Doouble Fine's new adventure

[Jetsetlemming]

I'd imagine that when Double Fine says $300k (Note that their entire goal value was not entirely for the game, it's 3/4 game, 1/4 Player Two documentary on the development), and October of this year, they've already got the preproduction finished, eating the cost themselves. This isn't an indie dev with no other source of income, they've just released four profitable smaller games this year. They're already staffed up with experienced people who are in an established working environment. Hell, wouldn't be surprised if Schafer and Gilbert weren't sitting on a couple dream project mostly complete adventure game design docs each.

In other Kickstarter news, I contributed to this today:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pri ... e-games-he

[AEmer]

Right.

But that all makes it no less interesting. If small firms could do independent productions by getting, essentially, pre-orders of this type even before the game is getting made, then you take away the power from the production companies.

This is exciting.

[Duke Floss]

Business sense tells me that unless other well known game designers take this on this will be a one up. I'm not sure most big name companies would be willing to sacrifice secure funding for maybe donations. As for indie developers - well I'm not sure anybody would donate money to fund an idea for a developer/company without any prior industry history/experience.

I am glad Tim Schafer has done this - but I think it is a one up.

[gamer0004]

But most developers do have industry experience - indies with a successfully released game on their name can use it to get funding.

[Duke Floss]

But most developers do have industry experience - indies with a successfully released game on their name can use it to get funding.

True, and this type of funding isn't unheard of - but it is still a very unstable way to secure funding for a project. Tim Schafer is doing it with grand scale - but his name has huge fan support.

I don't think that this is going to change the industry.

[gamer0004]

Changes typically don't happen at once. It's yet another step in a direction away from traditional publishing.

[EER]

I absolutely agree that if this was a random indie studio, I probably wouldn't have contributed.
If it was a game of any other genre, I probably wouldn't have contributed.

Although I agree that anything that puts money in the hands of developers instead of publishers is a step in a good direction, I doubt I will be funding more games through kickstarter. For me this is a one off. However, there are other people out there that didn't like this kickstarter for the same reasons I did like it. So I think there's definitely funding there for at least another two games, but it will have to be the right people with the right idea at the right moment.

[gamer0004]

For those of you who are interested, here's an interview with Tim Schafer about the whole kickstarter thingy.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Jonas is definately on the right track with his thinking. I've made very similar arguements about Kickstarter. I've been going around propogating to Indies to not use Kickstarter as there are better alternatives out there such as Gamers Gate and Desura. Eventually Valve will incorporate a community funding model into Steam, Gabe Newell said 3 years ago when in Australia that this was a major plan of his for the future of Steam- when it finally does come along, I'd be very much interested in setting up a project there.. though obviously wouldn't rely entirely on community funding (because ideally you should have some kind of product before you ask for money- afterall we're talking a transaction or a comitment to purchase here... we're not talking about Investments or Donations, it is strictly point of sale).

A Tactic that I'm going to use in the next 2 years will be to produce a small title for IOS initially as a simplification of a much larger game- use the IOS title to generate funds to then inject capital into the larger product- then offer the chance for people to purchase the game in that state.

A major failure in Community Funding is that its not suitable for story driven titles- once the story is done, there is no incentive for replay- so I advise against that. Sandbox titles flourish with community funding however, due to their inherit replayability- we saw this with Minecraft and Mount & Blade.

Kickstarter is not a good system to be using because it doesn't offer us anything we didn't already get before, in the end they take 10% of our income for nothing more than a website. Gamers Gate, Desura and eventually steam chuck in Distribution which is worth it. Further more Notch made plenty of money from nothing more than a paypal button- this is not something exclusive that Amazon are offering.. nearly anyone could do the same using PayPal. The only problem is however Kickstarter has very slack standards, you can come along with nothing more than a design document and start collecting money- whereas Desura and Gamers Gate require there be a product first. We've seen E-Begging scams before being propogated over Kickstarter, especially in the form of Spiral Game's Orion Prelude which I instantly flagged as possibly one of the most unethical projects to ever use community funding (the main reason is that they wanted 100% more for the beta.. which is a rip off, and they classified it as a Donation, so legally it wouldn't be covered by consumer law, that said it would still come under for-profit NGO law.).

In the end, I don't want to see Kickstarter start a trend of Pay-and-Pray projects.. but I can see it coming. Especially in the form of Brian Fargo and Obsidian. Both of them are contraversial, have produced sub-par games in the past, and have huge problems comitting to ideas. In the end when people are giving money, the project manager also becomes a risk manager, they have to ensure that the game CAN be done feasibly within the budgets given. Fortunately Tim Schafer did the right thing and under-valued how much he'd need to produce his game. A practice most of these developers should be doing... but I'd argue Tim Schafer's success will make them headstrong and think they can ask for millions of dollars and still get it..

I'm not against Community Funding, the opposite, I'm for it and I've been campaigning for it ever since Gabe started campaigning for it as well. But it HAS to be done in a way that protects the consumer, and delivers on promises.. However one thing I love is that it will soon take the fight to the publishers, and it may even liberate the industry. I'm excited by this.. But if we're going to do it.. we have to do it right.

