5 ms·

I was one of the backers, and while I got out of at the loop, wasn't there also an issue with Doublefine doing a strategy game (spacebars 9 or something) probab

• makomk 12y ago
  The game you're thinking of was Spacebase DF-9, and I don't think they did use their own funds to develop it. The initial development was funded by investors; you can find press releases bragging about how they them back early using money from people buying the incomplete game on Steam Early Access. Subsequent development was I think intended to be funded entirely by Early Access sales. The reason Double Fine gave for abandoning it was that they weren't making enough money from selling the game to pay the development costs and they didn't want to sink any of their own money in. Basically, they shifted the risk of the game never being finished from themselves and their investors onto their customers, and their customers got shafted and ended up paying money for a game that was abandoned, unfinished, in a state that was apparently really unfun to play because there just wasn't much to do.
  • lt 12y ago
    Well, technically they didn't abandon it, but rushed out a "completed" 1.0 a few weeks after some alpha or beta build. It's still being sold as a finished game, I believe. I haven't played the game, so I can't judge each side merits on the controversy, but it seems to me that a major issue were people expectations of Steam's Early Access model. You are buying an unfinished game, under development, to fund it. It's not a pre-order. It's not a model Double Fine created, they just experimented with it using DF-9. People seem to expect from this model frequent releases with shiny new content for an indefinite amount of time. The most popular early access games deliver on that, with a release date that never comes and frequent patches that don't necessarily have the goal to finish or polish the game for release but always adding new things. Failure and the game being cancelled should be an outcome expected from this model, as well as from the Kickstarter model. A game being released that don't meet your expectations is another, and it should be factored in your decision of buying a game that's under early development.
    • pluma 12y ago
      (Full disclosure: am an angry Early Access player) It's a bit more complicated than that. The biggest outrage doesn't stem from their half-assed "release" (which in itself feels more like an attempt to cash in on a failed project) but from their lack of transparency with regard to the project's funding. As a consumer the funding appeared to work a bit like this: they got some initial investment to get them to a proof-of-concept demo they could put on Kickstarter; they then raised a large sum of money via crowdfunding on Kickstarter; then they put the game on Steam Early Access for some additional funding to carry the project for the last mile. Going by the various analyses posted after the cancellation/release, it seems the actual funding worked like this: they secured an initial investment to create a something they could advertise on Kickstarter; they then used the Kickstarter money to pay back the initial investment, effectively putting their balance at zero; then they released the game on Steam Early Access to fully fund the ongoing development of the game; the sales didn't work out as they expected, so they effectively ran out of money and were forced to terminate the project. So basically from most players' point of view their balance during the Early Access phase looked like this: initial funding + Kickstarter money + Steam sales. But in effect, it actually worked out like this: Kickstarter money - initial funding + Steam sales. The crowdfunding didn't fund the game, it paid back the initial investment. Very few players were aware that Doublefine entirely relied on the monthly Early Access sales numbers to keep the project alive (and that those sales numbers weren't even remotely close to the actual money they burned through at that time). As for the so-called "release", the game was at alpha stage before it was canned. A lot of the originally planned gameplay hadn't yet been implemented and the features that were already there often suffered from game-breaking bugs. The final update was mostly a last-ditch attempt to weed out some of the bugs and make the game appear less obviously unfinished. Personally, I think the game is a victim of mismanagement and overconfidence. Doublefine's other games have mostly been extremely successful and well-received. They are known to pay a lot of attention to detail and generally deliver a very polished style. But they treated DF-9 the same despite it being an entirely different genre. DF-9 was very visually polished from the early Kickstarter onward. Most of its problems are in AI and the simulation aspects of the game. It tried to be a space sim / construction / management game but instead seems to have spent a lot of resources on graphics. This is even more obvious if you compare it with successful crowdfunded games in related genres like Rimworld or Prison Architect. These games have very rudimentary graphics but the actual gameplay (i.e. AI and simulation aspects of the game) was much more powerful at a much earlier stage. Additionally, the project seems to have been much more expensive. The Early Access sales had to pay for the regular full-time salary of each employee working on the project. This means the project had a very large fixed monthly cost the sales had to cover entirely. Solo developers can try to cut their expenses to accommodate bad sales, established employees need to be able to expect being paid a consistent salary. DoubleFine is still considered an indie developer. But it's important to understand that it no longer operates like one. It's a business with employees and project teams. Rimworld (Ludeon Studios) is effectively developed by one guy. Prison Architect (Introversion Software) was initially developed mostly by one guy. Minecraft (Mojang) was initially developed by one guy. In each of these cases that one person wasn't an employee assigned to the project by a company that paid him a salary, it was the founder or a co-founder of the company itself. Actual employees (with fixed salaries) would only come into it fairly late into the development (I think Ludeon Studios still is a single person).