Double Fine Raises $1 Million for New Adventure Game

You people are so up your own asses on this topic that I think one of you needs to get some fresh air and look at the big picture. Giantbomb reports video game news. This is video game news. Does the news often have an effect on things? Fuck yes it does, it always has. Does that mean that Giantbomb should not report news? Fuck no it doesn't.

On another note, its an interesting problem Double Fine has now. With the incredible amount of development money they've gotten, most people would think that the more money they get would be equal to the quality of the project they could make.

This is often not the case in business, and with so much more money than they could have imagined, yet in the same development time frame they've set out for themselves, it becomes an issue of what to do with it effectively without clouding the vision they may already have for the project. There's a lot of cases like this where too much money has made things difficult, and although I completely trust in the expertise of Double Fine I think they may have a tougher road ahead of them now than if they had just raised $400,000. What in the heck do they do if they end up with 4 million in dev money and only half a year to ship this adventure game? Buy 10 RED Epic camera's and Steven Speilberg to shoot the documentary?

@Brendan said:

On another note, its an interesting problem Double Fine has now. With the incredible amount of development money they've gotten, most people would think that the more money they get would be equal to the quality of the project they could make.

This is often not the case in business, and with so much more money than they could have imagined, yet in the same development time frame they've set out for themselves, it becomes an issue of what to do with it effectively without clouding the vision they may already have for the project. There's a lot of cases like this where too much money has made things difficult, and although I completely trust in the expertise of Double Fine I think they may have a tougher road ahead of them now than if they had just raised $400,000. What in the heck do they do if they end up with 4 million in dev money and only half a year to ship this adventure game? Buy 10 RED Epic camera's and Steven Speilberg to shoot the documentary?

Do the only logical thing and buy the most expensive voice acting crew they can scrounge up! I'm sure they could get some top actors in there on that kind of budget they're looking at!

Really I was wondering this too though. I mean, one option would be to take the excess money and put it towards funding on another game or something (Double Fine doesn't seem to be short any ideas for games.) But since the money was raised via donations for a specific thing, would it be ethically right for them to funnel the excess donations to other projects? Do they just take all the extra money and put it into making sequels to the original game? (Whether sequels in setting, story, or theme or otherwise.) Or do they donate all of the extra money to something else (like Child's Play or something?) But would that even be right? I can't imagine they would keep all of the donated funds and try to apply all of that money to making this one game. Who knows though.

@FateOfNever said:

@Brendan said:

On another note, its an interesting problem Double Fine has now. With the incredible amount of development money they've gotten, most people would think that the more money they get would be equal to the quality of the project they could make.

This is often not the case in business, and with so much more money than they could have imagined, yet in the same development time frame they've set out for themselves, it becomes an issue of what to do with it effectively without clouding the vision they may already have for the project. There's a lot of cases like this where too much money has made things difficult, and although I completely trust in the expertise of Double Fine I think they may have a tougher road ahead of them now than if they had just raised $400,000. What in the heck do they do if they end up with 4 million in dev money and only half a year to ship this adventure game? Buy 10 RED Epic camera's and Steven Speilberg to shoot the documentary?

Do the only logical thing and buy the most expensive voice acting crew they can scrounge up! I'm sure they could get some top actors in there on that kind of budget they're looking at!

Really I was wondering this too though. I mean, one option would be to take the excess money and put it towards funding on another game or something (Double Fine doesn't seem to be short any ideas for games.) But since the money was raised via donations for a specific thing, would it be ethically right for them to funnel the excess donations to other projects? Do they just take all the extra money and put it into making sequels to the original game? (Whether sequels in setting, story, or theme or otherwise.) Or do they donate all of the extra money to something else (like Child's Play or something?) But would that even be right? I can't imagine they would keep all of the donated funds and try to apply all of that money to making this one game. Who knows though.

They're probably shoehorned into putting it into this game unless they can produce a really compelling press release to convince everyone otherwise. Even if putting it to other uses makes sense, its a principle thing when it comes to Kickstarter, and I don't think that website would appreciate that happening. Actually, I bet its straight up against the rules, no matter how much extra money is made.

It will probably be put to hilariously and expensive superfluous uses, because its not like they can hire a bunch of new people, who are the right people, in time for this short development cycle. At the end of the day I'm sure it will be a very entertaining game, so regardless of what happens I feel like my $30 were well spent.

