Double Fine Expands Platforms for Kickstarter Game, And Notch Adjusts Expectations for Psychonauts 2

@eskimo said:

@mikey87144: Why would I bother to post if I was kidding?

It's not that I don't want anyone else to play it, I just don't understand why Doublefine need to make money off this when the costs have already been covered by donations. Like I said in my post, I had hoped they would release it for free. To go and sell something that has been produced for free in such a kind hearted manner seems antithetical to the whole project.

It hasn't been produced for free. It was funded by investors, and every one of them gets a copy of the game or more for their trouble. If they give it out for free they make zero profit. That's just stupid.

I hope Notch does not fund Psychonauts 2.

@Aelric said:

If there is excess, it's supposed to go back to the backers, not Psychonauts 2 or any other project because that would then be embezzling.

I seriously hope you're being facetious.

@eskimo said:

If they put this game up for sale I'm going to feel deeply betrayed. It's one thing to provide the game to the backers that funded it, but to make money off the back of those people seems outside of the scope of the original kickstarter pitch. It was my understanding that the game would only be provided to backers. I had actually hoped they would release it for free. Damn my naive idealism!

This isn't a charity project, and I don't recall seeing anything in the pitch for this Kickstarter that gave the impression it was going to be. The money they get from the Kickstarter is all going into the development of the game. If they then turn around and release that game for free to everyone, that's months of time spent creating a product for absolutely no gain.

Thing is, Double Fine are a business. The money they make from selling this game goes toward paying their employees and funding future endeavors, something that is key to keeping a company alive. They need profit or they'll cease to exist. They also aren't "making money off of the backs" of the investors -- the investors each get a copy of the game, plus whatever other goodies were offered for the tier of payment they chose. They are essentially funding the game by buying a copy early.

This isn't the first video game project to be funded this way, on or off of Kickstarter -- it's simply the largest in scope.

@ThePilgrums said:

@Branthog said:

@ThePilgrums said:

Notch proving yet again he's clueless when it comes to business. Not that he's a great programmer either, but... After the Minecon clusterfuck, I don't know how that guy is anyone's boss. This turn of events is unsurprising.

Clueless?

http://i.imgur.com/Xktrp.jpg Just a reminder of how he runs his own company. "Clueless" sums it up quite well, I feel. I enjoy Minecraft, but Notch is a naive, delusional manchild of the highest order, and I'm glad Jens Bergensten took over its development.

I wish I had the ability to say

"Y'know what? I think I don't want to work this May. Like, any of it. I'm going on vacation. As in, for all of it. May is my time of the year."

Correct me if I'm wrong. If enough developers get into this Kickstarter program, does that mean that none of them have to worry about publishers?

@Yiggly said:

I wonder what percentage of backers are Whiskey subscribers.

Probably a lot once he announced he was starting a Kickstarter account. I also know quite a few console homebrew developers sent backed Double Fine on Kickstarter as well.

@pw2566ch: Nope, just a popularity contest which will leave out the little guys who have no celebrity to their name. If anything, Double Fine just screwed a bunch of nobodies out of their future Kickstarter plans but no one knows that yet until the big-name guys completely dominate Kickstarter's font page. Today it's just a bunch of indie projects trying to fund book publishing deals and short film projects. Tomorrow it'll be nothing but Kevin Smith movies.

I'm easy like a sontag morgen.

@Xeiphyer said:

TL;DR version: People need to Get over the self entitled, elitist, douchebag way of thinking, and grow the fuck up.

I'm not being entitled or elitist. I'm just saying if I were in his shoes I wouldn't take a several day long vacation to play video games while people under my employ are working. Which he's done more than once. And I find that ridiculous, personally. How exactly is that a "douchebag way of thinking"?

And Minecraft is far from finished, but that's another conversation entirely.

@TzarStefan said:

Meh.

Don't be such a jaded internet gamer stereotype dude. Come on.

@Xeiphyer said:

@xxizzypop said:

@ThePilgrums said:

@Branthog said:

@ThePilgrums said:

Notch proving yet again he's clueless when it comes to business. Not that he's a great programmer either, but... After the Minecon clusterfuck, I don't know how that guy is anyone's boss. This turn of events is unsurprising.

