It seems to me that it's not as bad as it looks, but making game is long process and hopefully DF finish game.

If they would have released it now they would prob have cut 50% of the content to make it fit in the timescale. They now have a full plan how to release the game and also have funding for it. The release in January just gives them a buffer to make it easier financially not to be able to finish the second part.

But that happens when people read only the news sites which all copied eachother with only half of tim's message and with money making titles like double fine is out of money.

I wish more games said they are gonna put an extra 2 mil in it to make the game better and bigger.

Are they going to release on time? - No
Do they need more money to not be screwed up at least with release date? Yes
Did they announce that just after they were asking for money again? Yes

that's all I need to know.

Honest question - why do you keep arguing with such passion and trying so hard to make people see the "light", i.e. everyone must must turn against DF?
It seems to be so important to you and I really don't get why.

EDIT: typo

I like arguing, good to let off steam.

EDIT: I think you're the last person to lecture anyone about "keep arguing with such passion and trying so hard to make people see the "light"", Your Holiness

And you believe this? After they broke they promise of delivering a game now? Anyway it's not what many backers (me included) want. I want exactly the game they successfully kickstarted at around the time they promised. How can they assume I would like something different?

Or we just don't care all that much. I wanted to back the project, I knew it would be a risk. It was my entertainment money and not that much of it, not a serious financial investment. So I'm not too worried about it. The game will get made, DF just needs to make a course correction on their budget and design. That happens all the time for all kinds of things.


LOL +1

I remember commenting on the original kickstarter thread here and quoting from a games magazine that he hadnt a clue what the game would be about or like, seems it was true. His attitude was one of the reasons I tended to shy away from KS games, Divinity was the only one I went for.

Its a real shame for those who backed the project, I really hope it works out well for them in the end :(

This is news? Even i knew Broken Age was horribly mismanaged before the Massive Chalice KS and I'm not a backer.
I'm glad I didn't back either of their Kickstarters because I'm pretty sure if I was a backer I wouldn't feel that I got my money's worth out of some development videos.
So far I've only backed projects that showed some early footage of the actual engine running (Broken Sword, Dreamfall Chapters, Divinity). I think the only 2 times I backed a project with concept art alone were Project Eternity and Torment.

Nice try ... kinda, but not going to indulge you.

Yeah. The projects I back were: Wasteland 2, Planscape Torment, Project Eternity, Divinity, and Total Annihilation, and Hex.

All of them showed a clear vision and the videos didn't really go off course. I trust Inexile because of Brian Fargo and the guys who made Project Eternity since they made games I loved. The guys who made TA I know can deliver (game stuff already up). Bottom line, I felt I could trust these veterans because they knew their shit.

Divinity and Hex were new kids on the block. It wasn't a biggie on my list but they had some game footage so I said "why the hell not."

All had a clear vision.

The 1st Double Fine game I didn't back, because I didn't like puzzle games. However the video while being "humorous" didn't seem to be a lot of info. They didn't even have a name for their game unlike the other games of veterans I backed.

The 2nd one they wanted back was a rambling political nightmare with no vision. What really irks me is that not only they took on to make another game after being short of funds but they didn't release it until after Massive Chalice ended.

I feel that the mismanagement argument is weak (not void though). Kickstarter is new, however they are veterans. They have made games for 10 years (I think). Moneky Island had to be around that budget if not less.

I feel bad for those who backed their projects.

That's your opinion but I see it different. I took the dates and all other stuff that were written as promises and while I have nothing against some months delay I doubt now that they will deliver at all. For me they are on the verge of breaking their promise.

What you say basically is that everything on the KS project page is just an opinion or guess, therefore void and null. This means that every KS project owner can always do whatever he/she wants and any discussion would be futile from the beginning. I find this very unsatisfying and I think the TOS of KS say different. For this I copied from their TOS:

"Project Creators agree to make a good faith attempt to fulfill each reward by its Estimated Delivery Date."
"Kickstarter does not offer refunds. A Project Creator is not required to grant a Backer’s request for a refund unless the Project Creator is unable or unwilling to fulfill the reward."

Here I would say that DF is unable to fulfill the reward by its estimated delivery date. Maybe they will be unable to fulfill at all.

You're half right here except people generally don't complain about delays. If they hear that DF squandered funds despite getting a massive amount more than what they asked for the in the first place, THEN people would complain and that's what it sounded like to many. It doesn't take a genius to understand that considering:

a) DF asked for $400.000
b) DF received $3.360.000
c) DF still wants more money

If an architect says "I can build you a house for $10" and you go "here, have $100 and make it something nice", would you be happy if the architect then said "yeah but ... $100 isn't enough for what I want to design! I need $50 more!". You'd demand your money back and go to another architect.

This situation isn't all that different - DF said they could make a quality game for 400k, got 3.360k and then admit that they didn't plan the costs well enough. An adventure game is the easiest freakin game to budget because the cost scales along with how many areas for obvious reasons:

- less areas = less dialogue needed = less money spent on writers
- less areas = less lines for voice actors = less money spent on voice actors
- less areas = less artwork needed = less money spent on artists
- less areas = less puzzles = less money spent on designing them

With other games, a huge chunk goes towards designing the 3D models, animations, the 3D engine, the weapons, etc. but in adventure games, you mostly have the main character and its animation and all the rest gets expanded according to size.