They've said on Twitter that it all goes to the game and the film. (Mostly in response to crazy people who think this would be enough to make Psychonauts 2) Based on comments they've made, it mostly it sounds like the extra cash will go towards making the game available on a wider variety of platforms, and towards a bigger voiceover budget that possibly includes voiced foreign language versions.

@SleepyDoughnut: At the time I wrote that, this news article had only had 5000 views on Giant Bomb (I'm assuming this also counts the hits from the news section, not just the forums). Hardly significant considering everything. Also, if you compare GB directly to other websites on Alexa (which is what I did), you'd see a bigger gap than that link shows.

Whatever the case, there is nothing wrong with them posting about this either way. This whole argument was meaningless from the get go if you ask me.

@SlasherMan said:

@SleepyDoughnut: At the time I wrote that, this news article had only had 5000 views on Giant Bomb (I'm assuming this also counts the hits from the news section, not just the forums). Hardly significant considering everything. Also, if you compare GB directly to other websites on Alexa (which is what I did), you'd see a bigger gap than that link shows.

Whatever the case, there is nothing wrong with them posting about this either way. This whole argument was meaningless from the get go if you ask me.

But you keep forgetting that nowadays gaming media is build up in such a way that they each influence each other by exaggerating attention and facts.

You may have heard of this phenomem, it's called "Hype"...

I also thought that the GB crew might be aware of this and i'm pretty sure that they knew that their strong bonds with DF would help them catalyst this hype even further among this community. Is this bad? Not really.. it just feels kinda greedy and short sighted because like Brendan said: Hype exaggerates expecations, especially if people allready paid money...

Now they have a ton of money that and sold units all generated on expecations build by a "hype" they could never ever hope to reach.

I'm not saying the game will be "bad", i'm just saying in the broad big picture NO game can live up to the expectations that are generated by such an Hype.

You do not need to work in marketing to see what i'm talking about here..

Now think about all this.. and apply this to the kickstarter logic of funding games, and then you will see why some people might feel a little bit sour about GB joining in with this piece of news in the way they did. Maybe it's just patrick beeing stupid and not noticing what's going on, but then i still think GB should make up for this, by using it's communities attention for something more unique and helpfull to gaming in general.

Because so far GB had been among the few communties in the interwebs that helped VERY much increasing games acceptance as an creative art, instead of just accelerating the current trend of turning it into a profit driven business.

@Nethlem: I really cannot see where they even tried to hype the game or the project in the article. They merely reported it, and the article reads as objectively as possible to my eyes. I see no exaggeration whatsoever anywhere in the article. If people do have high expectations, it's because of Schafer's and Gilbert's past works, which a lot of people remember fondly and many consider to be some of their favorite gaming experiences. Whether those expectations are misplaced or not, no one can tell until we all see this through. The game could end up great, or it could end up being a huge disappointment, but clearly people are willing to take that chance.

I don't really understand that last comment. And I don't really see how GB helped to advance gaming as an art (most of the guys prefer mainstream titles, and many smaller titles are overlooked on this site). But to address your point about profit, if DF were only looking to profit and that was their only goal, they would not be making the games they are today. Not a single game of theirs that I can remember could be called a commercial success, and yet here they are still doing their thing regardless. Clearly, they're just whoring out for the money...

I won't be able to contain my joy if Chris Avellone is able to raise similar money for Planescape Torment 2!

@Kevin_Cogneto said:

They've said on Twitter that it all goes to the game and the film. (Mostly in response to crazy people who think this would be enough to make Psychonauts 2) Based on comments they've made, it mostly it sounds like the extra cash will go towards making the game available on a wider variety of platforms, and towards a bigger voiceover budget that possibly includes voiced foreign language versions.

There is very little chance that they will be able to spend every cent of the kickstarter money just because the mir fact that you will end up with a weird number of money. Such as right now the kickstarter is 1,565,392. Im betting that they will have at least 1$ left over. unless they make it a point to spend every single cent. in which i see them buying somthing like a 99c hot dog from 7/11 with the last 1$. but even then you still have 1c left over.

@SlasherMan: Them just reporting about this allready increases Hype, especially if you keep on throwing "updates" like it has happened.

