It seems this news made the slashdot effect of many big website overloading a small one, so here is their blog post directly from the Google cache.

And the sun sets…

After the barrage of sad tales about depression caused by indies turning into millionaires overnight, allow us to raise your spirits with a story about the liberating and energizing effects of complete commercial failure.

sunset_sale

Having a sale is fun. Many people get to play your games who normally wouldn’t and you receive a lot of positive feedback. But of course that’s not the reason for having a sale. The reason is always a need for money. And in our current economy, money tends to be collected from large amounts of tiny sources. It was a desperate move for us. An attempt to pay the debts caused by the production of Sunset and stay afloat while we figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.

Reaching out

In its 12 year existence Tale of Tales has always teetered on the edge of sustainability, combining art grants and commercial revenue to fund our exploration of video games as an expressive medium. We considered it spreading our dependencies. And that was fine, because we assumed this situation to be stable. All we really wanted was the opportunity to create.

Our desire to reach a wider audience was not motivated by a need for money but by a feeling of moral obligation. We felt we had to at least try to reach as many people as possible. To make the world a better place through the sharing of art as videogames, you know.

The drying up of funding for artistic videogames in Belgium (an issue beyond the scope of this article) did make satisfying this desire more urgent. No problem, we thought. This is an opportune moment. Several games with similarities to our own have been greatly successful. Some of their creators openly admit to be inspired by our work. So we studied theirs and figured out how to make our next project more accessible. At least more accessible to people who actually play and buy games (the others, we decided, can just go to hell for the moment since they apparently didn’t care as much about us as we do about them).

Nevertheless, even within Sunset’s carefully constructed context of conventional controls, three-act story and well defined activities, we deeply enjoyed the exploration of themes, the creation of atmosphere, the development of characters, and so on. Abandoning some of our more extreme artistic ambitions actually made work easier and more enjoyable. And that’s when we should have realized that we were on the wrong path. Because whatever we enjoy is never, ever, what the gaming masses enjoy.

Numbers

We hate the idea of viewing our audience as numbers in statistics. Way back in the nineties we embraced the internet as the distribution channel for art precisely for the opposite reason: to get away from impersonal mass-market broadcasting and to establish a two-way relationship with the people who enjoy our work. And that still exists, and is lovely. But we knew all along that the small number of people we can reach and have that relationship with would not be sufficient to sustain our work. So if you talk with us on twitter, hello, we love you, but we needed to reach beyond you. Into the land of big numbers.

00:0002:1302:13

In the end, we spent more money than we had on the production of Sunset. Because we wanted to make it really good and reach a wider audience. Compared to the ambitions we had for the game, the extra $40,000 seemed like a relatively small sum. “Surely we can make that amount back in the first month of sales!”

We were wrong.

So far a little over 4,000 copies of Sunset have changed hands. That includes the copies for our backers on Kickstarter. That includes the sale. There’s barely enough income to keep our company going while we look for ways to raise the funds to pay back our debts.

It’s hard to deal with this intense feeling of disappointment in a context of glowing reviews and compliments and encouragement from players. A small group of people clearly deeply appreciates what we do and we curse the economic system that doesn’t allow us to be pleased with that.

Being wrong will set you free

• We studied successful games and applied our findings to the design of Sunset. And while the inclusion of certain conventions seems to have helped some people enjoy the game, it didn’t affect the size of our audience much.
• We spent a lot of money on a PR company who got us plenty of press, took some work and worries off our shoulders, and found us other marketing opportunities. But it didn’t help sales one bit.
• We even took out an advertisement on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, where we figured the people most interested in Sunset would be gathered. They must all use AdBlock because that had no effect whatsoever.
• We worked hard on presenting a gentler Tale of Tales to the public. Which basically meant that Michaël was forbidden to talk in public and Auriea often just smiled at the camera, parroting words whispered in her ears by communication coaches. Didn’t make a difference.

So now we are free. We don’t have to take advice from anybody anymore. We were wrong. Everybody whom we consulted with on Sunset was wrong.

We are happy and proud that we have tried to make a “game for gamers.” We really did our best with Sunset, our very best. And we failed. So that’s one thing we never need to do again. Creativity still burns wildly in our hearts but we don’t think we will be making videogames after this. And if we do, definitely not commercial ones.

— Michaël Samyn & Auriea Harvey.