Clueless?

http://i.imgur.com/Xktrp.jpg Just a reminder of how he runs his own company. "Clueless" sums it up quite well, I feel. I enjoy Minecraft, but Notch is a naive, delusional manchild of the highest order, and I'm glad Jens Bergensten took over its development.

I wish I had the ability to say

"Y'know what? I think I don't want to work this May. Like, any of it. I'm going on vacation. As in, for all of it. May is my time of the year."

That image is so stupid. Dude was an indie developer, working on a game on his own time. It wasn't a professional studio and never claimed to be, so people getting pissy over him taking vacation time need to check themselves. Expecting somebody to be working full time on a game just because you want it is fucking dumb. That image is just so arrogant and self entitled and disgusting. Its those kind of people that felt the need to DDoS attack his site because he wasn't releasing updates as fast as they wanted. Also the way they present data is pretty dumb, like all updates are somehow equal. Of course there are a lot more updates in the early development as he had to push out bug fixes right after every update, and then later on they decided to update less often, but push out much larger updates when they did. Oh, and when you are a self made millionaire and have a staff of people who are working on a game that is basically finished, you can take all the vacation time you want. Its not like shit wasn't getting done while he was off on vacation. TL;DR version: People need to Get over the self entitled, elitist, douchebag way of thinking, and grow the fuck up. For the record, I don't like Notch at all, but his vacation time is his own business, and that image is clearly just slanderous trash that i'd expect to find on FOX news.

I was just about to type something like this, but then you went ahead and beat me to it. Good man.

Including weekends (the image doesn't differentiate between weekdays and weekends), I have roughly 92 days off a year (not including holidays). Is that excessive too?

I don't understand this image. At all.

I'm not the world's biggest Notch fan, but in the words of Senator Clay Davis "I'll take any motherfucker's money long as he *givein'* it away"

Woo son! I'm hyped as fuck.

Given that Notch is just a regular guy who made a game that happened to be extremely successful, I don't understand why people expect him to act like a shrewd businessman. As he says in his post, he doesn't want to lose the ability to say shit off-the-cuff online just because millions of people listen to him now. I don't see how saying 'okay, I'm talking to Tim, but y'know, let's not get carried away here because it turns out it's quite a bit more money when we get down to it' is anything but a reasonable, measured thing to say for someone in his position.

@Krystal_Sackful said:

I'm not the world's biggest Notch fan, but in the words of Senator Clay Davis "I'll take any motherfucker's money long as he *givein'* it away"

Woo son! I'm hyped as fuck.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

@Xeiphyer said:

@xxizzypop said:

@ThePilgrums said:

@Branthog said:

@ThePilgrums said:

Notch proving yet again he's clueless when it comes to business. Not that he's a great programmer either, but... After the Minecon clusterfuck, I don't know how that guy is anyone's boss. This turn of events is unsurprising.

Clueless?

http://i.imgur.com/Xktrp.jpg Just a reminder of how he runs his own company. "Clueless" sums it up quite well, I feel. I enjoy Minecraft, but Notch is a naive, delusional manchild of the highest order, and I'm glad Jens Bergensten took over its development.

I wish I had the ability to say

"Y'know what? I think I don't want to work this May. Like, any of it. I'm going on vacation. As in, for all of it. May is my time of the year."

That image is so stupid. Dude was an indie developer, working on a game on his own time. It wasn't a professional studio and never claimed to be, so people getting pissy over him taking vacation time need to check themselves. Expecting somebody to be working full time on a game just because you want it is fucking dumb. That image is just so arrogant and self entitled and disgusting. Its those kind of people that felt the need to DDoS attack his site because he wasn't releasing updates as fast as they wanted. Also the way they present data is pretty dumb, like all updates are somehow equal. Of course there are a lot more updates in the early development as he had to push out bug fixes right after every update, and then later on they decided to update less often, but push out much larger updates when they did. Oh, and when you are a self made millionaire and have a staff of people who are working on a game that is basically finished, you can take all the vacation time you want. Its not like shit wasn't getting done while he was off on vacation. TL;DR version: People need to Get over the self entitled, elitist, douchebag way of thinking, and grow the fuck up. For the record, I don't like Notch at all, but his vacation time is his own business, and that image is clearly just slanderous trash that i'd expect to find on FOX news.