Adding these updates to news adds a whole new level of subjective urgency that gives the reader the impression "he's missing out" if he won't keep on following all these "up to date" news.

It's exactly that kind of behavior that helps to build up Hype and keep it going further and further, if you create the sense of urgency people will keep on checking different news sources and these news sources in turn try to make themself look even more "urgent" by overacting even further. It's kinda like a snowball effect.

Like i allrady said: I don't think the GB crew did this intentionally, it's probably just patrick beeing shortsighted patrick and trying to generate "great news" without thinking ahead. Because GB didn't need to add into that hype, i believe that the strong DF -GB ties will give us alot of "GB exclusive" content on this whole thing in the future anyway. So GB didn't need this in it's function as a media site.

If you didn't understand the last part of my comment then you should think back as to why giantbomb got started in the first place.

Maybe you allready forgot, but Jeff is the guy who refused to take money for a review, even when his superiors pressured him into it he chose principle over greed. If you understand creative thinking people even remotley then you will understand why he did that and why this is such an huge and important example for gaming as an creative art.

Because personaly i'd like to think about the GB community and people as the more smart ones out there, at least compared to other sites and communities that see gaming just as an "business" that needs to be milked.

@Nethlem: So you're saying that GB shouldn't report on news? Because that more or less sounds like what you're saying. Or should they just not report on news that pertains to people/companies that they're close to? (Because that is also a lot of companies.) The "update" tag is just to let people know that there has been some amount of development with the original story, rather than running another, separate story, to address that other story they already have up.

But if you think that GB shouldn't report on news at all, that's fine. I think it's incredibly short sighted because GB won't stay up and running on good will alone, but, that's fine all the same.

@Nethlem: Destructoid and Rock Paper Shotgun both put up a whole new post every time a new milestone was reached. Both sites (along with others) were MUCH more vocal than this one about the writer's personal approval of the project. Not that I care whether they were or not, I think it's fine for people to show their enthusiasm for this sort of thing.

As far as I can see, Giant Bomb simply reported on a big, developing story in games. That it happened to be for a local studio which they've invited around on a few occasions makes no difference. It is utterly ridiculous to propose that they shouldn't have reported on the story.

The hype for this project came about because Tim Schafer making an adventure game is massive news for anyone who remembers LucasArts in the 90s. The fact that Ron Gilbert is also at the studio at the moment certainly doesn't hurt either. This is something so many people have wanted for years and thought would probably never happen. All that would have happened if Giant Bomb hadn't reported on it would have been a bunch of confused people saying, 'hey, why isn't Giant Bomb reporting on this??'

Also, so what if hype was generated by the story? What if Giant Bomb was responsible for even 5% of the money? I still don't see where the ethical dilemma is here. People still make up their own mind, or are you suggesting that people who come here and read the story are so stupid that they can't make up their own mind about what to do with their money?

Please read my comments again, thank you.

I won't be repeating myself or defending statements i never made, that's wasted time. I only said GB didn't need to report about THIS news.

DF didn't need GB's attention to generate that ammount of Hype

GB also didn't need to abuse the attention of this Hype, because down the line they will have exclusive content on this whole thing.

We clear now? Great.. like i said i don't blame anyone for anything, probably just bad luck that it went the way it did. I'm just saying to some people (and for last fucking time i'm not talking about ME here) this could look fishy. And Jeff usually watches out for "fishy looking" stuff on GB for exactly that reason as he wants to prevent it.

Now i'm waiting for the next opinion-nazi that's gonna missquote me and put my statements out of context on purpose, just so he can "win" an argument that was never supposed to be an argument.

Or maybe i'm gonna do something fun, yeah that sounds like an better use for my time :P

@Nethlem said:

Please read my comments again, thank you.

I won't be repeating myself or defending statements i never made, that's wasted time. I only said GB didn't need to report about THIS news.

If it's news, why shouldn't it be reported? Would you rather Patrick not do his job?

And here we go full circle again...

How about you read that sentence following that statement? GB didn't need to join into this hype in their function as media news site, yes they are about getting hits and reporting news.

But they gonna profit from this whole story anyway and way more then any other news media site out here. Because down the line you can be sure that we gonna see alot of "GB exclusive" news and content about this whole thing, considering the strong GB - DF bonds.