You can support and encourage us by simply buying our games (for yourself or a friend). Or by supporting Auriea’s Patreon or Michaël’s. Thank you.

Ouch. They seem very bitter. I can understand that and even respect that this is a clearly emotional post - but man, in the era of doctored PR it's kinda striking.

This is, in overall, sad. I haven't played Sunset yet and I wasn't a big fan of playing ToT's output, but I always respected them for being outliers and the ambitious indie dev in the business. Their manifesto on the artistic nature of games is also very interesting, even if I don't agree with many points, just like I didn't agree with plenty of design decisions in their games. But alas, an important voice in the indie community is now effectively gone.

That doesn't sound like they're quitting the game industry altogether, just having to lower the price of their last game in a desperate attempt to increase sales and feeling like they can't rely on any normal revenue model to make a living off of their experimantal games.

It's too bad that a successful kickstarter doesn't really equate with actual success for your game. At least it can ensure that your game gets made, but if you're still relying on sales after the fact, there's a possibility that the entire audience for the game has already backed you and already owns a copy.

While I'm not a huge fan of these two or their work, I do think their existence has been a good thing for the games industry overall and I really hope they find a way to keep making the kinds of games they've made in the past.

So let me get this right, they annoyed people so much they weren't allowed to talk in public (looking at both the patreons i can see why, fuck me) then they made a game people are not interested in playing (judging from a youtube video I can see why) and then they complain and bitch about said facts? Give me a break, this is why I pay very little attention to the indy scene as from the outside it looks to be infested with these people.

I think they need to realise they make games that are never going to catch in the mainstream and no amount of advertising or PR is going to turn the mass market on to what they're trying to create. The people they employed to push the product did the best that they could with a game that was just never going to do what the devs thought it would.

As someone said it sounds like people who are bitter that operated under the assumption that their game would have no flaws and that the failure rests on the shoulders of others so they place the blame on the audience, the PR team they hired, the economy and everything else they can before admitting that the game just didn't grab an audience.

Well, maybe they should have created more of a "game" when trying to make a "game for gamers" than what Sunset was.

Next time something like this happens, remind me to never, ever post it on this forum.

@vincentvendetta: Because people who might approach the news with a different view might read and/or comment on it? egads, what are forums coming to.

It's sad that just doing what you want to do isn't always economically viable yes but this blog post looks like some people failing to see that their product isn't what they think it is. They're looking at their work through their own eyes as the creators rather than through the eyes of someone approaching it from the outside and are failing to see the flaws in the product when they can say that every other link in the chain failed them instead.

Lol at all those bullet-pointed excuses.

I'll take the (weirdly) counter-point stance to the sentiment in this thread and say that it's always a bummer when any kind of developer that's passionate about their work has to call it quits. Tale of Tales' games may not have been the most commercially viable, but at least they were doing something other than the generic Open World Survivor/8-Bit Sidescroller.

Sure they sound bitter, but they put 13 years of their lives into a company that barely made a profit in an industry where every second Day-Z clone makes millions - I think I would be too.

@triplestan: Hey, I agree! : (

@triplestan: So much this. I don't even like most of their work but they always seemed passionate and try to do things differently. We should celebrate creativity, not look down on it.

@triplestan: I'd absolutely agree with that, it's a huge shame that just doing what you love in the video game space is most often an option that results in shuttering of studios or people having to give up on their dreams but it's less that they sound bitter and more that they failed to evaluate their product and what they make correctly.

I love a good mood game and as I get older I value a short 'experience' way more highly than the latest game that blows shit up really good but even then they are hard things to sell to people who may see the cost of the game and the breadth of the experience as not matching up. I think they went too hard too fast on trying to push a more mainstream game putting a lot of money in to something that was in no way a certain.

Sad to see another seed of creativity in games wilt but the story also reads like them overvaluing what they may be able to offer to people outside their usual audience on their first attempt.

Should have made another platformer or survival game, anything that trys to be different is pretentious or not a game.

Its a shame they couldnt find their audience. I tried playing The Path and it left me completely cold (which for a piece of art is the opposite of what I'm looking for) but that doesnt mean I dont respect what they were trying to do. Maybe I'll give Sunset a try

@fear_the_booboo: @ghostiet: I agree so much with this. Really sad to see them go. The Path was a super interesting idea, and I always loved their artistic choice. They might not appeal to everyone, but they sure were special.

Them closing down just reminds me not to take everything for granted. I noticed this when MGS 5 will be the last true game in that series come this September.