Thank you. People seems to forget Minecraft owes only to itself. Its an indie game, and people who "funded" it did it without any date or guarantee of when it was going to be out of beta (and its not like he took their money and run away, leaving the game as a virtual wasteland)

They are not published by any other company and any timeline they set, they do it by intuition. If he had an obligation to finish the job at a certain date, I would hate his guts for it (being familiar with the other side, the side of the other developers working on it), but he is an indie developer working on his own game and in his own time.

@ThePilgrums said:

@Xeiphyer said:

TL;DR version: People need to Get over the self entitled, elitist, douchebag way of thinking, and grow the fuck up.

I'm not being entitled or elitist. I'm just saying if I were in his shoes I wouldn't take a several day long vacation to play video games while people under my employ are working. Which he's done more than once. And I find that ridiculous, personally. How exactly is that a "douchebag way of thinking"?

And Minecraft is far from finished, but that's another conversation entirely.

Ridiculous. You do realise that he's paying these people a wage?

It's not like he forced them to work. If anything he's helping these people out, offering jobs in a fun, creative environment in a difficult job market.

I get it though - you don't like the way he lives his life.

@ThePilgrums said:

@Xeiphyer said:

TL;DR version: People need to Get over the self entitled, elitist, douchebag way of thinking, and grow the fuck up.

I'm not being entitled or elitist. I'm just saying if I were in his shoes I wouldn't take a several day long vacation to play video games while people under my employ are working. Which he's done more than once. And I find that ridiculous, personally. How exactly is that a "douchebag way of thinking"?

And Minecraft is far from finished, but that's another conversation entirely.

You realize this is kind of the way the entire world works right?

If there's one thing I regret, it's being included in these comments for replies while trying to be quippy.

We're all getting fairly derailed from the fact that Double Fine is clearly setting itself up to do gangloads of work, thankfully.

Interesting that when the prospective investor is an actual person, people immediately start getting suspicious and having emotional reactions. Even if the end result would be something they want.

Do they think Notch is going to throw a hissy fit and steal the source code halfway through development because they changed the color of Raz's hair, or something?

@jennoa said:

@13p said:

Rock Band for the blind...

This video game-based Kickstarter is not as cool or mainstream as the DoubleFine one, but it is still deserving, even if you only donate $1. And I didn't know computer / video game engineers looked like this either.

This absolutely deserves to be funded. I've already chipped in, hope they make their goal.

Being visually-impaired myself, I am always interested to see projects like this which aim to make video games of any kind more accessible to anyone who would have trouble playing "mainstream" games. I am interested to see how this project turns out and, if I had the money, I would have funded it. I am just a poor college student, though.

Now for the on-topic part of my comment: Good on Double Fine for being able to crowdsource the funding for Tim's new project. Publishers may not back it, but the community is obviously interested enough to collectively fund it. Maybe if people were this generous in other ways, the mainstream media wouldn't have anything depressing to report anymore. Hey, a man can dream. Also, by "mainstream media", I mean things like television news channels and their equivalent web sites. Sites like the Whiskey family and some other news-reporting sites aren't technically mainstream in my opinion.

I'm going to guess around 90% of whiskey subscribers backed DFA.

@Jost1: So every comment has to be positive just because it's Double fine? Great logic!

I'm excited for whatever product double fine bring out next, regardless of what they bring out.

I'd like to see Windows Phone added to the mobile lineup.

@Snapstacle said:

@pw2566ch: Nope, just a popularity contest which will leave out the little guys who have no celebrity to their name. If anything, Double Fine just screwed a bunch of nobodies out of their future Kickstarter plans but no one knows that yet until the big-name guys completely dominate Kickstarter's font page. Today it's just a bunch of indie projects trying to fund book publishing deals and short film projects. Tomorrow it'll be nothing but Kevin Smith movies.

