So, finishing the full game would take you into 2015, but finishing the first half, releasing it, patching it if necessary, finishing the second half, releasing that as an update to the first half, including those technical challenges with patching the rest of the game into a released patched version of the first part of it, will only take until the beginning of 2014...

Something about that doesn't make sense to me, the content that needs to me made is the same right?
Whatever, if you wait long enough the full game comes out so the terms of the Kickstarter are still met, i just wonder what the hell they'd have made on the original asking price, a Tamagotchi?

I don't have any problem with this.

this makes me scared for massive chalice. A game i'm far more interested in than broken age.

I appreciate the transparency (and as some said, it is to be applauded) but transparency does not necessarily make everything OK. What has happened is wrong.

I don't care if the product gets delayed, and I am well aware that my backing is by no means a contract to expect anything at all, but I feel when you make a plea on Kickstarter you should stick to that plea. Naturally there will be unforeseen bits that will kick up the price a bit more, but there must have been some severe miscalculations somewhere for a $400,000 plan not to be doable with £3m+ in funds.

That OR they stopped making the $400k game and started making a $3m+ one. In essence (and my problem with this is) they stopped making the game you/I helped fund originally.

Tim Schafer stated that he had no plan as to what the game would be when they started the kickstarter. he only started designing the game after the kickstarter was done. they were very clear on this.

@falling_fast said:

This is fine, I had no expectations with relation to the game content or size and was aware that it was a game that hadn't been planned but then where did the $400,000 figure come from? What would've happened if they had only made $400,000 (I am aware they said this wouldn't fund the whole thing, but still)?

My point still stands, they shifted their focus once they made a lot more money.

absolutely they did. but I feel like they were transparent about the fact that they were going to do so. at least, that's the impression I'd got all the way along.

I mean, for 400,000 dollars, we'd have got a pretty disappointing game, most likely. I only jumped on the kickstarter myself once it was clear that they were going to have enough money to do something on a meaningful scale.

@falling_fast said:

Thinking about it now, yeah I would agree with that. But I figure(d) DF are in a much better position to have an idea of what game could be made with that money. I trusted them in this respect and feel a bit let down now. "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed"

That all said, I am still looking forward to it.

Their transparency should be applauded.

They asked for a tiny amount, got an absolutely staggering one, and rather than pocket the difference, they changed their plans ot accomodate the extra money. They were completely open about doing this, and it was the Right Thing (tm) to do.

As it happens, they shot a little (a lot by some measures) too high. DoubleFine makes amazing adventure games - budgets, not so much. It's not their first rodeo, but it is the first time they've done this crowdfunding thing, and it's natural they'd get a little starry-eyed after the Kickstarter went so far beyond their expectations.

So long as backers still get what they backed - a great adventure game - there's been no promise broken. To make that happen, they're not asking backers for more money, nor moving to a publisher that could change the deal - but instead seeking a second, reasonable funding source to complete the game. Again, they're being totally transparent about this, and it's the Right Thing (tm) for them to do, in order to keep their promise to backers.

For folks pissed about Massive Chalice - you do realize that's a different team, right?

If DoubleFine as a whole learns from this, and adjust their plans for future titles (like Massive Chalice), there's really no harm, no foul here. If Massive Chalice runs dry and needs to seek additional funding, then there's a fundamental financial issue that needs to be solved.

I knew when everyone was patting themselves on the back over $3.3 million raised that it was still a paltry amount that even an experienced studio could easily exceed if they weren't extremely careful/lucky. I straight didn't believe them when they said they could make anything of consequence with $400,000.

Yep, you get it. This is the problem I have with kickstarter: people are being sold something on the promise of later rewards that, if they do materialize, turn out to be less than what they were promised. It's good that Double Fine is trying to be open about this but enough of these disappointments start piling up and the crowdfunding avenues may start drying up. I've yet to invest in any kickstarter because of the nebulous promises each project contains.

Finally, using kickstarter to fund game development (if the promise is give me x dollars and I'll give you a complete game) may not be the best idea. As someone who has done some development, it's extremely hard to predict how long a project will take or how much resources it will consume until you're pretty far down the road on development.

@smokepants: There's actually a video with Tim and Ron talking about the game before the Kickstarter and it would've been a very tiny game. Very few screens with very simple art, little dialogue and music. We need only look at Skullgirls when they did their IndieGoGo that highlighted that even making a new character would cost hundreds of thousands.

Hey Patrick, I just wanted to say well done on the reporting on this. It's a bit of a shame that this statement got out at all because it was intended for backers who have the context of the documentary series to know what's been going on. I'm sure that they wanted to announce it to the public without some of this backer-only baggage. Nevertheless, it's a story now and must be reported. With that in mind, here's some things you did right: Posted the full, unedited statement, with a summary of the main points. Led with the headline that they were splitting the game into two parts, rather than the misleading one being posted elsewhere that implies that they might be asking backers for more money. Explained the changes in full, and in a logical order.