The "stop whining" Kindergarten Cop soundbite kept on rattling around in my head as I was reading this.

You know you're in denial when you're blaming everybody else (the PR team, the advertisements, the lack of you being able to talk) for your project's failure. You know you're in denial when you're claiming "we were just trying to make the world a better place" and "we just wanted the opportunity to create". Furthermore, if you're going to start a Patreon after the total financial failure of a project, don't put the sentence "I'm not doing this for the money" in one of the stretch goals. Also, don't make it a stretch goal for people to "shut you up". You're not nearly as important as you think you are. I think the most accurate word to describe all of the above is "pretentious" but that word's a little overused nowadays.

The Path was my first dose of "Ohhh, look how games can be weird and arty and what is even going on." And that was a really cool experience for me.
But after that I didn't really buy their games, it's still sad to see them go though, I would expect nothing less then an emotional post when it comes to talking about your company failing becuase not even enough people bought it to justify $40,000 dollars, that has to suck hard, despite if they over-reached on their part or not.
I don't know how big their team was, but hopefully the people who want to keep making games finds other work or goes on to create their own stuff.

Considering the co-founder of Tale of Tales Michaël Samyn openly voices his disdain for the entire medium of video games on his Patreon, states that if video games can't be exactly his way it would be better that they were "annihilated" instead, and keeps talking about things like how he's "gaming's worst nightmare" and has the $5k Patreon tier being "I'll leave the industry and give you nothing!", I say good riddance, honestly. Everything about him comes off as just another self-indulgent small time dev sucking on sour grapes because he couldn't cut it.

The part about "And I don't see a bright future for this medium if some radical changes don't happen soon", when he's a complete nobody in the industry and the people clearly spoke in regards to the merit of his output really reminds me of this scene from the Simpsons.

You see, they have a Moral Obligation to make whatever they want without executive meddling or concern for profitability. The Belgian taxpayer has a Moral Obligation to allow them to express their feelings through art. All they want is the opportunity to create.

Those kids working shitty jobs so they can buy a guitar amp or a Wacom tablet and express themselves are all poseurs. The experienced devs who pitch games on Kickstarter after doing market research are hacks. They don't have a Moral Obligation to save the industry and all our souls. They don't have the Mandate of Heaven.

I liked the setting of Sunset, but I'm all out of love for adventure games and there's cheaper games that I really want that I can't afford.

So on the one hand, I get their "moral obligation" bit where they think video games/interactive experiences can be so much more, and they have some ideas, and it would be a "crime" to not communicate those ideas to people and inspire them and whatever. I'm sure a lot of artists feel that way, that their vision can help move things forward in whatever medium they work in.

But yes, also, it turns out that getting funding for your art is pretty hard, so it's easier to make it a commercial product, and sell it for money. They admirably tried to broaden the appeal of their work as much as possible, so kudos for that, but at the end of the day, yeah, there isn't going to be a huge market demand for weird mood pieces where you ponder revolution while cleaning a rich dude's apartment.

As much as their games are kinda well polished for what they are, I would also argue that it just seems crazy that they're charging money for them (Sunset maybe excluded from this since it seems to have a Gone Home-style narrative and everything). They just don't seem like viable commercial products, and I think the two of them would be better off seeking art grant money and making the arty stuff they want to make.

I am honestly surprised this game did that badly, but I guess it was a matter of kinda preaching to the choir. Everybody who already liked their other work probably got Sunset, but a lot of other people (even people very much in the know about more obscure developers) has probably heard some manner of word of mouth about The Path or whatever along the lines of "it's not for everybody" and wrote them off as too weird/experience is kinda short. But again, I'm kinda surprised this game sold so poorly when games like Dear Esther and Gone Home were apparently well received and people bought and played them.

@bisonhero: I'd consider myself a fairly well read person on video games and what games are being released but I've to admit this is honestly the first time I've ever heard of this game. I've heard of the studio, I've heard of their other games but I've never heard of this one. I'm confused why they hired a PR company to help promote their game instead of reaching out to Youtube and bloggers which seems like a much more successful and probably cheaper way to get eyes on your game. Putting money down on ads for a single site just because it's PC centric was never going to help. They admit to knowing about Ad Block yet they still did it.

