Fair enough perspective.

I guess what really irritates me with Double Fine specifically is that they proposed a niche product for a niche audience and then seemed to go for something else entirely. The budget and time issues on top of that just make it even worse.

Ok, fine then.

You mean DOUBLE FINE then!!!! waaaaaaa

One good thing about this news is that it tests some of the limits of the crowdfunding concept, specifically what people are willing to put up with with regards to a leaking project, as well as determining which types of crowdfunding are acceptable.

Tired, but I hope you get my point. The data will be rather interesting.

Why am I seeing everything double here?
Fine, fine I'm leaving already...

Anyway:
Why did the change their plan in the first place?

They wanted to do a $400k game.
They backers wanted them to do a $400k game.

Why didn't they just spend the rest of the money on naked girls and/or booze.
That will probably be my strategy the moment I start something at kickstarter.
I have a good Idea about a videogame, but I don't have the funds to get it developed I simply go ask for money. What I do with the money doesn't really concern anyone AS LONG AS I KEEP MY END OF THE BARGAIN

On the other hand.
If I back a game the only thing I want is the game with the content I backed,
if the whole project turns out to be superuberfunded and the developers and got more money than the GDP of Belgium its good for them (or bad for Belgium).

It'd also require accountability. I would venture it has less to do with "violating the spirit of Kickstarter" and more to do with not wanting to deal with a publisher. It's easier to stick your hand out again and ask for money from people that don't require accountability than deal with people that will breath down your neck for results.

I'm ok with pitching your ideas to people and letting them decide if they want to invest in them, that's not panhandling IMO. I'm even ok when people fail here and there, that's a part of the risk of putting money into a project. I've contributed to several that ended up as flops or were never even completed, I felt they were worth the risk. In all of those cases, they either offered refunds or did the best they could to make good on their promises, but best of all they admitted their mistakes honestly. The DF post on the issue, and request for more money, doesn't do any of the above. They seem to be selling the reason they screwed up rather than admitting it.

This makes me wonder what would have happened if they got exactly 400k? Would the game last 30 minutes? I also wonder how much money they actually think they can make from Steam Early Access.

I'd contribute.

Budget: $100k
Stretch goal: $100,001 - Party

At least you are honest.

This is one of the reason stretch goals kindof annoy me, in most cases (this doesn't apply to DFA) it seems the amount of money is disproportionate to the amount of effort that's actually involved (in addition to pushing the release out). It is one of the signs I look at when I evaluate a project, are the stretch goals promising features that actually cost more than the difference of the prior goal?

I'd rather them do what you said, take the money and make the game they promised, exactly. No fewer or more features for the initial release. If they want to re-invest later on and add features, awesome, but I don't want to wait 8 months for networking support that you claimed was gonna cost $10k to add without evaluating the actual amount of effort.

That doesn't make much sense. They haven't reached September 2013 yet. I could see how you could be upset if it was September 2013 right now and then they pushed it to November 2013.

Something like this wouldn't make me think the project won't deliver.

I didn't back Banner Saga because when I discovered it, it was already funded. The art is really amazing and reminds me of certain animated films I used to watch when I was a kid.

Their reasoning was because they got 8x over the amount they wanted, they decided to extend it out, flesh out the SP, make the game bigger etc & also the controversial free to play multiplayer was released blah blah....and yes i backed it.

I don't mind the Banner Saga saga (hah) yet because their reasons make sense. I wouldn't mind Double Fine taking more time either, really, it's the budget issues that make it a problem.

If Banner Saga was suddenly out of money and split into episodes and future releases depend on episode one success and whatnot then I would have a problem.

Havent really looked into this myself (havent had to). Under what conditions would this apply to a kickstarter giving a refund?. How far do the promises have to meet the final product or...close to it?

Not really bothered by Banner Saga issues... irked yes... but at least they are still working on it and giving communication (noticed further any project gets into development cycle the less regular are updates....).
The DFA one is the only one i know of (aside from a small comic one - dev just blew the money big time) game wise thats basically run out of money....

I still wish DoubleFine could give the latest Psychonauts files to GOG, but it seems that they are too busy doing that
http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/7268/#230156

I wonder if it would them cost that much to update GOG version. After all they didn't have problems to fix Humbe Bundle version. I would expect a little bit more "customer-friendly" practices than "we don't want to fix that, because we want to save money" from them. :(

Interesting. I wonder how it could possibly be hard to release the latest build for GOG. I think the DRM free Humble Bundle version was the latest build.

The Banner Saga is already planned to be split in 3 episodes. If I remember correctly backing 50$ or more was needed to get all episodes.