This is not as big a story as other sites are making it out to be. The headlines are:

• Broken Age is out in January
• But just a Steam Early access version, the rest of the game comes out later in the year
• Backers don't have to do anything different
• Non-backers now get to pay to play part 1 in Jan, then get the rest later for free.
• The reason they're releasing it this way is to secure funds for development earlier.

That last point is a little controversial, granted, but it's perfectly in line with other strategies DF have employed so far to finish the game with their own funds: e.g. sales of Brutal Legend PC, and the Humble Double Fine bundle.

I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorologist, but I wonder if they've known for quite a while they'd need extra dough, hence the creation of two main characters so as to split them later. Not that it really matters; I'm not upset by the choice - as long as it's good, they should do it.

I'll be here waiting, sounds awesome getting the game a little early.

It's evident early on in the documentary series that is available to the Kickstarter backers that the realization of money becoming tight sets in fairly early. They knew that the initial scale that Tim wanted to create was going to be hard on the money they had raised, and they start looking at ways to rein in production to keep it from getting too far beyond what they could manage on their budget.

But the game being played from the viewpoint of two separate characters has always been a part of the design, even from the earliest stages, and probably before the Kickstarter was even launched. So I don't think it was done with the prospect of splitting the game into "episodes" in mind.

I don't know if I'm as cynical as you but I'd bet that they held off on announcing this stuff until Brad Muir's kickstarter was finished.

I'm wondering how many people commenting on the wrongness or whatever of this plan are backers that have watched the documentary videos. The situation is explained in "Episode 10: Part 1 of Something Great." and the people in the private backer forums and generally fine with splitting it up into two parts.

If you're not a backer your opinion isn't really worth anything in this case. We paid the money. We've kept up with development. We get to voice our thoughts and concerns in the private backer forum.

The only really questionable thing about this is the timing. I'm sure it's no coincidence that this has come out just after the Massive Chalice kickstarter has ended.

Double Fine should have been more open about this sooner. Game development is fluid. Things happen. Goalposts move. Ambitions change. Timing alters. People know and understand this. But holding back the details of how the development has altered until the end of your new kickstarter is really shitty.

I totally get why a lot of people are rightfully angry and a part of me feels weird about this as well. But you know I hope this works out for them. I hope people don't loose faith in Double Fine because of this mess.

What do you mean they held back details of how development was altered? They have had budget issues and changes in scope for a while now. Have you watched all the documentary videos?

Collusion! Brad Muir and Tim Schafer are cutting bait and running to a non extradition country.

If this was any other dev we would all be crying foul. This is gross. I am sure the game will be great, but it's not the game we are talking about here. We are talking about integrity.

Completely different. With Massive Chalice, there is already a basic design doc on the table of how systems are going to work, what the world is, etc. Since Broken Age's kickstarter started with a blank sheet of paper, Tim had to take time and craft a narrative and world, hire a bunch of concept artists and start from scratch.

Brad already has a vision, so all he has to do is execute on it. Plus, since it's a strategy game, they extend the playtime with the game engine that's been built. For an adventure game you extend the playtime by completely handcrafting each and every scenario.

Except now they either attempt a cash grab (very unlikely) or need Steam Early Access money to finish the game they have in mind. That is what's happening if I understand correctly. On top of that people will of course comment on the development of certain games just like they do with any other conventionally funded title. You didn't somehow buy exclusive commenting rights by kickstarting it. Either way I genuinely hope people get the game they're hoping for. This is just an interesting twist in the KS development. An important one even if you didn't back since finally all those lofty promises hit reality.

@besetment: I'm pretty sure Patrick is on record saying he doesn't do kickstarters for some sort of belief reasons.

Second comment because people don't really understand some really basic things.

1. They planned a $400,000 game. They got $3.3 million. Thus they increased the scope. I just don't get how people don't get this concept. Would you have rather they just spent the $400,000 and used the rest to buy some nice cars or something? These days companies make stretch goals beforehand in case of something like this happening. But such a thing didn't exist when Broken Age was on Kickstarter. So they planned a small game and suddenly had to use 8x more money to make it. So they expanded. The problem was that they over expanded. This wouldn't have happened if they made $400,000 because they would have planned a much different game with that budget. It's not that hard to understand.