Holy shit. Now THAT I did not think about. What if there was a separate site for video game developers?

@pw2566ch said:

@Snapstacle said:

@pw2566ch: Nope, just a popularity contest which will leave out the little guys who have no celebrity to their name. If anything, Double Fine just screwed a bunch of nobodies out of their future Kickstarter plans but no one knows that yet until the big-name guys completely dominate Kickstarter's font page. Today it's just a bunch of indie projects trying to fund book publishing deals and short film projects. Tomorrow it'll be nothing but Kevin Smith movies.

Holy shit. Now THAT I did not think about. What if there was a separate site for video game developers?

Yeah... except he's talking shit: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/pkb4j/how_tim_schafer_indirectly_helped_indie_games/

Tim's success helps everyone, and I don't know any indies who aren't very happy for him (myself included). So I wish people would stop being angry at him on our behalf.

@SurplusGamer said:

@pw2566ch said:

@Snapstacle said:

@pw2566ch: Nope, just a popularity contest which will leave out the little guys who have no celebrity to their name. If anything, Double Fine just screwed a bunch of nobodies out of their future Kickstarter plans but no one knows that yet until the big-name guys completely dominate Kickstarter's font page. Today it's just a bunch of indie projects trying to fund book publishing deals and short film projects. Tomorrow it'll be nothing but Kevin Smith movies.

Holy shit. Now THAT I did not think about. What if there was a separate site for video game developers?

Yeah... except he's talking shit: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/pkb4j/how_tim_schafer_indirectly_helped_indie_games/

Tim's success helps everyone, and I don't know any indies who aren't very happy for him (myself included). So I wish people would stop being angry at him on our behalf.

So this Tim Schafer Kickstarter page is a blessing to indie developers.

"Investing that incredibly high amount of money also requires a lot of planing and discussion"

I'll forgive Patrick (he did quote Notch's blog post), but... Argh.

@ThePilgrums said:

@Xeiphyer said:

TL;DR version: People need to Get over the self entitled, elitist, douchebag way of thinking, and grow the fuck up.

I'm not being entitled or elitist. I'm just saying if I were in his shoes I wouldn't take a several day long vacation to play video games while people under my employ are working. Which he's done more than once. And I find that ridiculous, personally. How exactly is that a "douchebag way of thinking"?

And Minecraft is far from finished, but that's another conversation entirely.

That's what those people under his employ are ... you know ... getting PAID for. Welcome to how the real world works you twat. Your stupidity is mind blowing.

Man...at this point I shouldn't be surprised that there's a bunch of bitching about not only one, but numerous topics in a feel good story on the internet but somehow I still am. Maybe it's head-in-the-clouds naive to hope for nothing but positivity but apparently I'm a sucker.
Please forgive my outburst, but to people complaining, fuck you guys.
 
Also, yay mac version...

@pw2566ch said:

Correct me if I'm wrong. If enough developers get into this Kickstarter program, does that mean that none of them have to worry about publishers?

To elaborate on what others have said, there is a very small number of developers who could realistically benefit from Kickstarter.

Very well known developers, like Nintendo, Valve, Blizzard, mostly don't need to use Kickstarter because they're filthy rich, and are often already self-publishing their own games. Additionally, their games pretty much all cost over 10 million dollars to make (some games cost much, much more than that), and raising that amount of money on Kickstarter is even less plausible. And on the other hand, completely unknown developers who are just starting out have a pretty hard time of meeting goals of even $10,000, because nobody has any reason that have faith in these unknowns. These small rookie developers have no chance of ever reaching the amount of money this Tim Schafer/Double Fine project has.

So Kickstarter is only useful to fairly well known developers who make somewhat niche titles that prevent them from ever getting filthy rich. Or for unknown developers who only want a small amount of money, like $5,000-$10,000 or something.

If Lucassrts had ANY inclination to sell, I would personally contact them about the rights to a future. Grim Fandango game. I even have a story pitch! Man... I wish they would release the first on iPad!