Look at both Dear Esther and Gone Home. When those came out you had a media frenzy of articles and Youtube videos about them. Maybe we're past that and it's not exciting to talk about any more. And you can be guaranteed that those games sold to more people just because they wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

But overall I think their problem was trying to take something for a small target audience and sell it to others and doing it at such a high cost. This game is $20. You're not enticing people to try your game for $20, when your game looks like a think piece more than anything else. I'm sure that the PR team did the best they could. I'm sure that some people that aren't into these sort of games clicked through to find out about the game but then saw the price and left it because of it.

Sunset, from the gameplay I have watched, looks kind of boring and very un-interactive, even compared to games like Gone Home (referring to the interactivity here, not the boringness). I'm not surprised it didn't take off. I have mad respect for those that are able to combine an artistic vision with some actual gameplay to dig into, such as This War of Mine, Paper's Please, or even Braid.

This post is incredibly bitter, and the team seems keen on blaming everyone but themselves.

The thing that sometimes annoys me about some of the indie developers is their attitude in believing themselves to be the "saviours" of the gaming industry or thinking that the game that they are making will somehow drastically change the gaming landscape.

I am not saying that a genre changing game cant happen (for example minecraft) but it just seems that some indie developers seem to think that they have a bigger purpose than just making good games. Being a indie developer doesnt mean automatically that you are making original and artistic games it just means that you are independant of the publishers. There are also big AAA games which are pretty original and artistic in their vision.

Sunset looks like a pretty hard game to sell to a wider audience. I was actually thinking of buying it myself but in the end I didnt find the idea of being a cleaner locked into an apartment that appealing. I am also tired of playing a game where one just wanders around and reads notes.

Wow, what a bunch of mature, level-headed dialogue from developers who clearly aren't more bitter than 90% cocoa chocolate.

If this is any indication of comments they regularly made... Well, when they said they had to ensure that Auriea followed a script at all times and that Michael just never spoke period in order to garner a better public image, they sure weren't kidding, were they?

I've never heard of them or their games (unless they worked on that one weird game with the French name that took place on a beach with a bunch of benches) but it's a bummer they're done!

@two_socks: "it's a bummer they're done"

I mean

is it really, though?

(also yeah, the beach game that Vinny[?] did a QL of was them. Also The Graveyard, that game where you play as an old woman walking through a graveyard to sit on a bench, and every time you play, there's a small chance she'll keel over and die on the way there. TOO DEEP)

I was personally very interested in Sunset, having bought and enjoyed the mood of Bientot l'ete, played The Endless Forest way back when, jauntily strode along The Path and wobbled slowly through The Graveyard...then I see the people making these games, of which I mostly enjoyed, are irrepressible douches...shame really.

Stay free, avant-garde. Stay free.

I mainly know them from their deer mmo, Endless Forest. It was a cool thing. They also made a game called The Graveyard. You can play the demo and at the end you get a popup message where you need to buy the full game to be able to die!

Their timing is a bit strange since this is the year that a lot of Belgian indie projects began popping up (Woolfe Red Hood Diaries, Guns, Gore & Cannoli, Order of Battle: Pacific...) Before that, Belgium primarily had Larian Studios with the Divinity series (and Tale of Tales as a very very distant second).

I suppose the drawback to creating personal 'art' or any sort of passion project, is that if it underperforms then that reflects as a judgment on yourself. At that point you can either accept the criticism and thus take it as fact that your talents or ideas are not cut out for the mainstream, or you can denigrate the value of the opinions of your consumers. It's pretty obvious which route they've taken.

Still, whatever they spent on PR wasn't enough for me to have heard of their game. Not that their output looked like my cup of tea anyway. I don't like Belgian beer, so why I would I like Belgian video games? Then again, I do like Belgian waffles...

It's unfortunate that a creative dev had to shut down. I think their statement does come off as bitter and petty, but also very understandable. I can't imagine how it would feel to work so hard on a game, to invest so much time, money and yourself into it. And then not get a return on your investment, financially and emotionally. It's pretty fair for them to be angry and upset. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to feel betrayed by the games industry and consumers. They just lost their jobs. Try to have some empathy.

Also a very cool dude (who probably doesn't want his name on Giant Bomb's forums) once said:

"Make art. Make rent. Help others do the same."

@sor_eddie: I am quite fond of capitalism myself, it tends to put untalented hacks out off industries. Seems to be working a treat here.