2. Let me tell you about companies whose games almost always go vastly over budget. Valve, Blizzard, Bungie, Id, Rockstar, Irrational, Naughty Dog, 2K Games, and many more. People act like this is some sort of exact science. It isn't even close. Almost no one gets it right 100% of the time. In fact I don't think I can name a single developer that has never gone over budget or had to cut features to stay in budget. This is game development. It happens to at least 70% of the games you play. It happens to probably close to 100% of new IP's. Now people see why publishers hesitate to invest in new IP. They aren't as evil as you thought huh?

3. About going so much over budget. This is why you plan the game before making the budget. This would be crazy if they had a full design doc, concept art, and working code before they started. They didn't. Pre-production can take a long time. And until you know exactly what you are making, and start making it, it is really hard to guess how long it will take. In fact I might say it is impossible. Did they probably know before the Massive Chalice Kickstarter? Yea, they probably did. Did they know six months ago? No way. Not if like Tim said they only finalized the design recently. The issue was that doing the Kickstarter without anything ready beforehand was a terrible idea and no developer, not even someone as experienced as Miyamoto or Warren Spector or Richard Garriot would be able to predict the budget of a game they hadn't even thought of yet.

While you really couldn't have called it that long ago; while watching the early episodes of the DF doc, it felt like that game would take a while. Game development isn't easy and considering Tim and the team had no idea what the game would actually be when they initially got the money, so it's not hard to believe that there was a bit of snag in determining it's scale. I'm truthfully fine with them taking the time and doing what they need to get the game they have envisioned out, even if the initial path they chose led them to a road block.

Emphasis on the "kept up with development" part. They have been dealing with budget issues and scope change for a long time now. We knew that already. People who are commenting having only read this story don't know what they're talking about. They can say what they like and I can just as easily come in and say they don't know that they're talking about.

How are they gonna make massive chalice with almost a third the budget??? (i would have thought adventure games are easier to make). I guess its gonna be a reeealy small game.

A few of things worth noting here:

1) Massive Chalice is being developed on a very mature engine and toolchain which Double Fine have made several games with in the past. In contrast, Double Fine had to develop their 2D process and tools (based on an existing engine that they had never used) at the start of development of Broken Age, which is a big additional cost. Costs are always cheaper in principle when starting with a mature engine the team has experience with.

2) Broken Age has a much bigger voice acting budget because of all the dialog

3) Broken Age is being released on Mobile platforms as well, this adds to the cost

4) A lot of Broken Age's Kickstarter budget was taken up by physical rewards and the costs of the documentary. They have managed the costs of these for Broken Age a whole lot better, from experience, so a lot more of the initial money will go into the actual game.

5) Massive Chalice has more complex gameplay for sure, but Broken Age probably has much greater art costs than Massive Chalice will have, because as an adventure game it will probably feature a lot more unique assets that need to be concepted, drawn, painted and then individually animated.

There's probably some stuff I'm forgetting, too.

I think it's because he reviews games that he doesn't.

A bare-bones prototype. They've always been upfront about that.

Gee, I wonder how a Microsoft Gaming website forum looks like right about now. You think it might be people defending their camp to their very last breath? People are fanboys at heart about everything. The minute someone turns on what they like they'll turn into animals and defend shit to the death. Even if they're getting wronged in the process.

The people who actually gave two shits about this game have already bought it. And there's a high chance that they're only going to get 1 part of this game because who says there are enough people out there who will buy the first part to get the second part funded? If I was one of the people foolish enough to buy a product that wasn't even started yet I would be very worried. You bought a full game and might end up with just half of a game. Not acceptable at all. There is no spinning this. But if this is it what it takes for people to realize that Kickstarter is a terrible process then oh well. Now if only people would realize how much of a scam season passes are, but I guess Ken Levine is fixing that issue as well.

Wow, what a nasty little patronising point of view.

Yes, I'm a fan of Double Fine. Yes, that means I'm more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. But that doesn't mean I never disagree with them and it doesn't mean I don't know my own fucking mind, and it doesn't mean that I'm totally blind to stuff I don't like. I haven't always agreed with their approach but I HAVE been paying attention, and as far as I can tell this was the best of a series of less-than-optimal options.

Yes, they could have planned it all out correctly in the first place. But they didn't. I can forgive them for that, planning this particular kind of game is REALLY hard to do accurately. They're not alone in this, it's just that we don't often get to hear about it. So given that they didn't, they're doing the best thing they can do to make the best game they can make.

Fair enough. Backers certainly have much more insight into the entirety of development, I'll give you that. I just found it weird that you seemed to be quick to dismiss outside perspectives as "worthless" when they attempt to rally non-backers specifically to complete the game they wanted to make in the first place (the Steam thing). I know about as much about the development of this game as I do with any other title I follow. If you just backed for the documentary and the priviledge to closely follow the development that's great - you already got your money's worth.

