Broken Age by Double Fine is out of money, releasing half-complete early on Steam

[Dumac]

source

Highlights:

Double Fine’s Broken Age Being Split in Half
by Patrick Klepek on July 2, 2013
There’s too much game and not enough money (yet).

Broken Age is well into development, but Double Fine Productions has hit a snag. The game’s scope is bigger than its budget allows for. In a letter to backers that’s leaked out, studio founder and designer Tim Schafer is proposing the game be split in half.

“I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle,” said Scahfer. “There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is.”

Double Fine is responsible for putting crowdfunding service Kickstarter on the map for video games, raising over $3 million for a new adventure game. It’s easy to forget the studio only asked for $400,000 originally, but the response was enormous, and it raised well over that amount during its funding run.

When the studio looked at the likely schedule for the game it wanted to build, the first half of the game wouldn’t be done until July 2014--more than a year from now. The second half wouldn’t be finished until well into 2015. The Kickstarter money wouldn’t last that long, and so unless the game’s gutted from top to bottom, Schafer’s team needs more money. The question is how. Another Kickstarter wouldn't work, nor a publisher.

Right now, Schafer is proposing some “modest” cuts are made to the first half of the game, and it’s released in January, instead of July. While backers would receive a first look, that half of the game would go on sale through Steam Early Access, so other people could have a look at it--and pay for it.

“That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development,” said Schafer. “The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May.”

“I want to point out that Broken Age’s schedule changes have nothing to do with the team working slowly,” he continued. “They have been kicking ass and the game looks, plays, and sounds amazing. It’s just taking a while because I designed too much game, as I pretty much always do. But we’re pulling it in, and the good news is that the game’s design is now 100% done, so most of the unknowns are now gone and it’s not going to get any bigger.”

So basically, Schafer asks for 400k, gets 3300k. The game was originally set to be released in October 2012, taking about 6 months of development. Here we are in July 2013 with no game to be seen and Schafer is out of money.

Schafer predicts that completing half of the game would be done in July 2014 (more than two years since the Kickstarter), but by cutting a bunch of crap he can get it out in January 2014. Then, he claims that the second half would be out by April/May 2014, before the first half would have even been completed without the cuts? Sure, Schafer.

I found this tidbit particularly interesting.

It should be noted that development hiccups, delays, and added funding are a regular part of the development process--it’s just never made public until way after the fact, if ever. I’m curious how people respond to this, given that it exposes the ugly, changing, messy, and unexpected ways games are made today.

No, this is not the normal development process. Kotick said that Schafer was terrible at handling a budget and creating a schedule, and Schafer told everyone that Kotick was just being an evil money-grubber. Everyone tooks Schafers side. EA stepped to the plate and found out the same thing - Schafer is a black hole that just swallows money without putting out an actual product. Schafer again claims that EA is just being cheap and it isn't his fault that his game isn't ever done.

Now we get to see how Schafer really handles a schedule because there is no publisher to absorb and spin this news. Schafer spent 3.3 million dollars to make 25% of a 2D point-and-click in longer than 2 years.

I am worried about the effect this will have on Kickstarter. This was sort of Kickstarter's flagship project. It turned the website into a blockbuster, and here it is far from delivering on any of the promises.

 

[KaOTiK]

I think it is crappy, but at the same time it isn't as clear cut as we think it is.

The original game he was asking the 300k for was going to be a basic simple game. When they made over 3m, he felt it wasn't right to deliver something so simple and opted to do a full scale game which meant the cost of the game for them just shot up a lot. Tim is known to take a bigger bite than he can chew in the past and this is no exception but at least he was trying to do the right thing instead of releasing basically a flash game and raking in millions of profit.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Well, this is exactly the kind of thing people expected to see from a majority of kickstarters. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The questions are many. For instance, why only 400k if even 3.3 million can't cover it? That is obvious bad handling and means they had no solid concept to begin with or tried to overreach due to the over budgeting they received.

For kickstarters to work you have to have the foundation laid out before you ever start or it's just going to be endless scope creep.

 

[CPA]

sorry, but this is what happens when you don't have a bean counter or two involved. People complain about "corporate management" driving games, but sometimes you need corporate management, particularly the finance guys heavily involved to keep everyone on time and ON BUDGET.

it's obvious to me there was no business plan for this project. There was a "hey, let's build this game. Hmmmm, probably only need this amount of money and whatever we get over is gravy!" Few months later: "Where did all the money go? damn, maybe we should have had a project budget and someone with a finance background to manage it."

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Game developers sure have trouble managing money

 

[DaveSimmons]

The other way of looking at it is that the game is going to be twice as large as originally planned, but you'll have to wait longer to get all of it. If it turns out to be a good game then having more of it is a plus not a minus.