So GB didn't need to join into the hype for profit, they gonna profit from this the most in the long run compared to all the other media newssites out there. That's why all this kinda feels like people are gaming the system, but maybe i'm just assuming people are smarter then they are and it's just patrick beeing stupid :P

If GB want to generate and join into Hypes then they maybe should pick them more carefully, or start some that are more usefull like the suggested idea of "10 best concepts on kickstarter". This whole thing is about beeing an community and as an community we should act a little bit more responsible and share the love a little bit better....

@Nethlem said:

And here we go full circle again...

How about you read that sentence following that statement? GB didn't need to join into this hype in their function as media news site, yes they are about getting hits and reporting news.

But they gonna profit from this whole story anyway and way more then any other news media site out here. Because down the line you can be sure that we gonna see alot of "GB exclusive" news and content about this whole thing, considering the strong GB - DF bonds.

So GB didn't need to join into the hype for profit, they gonna profit from this the most in the long run compared to all the other media newssites out there. That's why all this kinda feels like people are gaming the system, but maybe i'm just assuming people are smarter then they are and it's just patrick beeing stupid :P

If GB want to generate and join into Hypes then they maybe should pick them more carefully, or start some that are more usefull like the suggested idea of "10 best concepts on kickstarter". This whole thing is about beeing an community and as an community we should act a little bit more responsible and share the love a little bit better....

Giant Bomb is not making any money off of this. Or at least, no more money than they'd normally earn from any ad revenues generated by people that read the story. Double Fine has not given them any money to report on this, and any money that they do give Giant Bomb will be for the purpose of advertising their game on the website; the same that would occur anywhere else. Giant Bomb does not get paid by publishers to run news about their games. Hell, Building the Bastion was not a for profit venture. It served to promote Bastion but did not in any way result in financial gain to Giant Bomb from Supergiant Games.

@Nethlem said:

And here we go full circle again...

How about you read that sentence following that statement? GB didn't need to join into this hype in their function as media news site, yes they are about getting hits and reporting news.

But they gonna profit from this whole story anyway and way more then any other news media site out here. Because down the line you can be sure that we gonna see alot of "GB exclusive" news and content about this whole thing, considering the strong GB - DF bonds.

So GB didn't need to join into the hype for profit, they gonna profit from this the most in the long run compared to all the other media newssites out there. That's why all this kinda feels like people are gaming the system, but maybe i'm just assuming people are smarter then they are and it's just patrick beeing stupid :P

If GB want to generate and join into Hypes then they maybe should pick them more carefully, or start some that are more usefull like the suggested idea of "10 best concepts on kickstarter". This whole thing is about beeing an community and as an community we should act a little bit more responsible and share the love a little bit better....

But by the logic of "They didn't need to report this news because this news is associated with people they know and this would have gotten coverage on other sites" then they don't ever need to report on any news because "some other website will have it covered."

That's like saying they shouldn't have covered Bastion at all because they know those guys. Nevermind that Bastion turned out to be an amazing game and one of the top games last year, they shouldn't have reported on it at all because they know those guys. Do you agree with that statement? That they shouldn't have given Bastion any coverage? That's an even more extreme case of what's going on here and what you're complaining about.

@SurplusGamer said:

@Nethlem: Destructoid and Rock Paper Shotgun both put up a whole new post every time a new milestone was reached. Both sites (along with others) were MUCH more vocal than this one about the writer's personal approval of the project. Not that I care whether they were or not, I think it's fine for people to show their enthusiasm for this sort of thing.

As far as I can see, Giant Bomb simply reported on a big, developing story in games. That it happened to be for a local studio which they've invited around on a few occasions makes no difference. It is utterly ridiculous to propose that they shouldn't have reported on the story.

The hype for this project came about because Tim Schafer making an adventure game is massive news for anyone who remembers LucasArts in the 90s. The fact that Ron Gilbert is also at the studio at the moment certainly doesn't hurt either. This is something so many people have wanted for years and thought would probably never happen. All that would have happened if Giant Bomb hadn't reported on it would have been a bunch of confused people saying, 'hey, why isn't Giant Bomb reporting on this??'

