and to a slightly lesser extent Ron Gilbert), and they know he's doing weird off-mainstream oddball games, and he's serving a genre that used to be ultra mainstream but has a really hard time finding a large audience these days. A niche audience that's been served with crap for the past 10 years. A lot of things need to be true for this sort of project to succeed.

And so much kudos to Schafer and Doublefine for figuring out that they're doing the sort of thing that could work with this model, but that doesn't mean it'll work for everybody else, and it doesn't mean it's going to change the industry to any significant degree.

Yeah it is definitely riding on the name game - but the adventure genre has been doing pretty good in the last 2 or 3 years (or at least Tell Tale Games has been doing pretty well in the confines of the P 'n' C genre).

I'll pledge money when the game is out if I figure it's something I want to play.