I'm not a backer of this one so I'm not personally affected, but I wouldn't be reaching for a torch and pitchfork if I was.

 

[Dumac]

Well, this is exactly the kind of thing people expected to see from a majority of kickstarters. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The questions are many. For instance, why only 400k if even 3.3 million can't cover it? That is obvious bad handling and means they had no solid concept to begin with or tried to overreach due to the over budgeting they received.

For kickstarters to work you have to have the foundation laid out before you ever start or it's just going to be endless scope creep.

He redesigned the game to fill the budget, but he overshot by way to much. 3.3 million, 1.5 years, and he has a 25% done game? Not to mention, he JUST got the design finished?

 

[Dumac]

The other way of looking at it is that the game is going to be twice as large as originally planned, but you'll have to wait longer to get all of it. If it turns out to be a good game then having more of it is a plus not a minus.

I'm not a backer of this one so I'm not personally affected, but I wouldn't be reaching for a torch and pitchfork if I was.

If the game is good, then complaints will be quickly forgotten. However, raising up even more money and asking for more time is raising the level of expectation for this 2D point-and-click pretty high.

On the other hand, the incompetence of the devs from a business perspective is in plains sight for all to see, so while the product may be fine, their future Kickstarters may not.

 

[smackababy]

Oh, Kickstarter is great for the industry they said!

I am glad I don't participate in such silly endeavors like giving a company money that has no legal obligation to give a product.

"I designed too much game" really means "I bought a new house and the other main guys got new cars and we realized we spent all our money."

 

[ImpulsE69]

You only pay when they deliver, however yes, that doesn't mean they couldn't deliver complete crap.

On the positive side, there have been some good projects funded by kickstarter. You're always going to have bad apples. There are definitely a few that raised some eyebrows.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Well said impulse, I still can't figure out why no game company can stay within budget and deliver on time.
Is it something to do with the more creative mindset?

 

[Dumac]

You only pay when they deliver

Don't you pay when the Kickstarter ends?

 

[ImpulsE69]

Don't you pay when the Kickstarter ends?

You're right:

When is my card charged?

If the project you’re backing is successfully funded, your card will be charged when the project reaches its funding deadline. If the project does not reach its funding goal, your card is never charged. That's why we call them pledges.

 

[KaOTiK]

Oh, Kickstarter is great for the industry they said!

I am glad I don't participate in such silly endeavors like giving a company money that has no legal obligation to give a product.

"I designed too much game" really means "I bought a new house and the other main guys got new cars and we realized we spent all our money."

Kickstarter is great for the industry. There have been plenty of games that have come out already that have been made if it wasn't for Kickstarter. Of course there is always going to ones that go bad and nothing comes out of it or other situations. But to act like it is horrible due to a few exceptions is absurd.

 

[Aikouka]

Well said impulse, I still can't figure out why no game company can stay within budget and deliver on time.
Is it something to do with the more creative mindset?

There can be a wide variety of reasons, but it normally comes down to poor planning. That can be caused by inexperience (especially true with non-technical people planning highly-technical projects), an overzealous nature, etc.

 

[smackababy]

There can be a wide variety of reasons, but it normally comes down to poor planning. That can be caused by inexperience (especially true with non-technical people planning highly-technical projects), an overzealous nature, etc.

I bet a lot of it comes to having a "great" idea but no idea how to really implement it. And when they try and hack it together, since it is their baby, they won't cut it.

 

[NickelPlate]

I never have gotten involved in Kickstarter projects for this very reason, I view it as an investment risk with no ownership stake. I'd rather risk my money in the stock market with real potential payoffs, company stock, dividends and profit sharing.

I think Tim Schafer needs to step up to the plate and fund the rest of the development using his own funds or go talk to some venture capitalists and take some risk himself. Especially considering all the backers aren't really getting anything for fronting the dev costs save for their name listed in fine print in the credits or whatever.

If he really believes in the game and it's success then it should sell itself and he'll make his money back.

 

[Craig234]

Here's the main mail actually sent out to backers:

Hey backers!

Finally, it's here. Hopefully the delay was worth it, because this extra-meaty episode (gross) contains some of the most significant developments about Broken Age to date. In fact, we're going to let Tim explain the latest news right now. Here he is:

A Note from Tim

Hello, Backers of Adventure!

Those of you who have been following along in the documentary know about the design vs. money tension we’ve had on this project since the early days. Even though we received much more money from our Kickstarter than we, or anybody anticipated, that didn’t stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money.

I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is.

So we have been looking for ways to improve our project’s efficiency while reducing scope where we could along the way. All while looking for additional funds from bundle revenue, ports, etc. But when we finished the final in-depth schedule recently it was clear that these opportunistic methods weren’t going to be enough.