I'm more interested to see if they actually get a satisfactory game done. And that doesn't seem to be up to the elite of highly informed initial backers anymore.

I'm a backer and this doesn't upset me at all. From the start, Double Fine have been completely transparent with their development process and I don't believe they wouldn't have done this if they didn't think it was the best course of action. If you watch any of the ongoing documentary then you can see that they're clearly putting a lot of effort into the game and the reason many people backed the Kickstarter in the first place was so Tim could realise his ambitions.

I think a lot of the complaints (many of which are coming from non-backers who wouldn't be affected anyway) are related to not understanding that things don't always go to plan in game development. DF had a plan for developing a small $400K game and then received substantially more than that. So Tim started adding more ideas and they began developing on them but eventually realised the scope had become to big for the original budget. Normally, with a publisher the game would either get cut or cancelled. What DF are saying is they could make substantial cuts but they'd rather try getting other revenue sources first, which seems entirely reasonable.

As long as I get an adventure game made by Tim Schafer at some point, then I'll be happy.

Great point! I understand how he's rationalizing this decision, and that's fine. If this is a way for them to make they game they want to make then it's definitely the right move, I absolutely agree with you.

My point is that here's a guy with years of experience in leading projects and making adventure games who has been totally caught off guard by the production schedule. His "jaw hit the floor" when he realized the ship date would be 2015. If we are to believe that this is just "how game development works" then something is not working very well. Going over budget shouldn't be normalized. This suggests to me that there's a problem with defining scope, budget, and timelines when developing games. That's not to say that Double Fine has done anything "wrong", just that, when famous developers and console makers attack used game sales, maybe there are some managerial/development aspects that could be more streamlined and it's not the consumer's fault that 3.5 million units sold makes a game like Tomb Raider a disappointment.

But a lot of this inference comes out of ignorance. The questions I have are: why is production so unruly and fickle? and how can developers better account for these sorts of problems, which seem really widespread?

At least it's not split in half based on geography, cause that would be real stupid.

Let's all remember that the initial Kickstarter donation was for a game much smaller in scope than the one that is being delivered. And those original investors will not have to pay a penny more. We'll just have to wait a bit longer than expected. And that never happens with game releases, right?

So you can budget an Adventure game for $400,000, but you can't accurately budget for $3.3 million?

Generally speaking, the larger the starting budget, the harder to predict the scope, the more scope/budget changes are likely as the project continues. So... yes.

Yeah, that's entirely reasonable.

To a point it's on me that, despite being a backer, I haven't kept up with the doc, haven't visited the forums, never considered my investment beyond an over-simple, "I'm preordering the game!" Which, clearly, is not the case. But it was new, and exciting, and I wanted to see them succeed.

Sitting on it for a bit, the thing that I (thought I had) backed was not the thing this has turned into. I was very much into the idea of a retro, pixely, text-based, oldschool adventure game in the style of Maniac Mansion. That's what I had in my head. That's what I thought they could accomplish with 400K. As the donations piled in, that's still what I wanted. And that's the thing that sticks in my craw -- outside the money, I thought they were going to do something different, based on what they said in that Kickstarter. And that's on me too.

The more you know.

Spot on here. And top of that, they made no stretch goals for Massive Chalice (well, besides promising a bi-weekly gaming livestream after 1 mil), and they're publishing all their video production videos public this time (probably so that the general public won't be so shocked at a piece of news like this coming around). You can definitely tell that the Massive Chalice KS was designed to avoid the problems that the over-funding of Broken Age caused. They've also come out right away to say that Massive Chalice is getting a injection of a specific amount of their own money like Broken Age is now.

But yea, the problems with Broken Age's budget was evidently clear to backers as of early this year if I recall; it's really not something they tried to spring on us at the last minute. The news certainly looks bad for Double Fine on paper, but only because most people don't have the context for the project as a whole.

Well, this isnt the end of the world, but now I have questions:

How much more do thay need to finish the second half of the game? another 3 mil?

Will massive chalice need to use the same strategy with steam early access if it runs out of money?

What if they dont sell enough on steam early access? would they need a publisher?

and finally http://www.doublefine.com/images/avatars/uploads/avatar_124588.gif

"Hey guys Tim Schafer here thx for founding Massive Chalice. Oh btw the other game you gave 10 times the amount of money we asked for is still not done. And we have to do some very risky stuff or it will never come out. (could still happen )

But everybody will is fine with this because I am a funny guy and I made some funny games 15 years ago. "

asking for 400k. Getting 3 Million. Complaining that they dont have enough money for the game they planned. Conclusion: Double Fine cant plan for shit, but the make some fine games! ;-)

Does this mean the documentary videos just keep going as well? Thats all I really backed it for anyways since I like documentaries.