There’s quite a lot of documentation and interviews out there about Schafer’s complete inability to manage money from people who’ve had to manage Schafer before. It’s also clear to see on doublefine’s track record as every title they’ve done that hasn’t been a copy/paste job of their walking dead formula adventure games have literally ran out of money halfway through. And even the episodic adventure games appear to run out of steam halfways with episodes getting smaller and later as they struggle to finish.
ah, yeah I might be conflating things here. I am indeed thinking of Telltale being the only not shit modern titles that I thought doublefine had managed to complete -_-;
I guess that makes my view on doublefine even worse. Thanks for the correction.
I suppose you mean Broken Age, then. To be honest, I’m very happy with how the project turned out (aside from the Kickstarter backer reward delay, that’s a whole other field of trainwreck).
I guess the real issue is that they overestimated how much support they had for Broken Age. The original plan was a “retro” (cheap) point-and-click, with the star of the show being a documentary of its production. After the Kickstarter, they massively upscaled the scale of their project, and… well, that’s where things started to go wrong with the project. $3.3M is astronomical for a Kickstarter, but it’s still not much in game budget terms, and the upscaling exceeded their actual budget. It’s sadly something I’ve noticed a lot (hence why I’m glad that Fig seems to do a much better job in funding projects like these, such as Phoenix Point and Pillars of Eternity 2). Kickstarters just don’t cover games as well as you’d hope, in the end you’re still making pocket change by AAA standards and success isn’t always guaranteed in game development.
As far as games like Mighty No 9, Torment, and countless other Kickstarter disasters go (not to excuse the developers for the issues that could have been prevented), a lot of the problems can be traced back to the fact that unless you’re developing Wasteland 2 (and again, remember they kickstarted Torment:ToM too, which was a disaster imo), you might not walk away with everything you need. Do you actually ask for what you need to make the game (and risk failure), or do you walk away with a month’s allowance of food costs and call it a success? It’s just not designed for something as expensive as making a game.
The reason why I respect DF anyway is because of the way they picked up from there. Broken Age did have issues with its budget, but the company is still around for a reason. They managed to scratch together a working “Act 1” of the game and released it (with Kickstarter backers granted keys, of course) and used the funds from it to pay for Act 2. Overall, I’d say the game was great and they really fired on all cylinders once they knew what they were up against. I just don’t really get the complaints with Act 2, to be honest, and I have a feeling that a lot of people who have issues with Double Fine today are people who just didn’t like the way the game ended. Well, and people who have no clue what Double Fine does but watched some CrowbCat video or something. -_-
I highly recommend that you actually watch the documentary they made on this, as it shows a lot more of the behind-the-scenes problems they ran into.
This is getting a bit off topic though, so it might be best to continue this on a new thread. TL;DR: Tim Schafer is perfect in every way (or something like that), Kickstarter sets indies up for failure, Broken Age was pretty fun, Spacebase still sucks, Psychonauts 2 is worth hyping.
Since most of the games I haven’t played or I have them downloadable and play them that way, I really haven’t seen anything I Want or that I would die if I didn’t have…etc.
I did see this…Momonga Pinball Adventure because I love Pinball games and it looked like fun. But it it isn’t in Linux…but…I found this…Thanks to Enhanced Steam:
I get 7 or more games, lots of music plus I feed 5 people. Win. Win. Everyone wins!
Thank you, Enhanced Steam. I appreciate you more and more.
These days I have a massive backlog combined with an old PC so I’m much more selective. Combined with that I’m not client-ist…that’s to say I’ll happily use Uplay and Origin beside Steam to play games. That being said I cry tears of water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin, immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium when I see that the DLC’s Dead Space (3) Awakened and Mass Effect (3) Citadel still cost far too much to play…Looks like there goes another year of waiting for a price drop.
(Also for any who care…I’ve been ill lately so around less… )
My Steam winter sale shopping is done. In addition to dropping 99 cents on Fez, I got:
Pyre - 50% (I enjoyed Bastion & Transistor so I’m assuming this will be just as good. I believe this is also the lowest it’s ever been discounted.)
BattleBlock Theater - 80% (I played this on a friend’s Xbox 360 a few years ago and remember it being pretty fun.)
Hitman Go - 75% (Everyone seems to love this turn-based Hitman strategy/puzzle game, so I figured I’d give it “go.”)
In total, I spent about $16 on four games. Can’t really justify spending more than that considering my backlog - which is becoming more overwhelming with each passing week.
I noticed you haven’t been around much lately. Bad time of year to be ill. Hope you feel better soon!
Thanks muchly.
Hope you enjoy Pyre. I loved Bastion, own but haven’t really played Transistor yet and have read a lot about Pyre. Was a little worried about the ties to it being a sport game, but I trust Supergiant and from the looks of it it’s a blast. At some point I’ll have cleared my queue enough to start stocking up on my “To Play” list.
(Wow…just read the latest Pyre reviews and Steam discussions…looks like their latest translation patches broke a lot of things and there are a fair few unhappy Chinese gamers!)
No actually, I saw someone play it briefly some time ago and it did not look very good at all. I can’t remember exactly why I thought so though. Is it?
Well I really enjoyed it enough to 100% it (on Epic Launcher…I’ll get round to replaying my Steam version some day…). Given it’s setting it’s very different in style from other Metroidvania’s it’s definitely worth a play (it was given away for free by Epic to promote their launcher and it’s also been bundled by Humble). I’d given it a solid recommendation, more so than my Aurion recommendation!
Edit - FWIW…as a kid I LOVED LOVED LOVED Wonderboy III The Dragons Trap and still have the Master System cartridge. It’s not on sale at the moment but I’d recommend that you keep an eye on it for any future drops. Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight is also supposed to be pretty good but I have no experience of that one.
Maybe I’ll check it out again at some point. I bought momodora on gog earlier along with Stasis. Now that I think about it I’ve spent an awful lot on games this month little more than I should have, I’ve even bought a game or two from chrono too. My backlog just keeps growing and here I am playing Witcher 3 again >_<
@Fraggles If you’re willing to expand to 3D Metroidvanias as well…
Darksiders is available in a franchise (1+2+a sick Jesper Kyd OST for 2) bundle for $10.
I just finished the first game, it’s absolutely incredible. You need to be a bit patient with the early levels, but it really picks up from Twilight Cathedral onward once you get more moves and the Serpent Path system. I’m also playing through II now, but so far, it’s just… lacking something. The combat doesn’t feel nearly as controllable or responsive as the first game, and the difficulty is nonexistent (Easy in DS1 = Apocalyptic in DSIIDE) as your character moves twice as fast. Still, I could end up changing my opinion later, and the Jesper Kyd soundtrack is still perfect either way.
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