We looked into what it would take to finish just first half of our game—Act 1. And the numbers showed it coming in July of next year. Not this July, but July 2014. For just the first half. The full game was looking like 2015! My jaw hit the floor.

This was a huge wake-up call for all of us. If this were true, we weren’t going to have to cut the game in half, we were going to have to cut it down by 75%! What would be left? How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story? Yikes! Sad faces all around.

Would we, instead, try to find more money? You guys have been been very generous in the tip jar (thanks!) but this is a larger sum of money we were talking about. Asking a publisher for the money was out of the question because it would violate the spirit of the Kickstarter, and also, publishers. Going back to Kickstarter for it seemed wrong. Clearly, any overages were going to have to be paid by Double Fine, with our own money from the sales of our other games. That actually makes a lot of sense and we feel good about it. We have been making more money since we began self-publishing our games, but unfortunately it still would not be enough.

Then we had a strange idea. What if we made some modest cuts in order to finish the first half of the game by January instead of July, and then released that finished, polished half of the game on Steam Early Access? Backers would still have the option of not looking at it, of course, but those who were sick of waiting wouldn’t have to wait any more. They could play the first half of the game in January!

We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May.

So, everybody gets to play the game sooner, and we don’t have to cut the game down drastically. Backers still get the whole game this way—nobody has to pay again for the second half.

And whatever date we start selling the early release, backers still have exclusive beta access before that, as promised in the Kickstarter.

I want to point out that Broken Age’s schedule changes have nothing to do with the team working slowly. They have been kicking ass and the game looks, plays, and sounds amazing. It’s just taking a while because I designed too much game, as I pretty much always do. But we’re pulling it in, and the good news is that the game’s design is now 100% done, so most of the unknowns are now gone and it’s not going to get any bigger.

With this shipping solution I think we’re balancing the size of the game and the realities of funding it pretty well. We are still working out the details and exact dates, but we’d love to hear your thoughts. This project has always been something we go through together and the ultimate solution needs to be something we all feel good about.

In the meantime, I’m hoping you are enjoying the documentary and like the progress you’re seeing on Broken Age. I’m really exciting about how it’s coming together, I can’t wait for you to see more of it, and I feel good about finally having a solid plan on how to ship it!

Thanks for reading,

Tim

 

[PowerYoga]

Oh, Kickstarter is great for the industry they said!

I am glad I don't participate in such silly endeavors like giving a company money that has no legal obligation to give a product.

"I designed too much game" really means "I bought a new house and the other main guys got new cars and we realized we spent all our money."

Oculus rift is awesome, btw. Was kickstarted. Doubt it would ever have seen the market otherwise.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've funded several, and so far none of them have headed off to Mexico with their funding.

The point of KS is that it gives games a chance to exist that would not exist otherwise.

Bryan Fargo tried for years to get publishers to fund a Wasteland sequel and failed, despite the success of Fallout 3. Obsidian had the same problem with their RPG.

Thanks to KS both projects are in development. Are we guaranteed great games? Of course not, but the chances of getting to play them are now (infinity) times greater than they were a year ago.

 

[CPA]

Well said impulse, I still can't figure out why no game company can stay within budget and deliver on time.
Is it something to do with the more creative mindset?

Because budgeting, forecasting, calculating return on investment, projection, budget/actual reviews and the myriad other necessary finance functions is not an easy discipline. It's why people get accounting, finance and economics degrees.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Oh, Kickstarter is great for the industry they said!

I am glad I don't participate in such silly endeavors like giving a company money that has no legal obligation to give a product.

"I designed too much game" really means "I bought a new house and the other main guys got new cars and we realized we spent all our money."

How cynical. Sounds to me like he will still deliver the game, but just delayed and with some features removed. That's hardly unusual.

In the meantime, games like Shadowen Returns, Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity are all in production and looking good for release time.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I just read this interesting article explaining some of what happened with the project and it gave some background on the company and where they are coming from.

The curiously ordinary desire of Tim Schafer

https://www.polygon.com/features/2015/5/20/8601389/tim-schafer-broken-age

 

[Aikouka]

I've seen all of the documentary videos, which make it pretty obvious what happened. The biggest problem seemed to be that they started the project with an idea that was just far too basic... "Let's make an adventure game!" That sounds like a good idea, but what that really says is, "Other than the genre, we have no idea what we want to make!" An adventure game has a huge focus on the story and the puzzles, and none of that was done ahead of time. It was also pretty evident in the videos that story and puzzle development was taking too long.

Of course, there's also the fact that the scope of work was raised massively, but that in itself doesn't cause dire harm to the project.

 

[Jax Omen]

dat necro...