So yeah, gross mismanagement.

I thought this take was interesting from one of the guys making Banner Saga (I guess it reinforces my views - I don't care that DF are releasing it on steam early access, I have a decent understanding of the difficulties associated with project management, and I feel that some - not all - of the comments on this issue are good examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect):

A CONVERSATION ABOUT KICKSTARTER
Lots of stuff has been going on in the Kickstarter community lately. I'm sure many of you have noticed Double Fine's announcement about splitting up their game into two parts. They've gotten some serious heat for this. Backers of Shadowrun have heard similar things about the content in that game, with the DLC being released much later.

First of all, I want to be clear that we do not intend to do something like this for The Banner Saga. When it releases it will be a complete product. We don't have plans for DLC at this time, and we will continue to support the multiplayer component. We also intend to continue on the sequels (chapter 2 and 3) just as planned.

I would also like to talk about my personal opinion on this, and I'd love to be open and talk like a normal person instead of a PR person in damage control mode. Can we do this? Without freaking out? You can disagree with me of course, just be nice about it.

This is hard. Like, way WAY hard. When we pitched the game we were hoping for enough money to get extra animations, maybe increase the length of the game. We thought we'd get, like, 2000 backers, not 20,000. A fine problem to have, right? Haha! Except that it's actually a huge problem. The hardest problem I've ever dealt with in my life. Now I know.

We thought now we could do everything we ever wanted for the game, and got too ambitious. We thought we could make the game in six months, and I'm still not sure what we were thinking. That was stupid. I wish I could take that back, all we needed to do was put a different date there and nobody would be complaining. Whoops. We ARE still doing everything we want, and it's taking a long time. I don't feel bad about that. That was the POINT, right? To dream as big as we could?

It's interesting to think of it from someone else's point of view. For many people, letting a dev shoot for the moon is NOT the point. For a lot of people the point is I BOUGHT A GAME, WHERE IS IT? They want the biggest, best game ever made, on time, for their $10 contribution. I can see that, too. I don't really agree... but I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

If nothing else, I think the gaming community is finally getting a good picture about real game development. What would really shock people is that there is nothing unusual about any of this, except that you are finally seeing it. This is every game development story that has ever existed, except instead of the publisher dealing with it, YOU are.

Budgets of 1 to 4 million are small-to-medium sized. Our budget of $650k (in actual funding) is relatively small, half a year of production for a small team. Budgets of kickstarter projects asking for $20k... that's not enough to make a game, that's just some content. Surprise! Games you've come to expect as "standard" like Call of Duty: maybe 150 million to make, rough guess. You know how much Old Republic cost? I'm not legally allowed to tell you, actually. It's that much. Now you know.

Games take 1 year to make... if it's a casual iOS game, or an annual sequel. Medium sized games take 2-3 years. Large games take 4-5 years. Believe it or not, lots of games fall in a nebulous space between AAA and "indie", whatever that means. The Old Republic took over 6 years. Yeah, you started hearing about it 1 year before it released. It started production five years before that. For five years hundreds of people toiled on it 12 hours a day and you had no idea! Now you know! Isn't knowing about production right from the start wonderful? No, it's not. It's annoying. It takes FOREVER. That's why you usually don't hear anything until it's almost ready to ship.

Delays, content cuts, pushed back dates, plans to make revenue sooner- this is how games are developed. Bioshock Infinite, the biggest game of 2013, got delayed for half a year, AFTER pre-orders were sold. Journey took 3 years to make a 3 hour game and had to go back for more funding from Sony TWICE. That's how game development goes. They didn't know they'd need to do it. Humans are not good at estimating creative endeavors, no matter how "professional" they are.

We released a truly free demo hoping to make some extra cash for development, and got brutalized for it. But without that income and development time our single-player game wouldn't be as good. Some people will never understand this.

I've worked in games for about a decade. Some companies I worked for had their stuff together better than others. Some were a huge, hundred-million dollar, extremely delayed nightmares. Every company had delays and went over-budget. You know what a release date is? A guess. We're just guessing.

Essentially, I hope people don't freak out too much about what's happening with Kickstarter right now. It's not deceitful or underhanded. It's not a conspiracy. It's normal stuff, whether you like it or not. If Broken Age wasn't a Kickstarter game the first time you would have heard about it would be a couple months from ship, and that it was a two-part adventure game. And you would have been fine with that.

Our game is coming along better than I could have imagined, even if delayed. BECAUSE it's delayed. I'm super happy with it. Other companies have way bigger problems, but that's game development. NOW YOU KNOW. I sincerely hope everything works out the best for them, and you should too. At the end of the day, they're nice guys trying to make good entertainment for you. I, personally, will cut them all the slack in the world.

So there you have it. The games industry! The aristocrats! Maybe it'll get better someday? For now, let's enjoy our time together! (I love you).

-Alex