DoubleFine seem to have attracted a bit of a mess with Psychonauts 2 funding

I wanted to back Psyconauts 2, I hadn't backed anything they've made but I heard people disappointed about 2 games that they made with crowd funding, I do hope this gets them on track, you fail, you learn, but sometimes it takes you a few falls to learn that lesson, but I'm not willing to throw money at someone whos got such a falling background.

I'll defiantly pick up Psyconauts 2 if reviews are good, but I dont want to throw my money at it till I'm sure which is sad because I REALLY like Psyconauts 1.

I do back things from crowd funding stuff but I try looking at more realistic stuff and from people I trust such as yooka laylee from the old rare guys, I trust them guys and the thing looks realistic especially since they already had a beta hub up!

Woaw, seeing this, and i watched the whole, video... I've never crowdfund anything yet, and now for sure I would never. I'm seeing for years how publishers like EA are raping people, games and games makers, I feel this is a new type of raping people. Again how can we trust so much what we see on the internet these days. I sure won't buy/fund this game.

I think we just should buy/fund some real work and serious or a least, I will continue to buy finished products even outdated considering some game not worthing their price.

Still shocked about this video, thanks to this guy which provides some real investigation here !


Last edited by Kwaadpepper on 2 Jan 2016 at 12:23 am UTC

After a quick look at the other videos on the channel (typical gamergate/anti-sarkeesian stuff) I don't think I will give any kind of interest to this video...

I said this when Fig was first announced, before any cowdfunding projects were put on it: Fig is a ticking legal time-bomb just waiting to explode. I'm not touching anything on that platform ever, much less a Double Fine project, which carries with it a significant conflict of interest (the people running the crowdfunding campaign are some of the same people that run the crowdfunding platform). This is a sham and I should feel bad for all the people that give Tim Schafer money up front, but I don't, because if you're a sucker then you deserve to lose your money.

Tim Schafer has been involved in making some of my favorite games ever and if Psychonauts 2 is indeed finished and lives up to the legacy of its predecesor, then I will gladly buy it. I will not, however, ever give Tim Schafer any money up front ever again (I was one of the suckers that crowdfunded Broken Age and got a disappointing game several years late). It's not necessarily anything nefarious, but Tim has proven that he cannot be trusted to manage money and resources.


Last edited by Keyrock on 2 Jan 2016 at 12:30 am UTC

In Double fine we trust!

#STEAMdayONE

Ouch. Hopefully it isn't as bad as he's painting it, though I'm sure it has the potential to be.

I'm just disappointed that you felt this warranted an article, this is not gaming news...

The video can be summarized as:
- The business is shielding themselves from liability when handling other peoples money
- They are paying for their expenses before passing on the profits
- They've already invested a bunch into the company and would like to recoup those initial costs

Also I'm getting a little tired of people trying to paint Double Fine in a bad light when Spacebase DF-9 was the only game they failed to deliver.

This is a hatchet job of a video. He makes some pretty shakey statements there.

Would Doublefine have been able to make a Broken Age for $400,000. Well no, but it wasn't going to be Broken Age for $400,000. It would have been more a Hack 'n' Slash game for that money. Also, how can the guy not understand the concept of stretch goals?

(Doublefine do great work, they support Linux and Mac on day one and lets not forget that all games companies miss deadlines and cancel projects.)


Last edited by neffo on 2 Jan 2016 at 10:25 am UTC

I don't see anything in the video that shouldn't have been immediately obvious from the campaign itself and common logic. It's crowd funding; you're donating to the development of a product that may or may not live up to your expectations and may not even ever be finished. Nothing new here.
Regarding Double Fine's previous two funding rounds, Broken Age eventually came out and despite not being the greatest game ever, if one could wait a bit before playing the first part, it was quite an enjoyable experience overall. The documentary that was part of the deal was also consistently excellent and definitely worth the cost of backing in itself.
Space Base was a mess, but I still got about the same amounts of actual fun out of it as I have with most other games, so I don't personally consider it a complete failure. It's also still being developed further by community members / Derelict Games and a patch was released October 2015. JP LeBreton, who was in charge of the game, is also no longer with Double Fine, so that's something to consider.

Broken age came out and it was a good game.
Massive Chalice came out and it was a good game.

If you don't like DF, then don't support them. The people who love their games will continue to support them.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 2 Jan 2016 at 9:19 am UTC

Broken age came out and it was a good game.
Massive Chalice came out and it was a good game.

Disagree on both accounts. Part 1 of Broken Age was fairly good. The puzzles were weak, but the story was interesting and I was excited to see where it went. Part 2 was flat out bad. The story completely fell apart and the whole thing fell flat. The game looked great, the art style was terrific, but beyond that, I felt it was a bitter disappointment overall.