I don't care how creative or ritzy or fucking unique your shit is, if it's not fun to play or doesn't catch the eyes of gamers and doesn't sell, you probably should be doing either of the following:

A: Reconsider your vision

B: Decrease your budget and stop borrowing more than you'll earn back

or C: Get the fuck out of the industry

And with their toxic remarks following, I'm glad they're choosing option C, and I hope they never get a sale ever again - for as much as people hate Phil Fish, these people are way, way worse and can fuck right off

I didn't want to say it, but, who? I mean, I'm not well versed in video game companies so I have no idea who they are. What games did they make? Maybe I played some of them.

I never read this as particularly bitter and more as disheartening and exhausted. Taking aside their slightly odd "game for gamers" appeal that Sunset was supposed to be, let's focus on the real nuggets here which are the way their outreach failed. I've heard before from other independent studios where traditional avenues like press sites and reviews don't do as much as you might want or think for sales but others do way more than expected. Of course it's also the case that each form of outreach plays out differently for some developers so it's hard to say this is where everyone should go to promote their stuff. Sometimes a bundle kills it for a game, other times its their Steam debut, other times it's a particular press exposure, other times it's a big YouTube video.

Sometimes it's also about the long game because if the game didn't do just well enough thanks to one video, they couldn't have made it to the next seasonal sales which might do huge for them and finally make their situation comfortable. This is the other side of that where it went nowhere.

The line stuck out to me most is this: "And while the inclusion of certain conventions seems to have helped some people enjoy the game..." I could see a situation where this played out the same but they hung their hat on that point and they have to give it up for a while before they rally and come back stronger. But in other places they seem much more antagonistic to the situation (as might be somewhat understandable) so on the outside it's easy for people to play the smallest fiddle and poo poo something that still sucks and people still in the running are taking notes on.

@carryboy: @kalmia64:They weren't "betrayed" by the consumers, the consumers didn't purchase their product because it was bad or they had no interest in it, simple as that. Cool it with the dramatized language and don't act like people were duty-bound to give Tale of Tales money just because their art was oh so brilliant or something. After all, these are people who openly spoke about not having an interest in targeting the "consumer niche". Which is literally saying "I have no interest in selling my product to people who will buy it".

The fact that they think customers are a target demographic to avoid is laughable and shows just how out-of-touch and delusional they are.

Since the dawn of the printing press, art that makes you think has always sold many, many fewer copies than art that is really fuckin' cool. Did they expect Sunset to be the turning point for all of human culture? Jurassic World breaking international box office records while Criterion collections go unbought on Barnes & Noble shelves must be soul-crushing for them.

The more I think about this, the less I feel for these two. They poured their heart and soul into a very thoughtful piece of art, and it didn't sell. 'Good' doesn't mean 'sales', and they should know that. Everyone knows that. Thoughtful art makes money for reasons other than it's thoughtfulness. For example, show me an artist whose work sells for millions and I'll show you their grave.

I don't think any of their games have ever been featured on Steam as a weekly or daily deal during the Steam sales or even included in a humble bundle, if they were this close to shutting it all down, they should have been working on more exposure through Steam where people actually go to spend money on games.

Making the same type game over and over doesn't seem like the way to go if none of them ever sold well.

It took me a while to figure out who these guys were, and then I was like "Oh right, that incomprehensible artsy-fartsy game that Vinny QL-ed". Other than that, I vaguely remember something about Sunset, but even by the standards of artsy indie games these guys never really crossed my radar. It's cool that they're Belgian though! I thought Larian was the only Belgian developer around.

I can't say I'm very sympathetic to their plight though. The developers come off as the worst kind of pretentious asshole artistes and the idea that they are somehow owed success because they tried to make their most recent game slightly more commercial seems somewhat delusional.

Hum, most writers that won the Nobel or the Goucourt prize are millionnaires. Obviously high-art does not appeal to most people and it tends to not make for the most sellable products, but acting like you can't make something artistic and sell well is misinformed.

Looking at videogames, Papers, Please and Gone Home both sold fairly well. The creator of Papers, Please often said how surprising it was for him that the game sold this well and I do agree with him (I absolutely adore the game too). Those games had no obvious marketing capabilities but still made a good amount of money for their creators.

Everyone should know that good does not equate sales and I agree with you, but I also understand that those two hoped to have lucky streak with one of their game. It never happened, which is disappointing. I think that acting like they asked for it is quite pedantic and way more pretentious than any of their game or twitter comments is.