I'm also concerned that the bigger already established industry memebers like Brian Fargo ect, will overshadow the indies.. I absolutely hated the article Gamespot did on this subject where they essentially said "I want to see Modern Warfares being produced with this"... WHY?! they don't bloody need the money?! FUCK EM. Far as I'm concerned the AAAs need to stay the fuck out of community funding.

And a major thing as well, this is not something that can or should be repeated. Once you've had your success.. THATS IT. Now recapitalise your profits and produce another game off your own dollar, you don't need to ask people for capital at that point.

Those are my opinions on the subject. Rest assured, I hope to god Valve jumps on this ASAP, we need to kill the industries interest in Kickstarter asap. Kickstarter is perfect for non-profit projects.. what we're effectively doing is selling products.. We need to be doing this in a place of commerce, in other words, we need a Kickstarter designed and tailored towards the video games industry only.

It's going to be interesting over the next few years to see the impact this has. We've already seen it work in the form of TaleWorlds and Notch- its got huge potential, but we have to do it right because there are risks there and there have been scams before. Everyone is especially worried about the potential Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo have for failure- since in the event of failure we don't get refunds and we may not even get a game. So I'm against selling the idea during Pre-Production.. Games have to go into Production and be a sellable Alpha first. Both Desura and GamersGate have this requirement.. Kickstarter does not.

And I am 100% opposed to Quotas, because anyone can set a very easy to reach quota and still get paid. They serve no purpose at all despite Kickstarters claims that it "Stops E-Begging".. it doesn't. If they're able to persuade enough people, they can still scam people.

I just figured I'd share this, because a lot of people are like "YES FINALLY WE DON'T NEED PUBLISHERS" but are forgetting that publishers exist to take the risks away from the developer, if its not a publisher taking the risks.. its the consumer.. so remember that.

Sorry for the wall of text lol

Hmmm, when the Angry Video Game Nerd used a similar system to fund his movie, people bitched left and right about how this was not the "proper" way to fund a project, because there is some sort of imaginary law, i guess. "He should be taking a risk, he should get some money from the bank, why doesn't he trust his fans to buy the game", etc.

James was attacked by his fans because of a variety of reasons, 1. he was selling plenty of DVDs which were making ample profits 2. He began an merchandizing campaign almost immediately after he'd taken people's money for the Movie (which was received in poor taste given how over priced the plushies were) 3. The fact that Mike Matel took over James' role on the site, a lot of people hate Mike. Myself included. 4. James has still produced amazing work even with minimal budgets, he's not a big budget director and he's even said that the film will be very indie. 5. Members of the site ThatGuyWithTheGlasses (which james is indirectly affiliated to) ran a lot of e-begging scams, the biggest being TheAmazingAtheist.. A lot of the negativity from his scam rubbed off on James as a result- the point is that James was already running into hostile territory. I for one think James will do the right thing in the end, he seems like he's genuinely passionate about doing this. For James to resort to this though, it is disapointing to see, we all thought he had a lot of success, and that success would've have given him plenty of weight.

E-Begging has become a huge problem though, especially since the Escapist/Yahtzee Scam that occured in Australia (which was also indirectly related to Extra Credits leaving due to Escapist being utterly Corrupt.., Extra Credits did what they did for a good cause, then Escapist screwed them over, copied their idea and tried to run a for-profit campaign using the same tactic. Of course they did remove their campaign due to negative PR.. but the fact that it even happened hurt their reputation BIG time.) It was a huge issue because you effectively had a greedy company seeing a charity thing and going "Hey we could do that!". Not fucking cool!. In the end the video games industry is about Commerce. We provide a product, the consumer pays for it.. that's it!

These kinds of things are why Kickstarter, IndieGoGo ect are a huge problem. We can't just jump in with blind faith- because thats what these sites want you to do (ie. Just hand over your money without thinking). In the end, it has similar risks that you'd find on the stock exchange. You could claim "Buyer Beware" but frankly that's not going to cut it, we have laws in place for a reason.

Crowdfunding has worked in film before though, the film Iron Sky used a combination of Crowd funding and actual studio funding to give it a high budget quality, and it really shows. But this is just one success story.. not all projects could potentially end so happily, and we'd be foolish to expect all of them to be that way. Further more, not everyone is as genuine or for that matter can be trusted.

In the end we're weighing up the good and the bad here. You have to be really critical about this. What these systems are about is Risk Management.