Massive Chalice came out on time, I'll give them that, but I thought it was a rather mediocre game.

If you don't like DF, then don't support them. I'm sick of you faggots complaining about them all the time. The people who love their games will continue to support them.

There's no need for that kind of language, that's very inappropriate.


Last edited by Keyrock on 2 Jan 2016 at 6:13 am UTC

FWIW, I liked both parts of Broken Age. Not one of my favorite games ever, but I had a good time playing it. After the first half, I think I adjusted my expectations appropriately and was able to appreciate having decent main characters with solid acting, a few zany plot twists, classy one-of-a-kind graphics, and a good ending. There were some innovative puzzles, though some more fun than others. The knot one was a bit annoying really, but it was an experiment in trying something new rather than yet-another-inventory-puzzle, and some experiments do fail.

Are we doing this again?

Games go over budget all the time. Games get cancelled all the time. Yes, the cancellation of Spacebase DF-9 could have been handled better, but it didn't sell and development had to stop.

I don't put to much value in a video posted by a guy who "thinks #GamerGate are OK", and there's nothing new in this video.

If you don't like taking risks, avoid crowdfunding, Early Access and investments.

I'm just disappointed that you felt this warranted an article, this is not gaming news...

Also I'm getting a little tired of people trying to paint Double Fine in a bad light when Spacebase DF-9 was the only game they failed to deliver.

Some of us do find it interesting, and it's interesting to me. Not everything we post here is brand new news.

As has been pointed out Broken Age was also terribly handled. I also own Massive Chalice, and it was so boring i regretted it.

If you don't like taking risks, avoid crowdfunding, Early Access and investments.

This is my point of the article, to simply warn people of dangers like I always do :)

Thank you for posting this TheBoss! As the author of the video states: "[he is] simply stating the facts from their own literature and that if they wanted to, they could take the money and run."

The problem is gamers see those sliders and with the flick of the mouse crank it up to see massive ROI, and they think cha-ching, I'm going to be rich – what could possibly go wrong? (famous last words)

And this means they might spend excessive proportions of their disposable income which could be better spent elsewhere ---- including other kickstarter projects who might be more deserved of their money!

Yes, thanks for posting this, although it isn't really news that some studios don't need crowdfunding to get a game going but just find it too convenient to dump all the risk on the consumer and cash in all the profit. Double Fine are known to be one of the worst offenders if you follow the news

Yes, Gamergate have their gripes with Tim Schafer too, exactly for those ant-consumer shenanigans. So what? Doesn't render the opinions in this video invalid, at least if you're none of the ad-hominem folks.

Broken age came out and it was a good game.
Massive Chalice came out and it was a good game.

Disagree on both accounts. Part 1 of Broken Age was fairly good. The puzzles were weak, but the story was interesting and I was excited to see where it went. Part 2 was flat out bad. The story completely fell apart and the whole thing fell flat. The game looked great, the art style was terrific, but beyond that, I felt it was a bitter disappointment overall.

Massive Chalice came out on time, I'll give them that, but I thought it was a rather mediocre game.

Subjective statements though, wouldn't you agree? Making games that not everyone likes but generally well received (76 metacritic if that means anything) doesn't make you fraudsters, nor does being late on delivering the game.

I wonder how much of it is just lingering dislike over his stance on that gamergate nonsense last year. (Like his GDC thing.)

Regarding crowdfunding, I think it only makes sense for open source projects with public repositories. At least then, your investment isn't lost even if the project hits delays or problems, since the IP will belong to the community and can be forked if necessary.

Funding proprietary stuff, in my opinion is almost like a masochistic exercise in order to get perks that have an artificial limited availability.

As much as I like Double Fine and their games, I sadly have to agree regarding the sales numbers displayed in the Fig campaign. The only sales that really count are the retail sales before Psychonauts has been available for a few cents per copy.
While I don't expect them to really let Fig Publishing just go bankrupt and run with their investor's money, I'd still consider investing to be risky, simply because it's hard to impossible to estimate the number of sales of Psychonauts 2.

Seriously? Are we still pandering to the gamergate narrative?
We are talking about a company that has delivered on every title they ever kickstarted, in case of Broken Age indeed delivered far MORE than they promised.
On top of that, they had two early access games, one that was completed, and one that didn't sell and had to be cancelled. Rather than drop it instantly, they did some extra work and released the source code.
They've also ported all their games to Linux, and did so before supporting Linux was cool.

What an awful evil company.