Also, so what if hype was generated by the story? What if Giant Bomb was responsible for even 5% of the money? I still don't see where the ethical dilemma is here. People still make up their own mind, or are you suggesting that people who come here and read the story are so stupid that they can't make up their own mind about what to do with their money?

I know at thid point i might sound like rambling madman to some people because i keep answering even when i declare that i won't anymore.

But i believe i finnaly found somebody who catches my line of thinking :)

I'm not asking for GB to turn time back, i'm just voicing one viewpoint that people might get that don't understand all this so well. Originally i just wanted to get the suggestion in here for something that might counter-balance GB opinion in these peoples mindests like following up by shining lights on other kickstarters that do not enjoy the luxury of beeing talked about on Destructiod, RPS, GT, EG and all the others because of something that looks like an marketing textbook example of generating hype :P

We are all gamers, we see systems everywhere, it defines our way of thinking. So we should be carefull about how we react to each other as an community :)

@Nethlem: I think the reason that sites don't report on every Kickstarter project is because not every Kickstarter project involves an adventure game legend returning to the genre that made him after 14 years of not being able to do so. As much as I'd like every worthy thing to get some space (I sure tried to get people talking about my little game, with only limited success!) I don't think anyone could argue that this project isn't -particularly- newsworthy.

Take all of my money!

@SlasherMan: Them just reporting about this allready increases Hype, especially if you keep on throwing "updates" like it has happened.

Adding these updates to news adds a whole new level of subjective urgency that gives the reader the impression "he's missing out" if he won't keep on following all these "up to date" news.

It's exactly that kind of behavior that helps to build up Hype and keep it going further and further, if you create the sense of urgency people will keep on checking different news sources and these news sources in turn try to make themself look even more "urgent" by overacting even further. It's kinda like a snowball effect.

Like i allrady said: I don't think the GB crew did this intentionally, it's probably just patrick beeing shortsighted patrick and trying to generate "great news" without thinking ahead. Because GB didn't need to add into that hype, i believe that the strong DF -GB ties will give us alot of "GB exclusive" content on this whole thing in the future anyway. So GB didn't need this in it's function as a media site.

If you didn't understand the last part of my comment then you should think back as to why giantbomb got started in the first place.

Maybe you allready forgot, but Jeff is the guy who refused to take money for a review, even when his superiors pressured him into it he chose principle over greed. If you understand creative thinking people even remotley then you will understand why he did that and why this is such an huge and important example for gaming as an creative art.

Because personaly i'd like to think about the GB community and people as the more smart ones out there, at least compared to other sites and communities that see gaming just as an "business" that needs to be milked.

With all the people who are going to get a Special Thank You, the credits roll for the game is going to be ENORMOUS.

@Nethlem: Stop it.

@Sooty said:

hahaha fucking perfect

@Nethlem said:

@SlasherMan: Them just reporting about this allready increases Hype, especially if you keep on throwing "updates" like it has happened.

Adding these updates to news adds a whole new level of subjective urgency that gives the reader the impression "he's missing out" if he won't keep on following all these "up to date" news.

It's exactly that kind of behavior that helps to build up Hype and keep it going further and further, if you create the sense of urgency people will keep on checking different news sources and these news sources in turn try to make themself look even more "urgent" by overacting even further. It's kinda like a snowball effect.

Like i allrady said: I don't think the GB crew did this intentionally, it's probably just patrick beeing shortsighted patrick and trying to generate "great news" without thinking ahead. Because GB didn't need to add into that hype, i believe that the strong DF -GB ties will give us alot of "GB exclusive" content on this whole thing in the future anyway. So GB didn't need this in it's function as a media site.

If you didn't understand the last part of my comment then you should think back as to why giantbomb got started in the first place.

Maybe you allready forgot, but Jeff is the guy who refused to take money for a review, even when his superiors pressured him into it he chose principle over greed. If you understand creative thinking people even remotley then you will understand why he did that and why this is such an huge and important example for gaming as an creative art.

Because personaly i'd like to think about the GB community and people as the more smart ones out there, at least compared to other sites and communities that see gaming just as an "business" that needs to be milked.

Thats not what happened with Jeff at all. Jeff had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. He just gave the scores, and apparently he gave the wrong score, so was let go, well technically he left of his own accord.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for gaming.