[gamer0004]

I... really don't understand what your problem is with crowdfunding. You're saying that some projects are never finished and as such are a scam. But we all know that, right? There are some very entitled people on the internet (*cough* HDTP) but those should be ignored. When I fund a project, I do so knowing it might never get done. And that's the reason why I don't fund projects which have nothing but a design document and no other way of showing that they are really committed. In case of this Double Fine adventure game, there was no proof of concept, but they're risking their rather excellent reputation, so they'll probably deliver. They may not do so after all, the result may not be any good (or I may not like it despite it being good), but that's the risk and that's part of the fun as well. I like funding things more than buying finished product, because there is some uncertainty as to what it's going to be like.
The scams are a bit of a problem and kickstarter should monitor their projects, but I think that most people realize that successful funding does not equal a successful project. You would have to be epically naive not to understand there is some risk involved. Projects which offer nothing but some "idea" tend to get less funding. Projects which show dedication and commitment (a video, proof of concept, early builds) are far more successful in raising funds. Projects which offer none of that often are not successfully funded, which means nobody pays anything. If they are, it's often because the project seems so special that it's worth taking the risk.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

I'll translate what I'm suggesting much clearer. Any products that are in pre-production should not be on kickstarter or any community funding service. Clear and Simple. You cannot sell an idea.. you MUST sell a product. When the consumer parts with their cash, they should immediately get a product, this way its treated as a purchase, it is treated pretty much that you've bought a product (that just happens to be unfinished.. but given most games are unfinished nowdays.. this is preferable) a comitment to purchase (whereas a pre-order is not a comitment to purchase.. since a pre-order can be canceled.. this cannot).

The other problem I have with Kickstarter is the teird injections, that if you pay $1000 more you get awesome stuff. This definately will lead to a sense of entitlement, and I'm concerned that if it should come down to the crunch, those that paid more would have more of a say in the projects future, I'm concerned that feedback would go ignored with some projects due to an investors sense of entitlement to feedback.

I... really don't understand what your problem is with crowdfunding.

I think you might've skipped over the bit where I said I'm not against community funding.. I'm just against Kickstarter's handling of it- because they offer us nothing- whereas we already have services like Gamers Gate and Desura that do offer us something, they throw distribution in anyway (which Tim Schafer had to organize through Valve with his game.. but in the end this likely cost him a lot in Royalties, if we cut out the number for people in the process, it works out cheaper.. if we could just do it from Valve directly, it'd be awesome).

Eventually Valve will adopt this, Gabe announced it 3 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk

The second that Valve adopts this system (which is a given, since now 2 of their competitors are using it) Kickstarter will be obselete and everyone will 100% jump onto Steam, where Valve will push for stricter submission standards (as has been the case with both Desura and Gamers Gate as well.. they won't let just anyone use their networks and they have a submissions board that filters out the bad eggs. I feel safer knowing someone is at least going "I'm not sure about this one"- but more importantly, not all of us are critical thinkers, they will impulsively buy into something- Digital Distribution is all about impulse purchase, tie it directly to crowd sourcing, give them the product immediately after purchase and it'd go much further.)

but they're risking their rather excellent reputation, so they'll probably deliver.

But there's always that chance the game will be a commercial flop. So we get a new adventure game.. but Double Fine is a business at the end of the day, they ideally want to be pulling a profit from this. As I said Risk Management comes into that. This is where community funding falls on its ass, you can only do it once, after that.. if you didn't make profits, you can't ask for more money (you can try, but in the end its poor business to do so, ideally the product should make a profit). That's the only real risk I see for double fine, I'm positive their product will be amazing.. Will it make bank though?.. who knows.

Rest assured I don't intend on my arguements to come across as hostile so don't treat them as such. I'm very much for Community Funding, I've bought community funded products before (just not via Kickstarter). And I very much intend on using it someday should my initial plans fail to generate enough money to finance a major game operation in Australia.

[gamer0004]

I had read your post, but thanks for clarifying

If Steam launches crowdfunding, that'll probably be the end of kickstarter for sure. But I don't think kickstarter is doing things wrong, and I don't think crowdfunding should be limited to a more or less existing product. Of the four projects I've funded, two of them were projects in a pre-development phase (one had only a proof of concept (Octodad 2), the other had nothing (Double Fine Adventure)) and I'm okay with that. In fact, I think it's part of the fun, funding then seeing where things are going. Funding a game which has already got a playable build is far less fun because it doesn't feel like you're making things happen, it rather feels you're making distribution happen (if they got as far as a playable build, they can probably get the game itself finished without any extra money... The money would rather be needed for costs other than development). Sure, it's more risky, but also more fun, and funders can themselves decide whether or not a project is too risky. As such, if Steam is more strict (and they probably will be), I hope kickstarter will continue what they're doing right now. I like this far better than funding an already existing (albeit unfinished) product.

[Jaedar]

BEHOLD IT IS AS THE GREAT JAEDAR HOPED IT WOULD BE(assuming it actually works out properly. First step tho, hath cometh)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inx ... 2?ref=live
the video is pretty funny.

[gamer0004]

Yeah I wanted to pledge $50 for the box and all that, but shipping is $15 That's too much. $10 should be fine (other projects manage to do shipping for $10...)
Shame Double Fine didn't have a boxed version of the game for the $60 pledge, because now I only pledged $30 whereas I'm more excited about the DF adventure than Wasteland 2 (having never played the first). But so far I haven't pledged anything for W2 anyway because $15 shipping.

[Jonas]

Your logic is a little hard to follow, mate. Why not just pledge the $15 for the digital download then?