As someone who has supported Tale of Tales for their entire existence, their message is somewhat confusing. They decided to "sell out" or make their art more accessible against their natural instincts. I don't hold that against any artist, because they're totally within bounds to try to expand their audience and grow their business. And then they failed to do so. But their conclusion is that the medium is therefore broken? Nope. Sunset was just not a good game.

VIDEO GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@thatdudeguy: As The Simpsons so eloquently explained earlier;

"Am I really so out of touch? ...No, it's the children who are wrong."

@fear_the_booboo said:

"most writers that won the Nobel or the Goucourt prize are millionnaires. Obviously high-art does not appeal to most people and it tends to not make for the most sellable products, but acting like you can't make something artistic and sell well is misinformed."

I don't know nor do I know how to confirm or deny that most lauded writers are millionaires, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that most successful writers are not writers of high art, philosophy, or social concerns. I would also guess that most writers of high art make more money over many decades, or through speaking engagements, rather than simple release-day sales. Additionally, book contracts are entirely different than video game sales. An author's esteem garners funding to START the book. Sales simply equal more money on top. In this way, authors make money on their work for reasons OTHER than how good it is. In this example, they are making money on their upcoming book based on the performance and value of their previous works. Anyway, yes, sometimes a piece of high art immediately strikes a chord with society, and that creator reaps the rewards of their effort, but generally, the artist must be perceived as having a point of view of pre-existing value before their work catches on with society. I'm not sure I feel comfortable continuing to compare authors to video game creators, though, as the publishing industry is more complex than I know.

With regards to comparing Papers, Please and Gone Home to Sunset: Papers, Please launched at half the price of Sunset (under $10), with an incredibly trendy pixel-art Cold War aesthetic (NOT a derisive description), and received tons of amazing press. On the other hand, virtually all of the criticism levied against Gone Home, where it was not directly or indirectly homophobic, was about the (perceived low) value of the game versus the (perceived high) price for it. $20 or more for quiet 'indie' games is perceived as too much by the video gaming community, period. Not by me, maybe not by you, but by and large, $20 is too much to pay for a game like Sunset. People think No Man's Sky barely qualifies as being worth $40, for example. "Indie" games are simply worth less, and if they are linear and low in action, less still.

Why Gone Home sold well in spite of exceeding the expected price of a quiet indie game is another discussion; a discussion that has largely already happened ten thousand times over elsewhere (nostalgic setting and content? Insane amount of press? Numerous awards? Good launch timing?), but regardless, that's the way it is. If Sunset launched at $9.99, who knows what would have happened? Would it have helped the initial reception? Alternatively, is Tale of Tales' pedigree too obtuse for most gamers, and did the pedigree itself put people off?

"I think that acting like they asked for it is quite pedantic and way more pretentious than any of their game or twitter comments is."

I am certainly not saying that they asked for their financial failure, nor that they deserved it. I am just saying that they are decrying the nature of a business that has functioned as-is since the beginning of human history. Entertainment outsells challenging art, ten to one, every time. If they expected otherwise, they bet against history and lost and no one should be surprised. This is to say nothing about the quality or value of their work, it is simple a statement of fact.

This is a worry I have with all Kickstarter projects I back, and something I think the developers behind the campaigns should always have in mind - maybe everybody who was interested in your product backed your kickstarter? With that crowdfunding model I'm not so sure that most developers should expect a lot of sales after the project is done.

@kcin: "For example, show me an artist whose work sells for millions and I'll show you their grave"

Wang Yidong

@fisk0 said:

I feel like that especially happened to Broken Age. It seems like it didn't actually sell that many copies once Act 1 or Act 2 came out. The Kickstarter campaign really seemed like it hooked in most consumers interested in the idea. Most of the really successful Kickstarters aren't so much preorder campaigns as they are "here is 90% of the money this game will ever make, up front, in one lump sum that Kickstarter takes a cut of and also you have to burn a bunch of it on backer rewards".

Also I feel like Double Fine would be on the brink of bankruptcy all the time if they didn't have Justin Bailey to be a godlike biz dev guy.

I feel like Wasteland 2 or Pillars of Eternity have a better shot since "RPG" is a thing with broad appeal, so I wouldn't be surprised if those did decently once they were properly "for sale." Same goes for things like FTL or whatever.

I found it silly that all these indie devs always attack "gamers" when they get the chance. Why make video games if you dont want people to play it? You make an "art game" that no one cares for or wants at that point. I dont get indie devs