Well, Wasteland 2 has a pretty long gameplay video out, and apparently is looking towards a beta release this month or August. And WL2 had a budget less than DF2. Not to mention that making a fully-featured open-world RPG is more expensive than a point-and-click adventure game.

It's obviously not just a case of Broken Age getting out of scope, there was obviously some serious financial mismanagement going on to blow so much money and have so little to show for it.

releasing a unfinished game on full price, which they promised would finish in kickstarter, lies or promising something they cannot fullfill

So kickstarter was in feb/mar 2012...originally planned on a july 2012 release...get 8x what they asked for...move release to july 2013....but oops...we now think it would take till 2015 if we do not go to steam for early access...

What a major screwup...Even if you subtract 800k from the top for fees and physical items...they are averaging over 100k a month...and just did some horrible planning...ridiculous.

Hmmm...but also lets start another kickstarter knowing our project is way...way..behind schedule....yeah...makes even more sense.

I kind of picture Double Fine guys playing office ping pong and drinking imported whiskey while having two week long "strategy sessions."

I picture the InXile guys actually working.

Just a gut feeling.

Well, Brian Fargo was a former CEO of a major publisher, I imagine he knows how to make his employees work hard :)

Put yourself in a publisher's shoes. Would you give these people your money ?

Not a surprise really. Being a good game designer doesn't automatically mean someone has a clue of how to run a business or budget properly. This will be far from the last instance of something like this happening.

Wow, a nice reminder why I don't use kickstarter to throw my money around like a monkey flings feces.

hehehe, done and done. Also we're a day off from telltales 400 days TWD episode.

That would be possible if we are talking about a group of enthusiastic programmers.
Double Fine is in business since 2000. They have developed many games.
And i would say that the fist step is creating a concept about what you want to do.
Next step would be a reasonable time schedule. After that you can calculate the possible costs.
If you are asking for a specific sum and get 8x the money you may consider to make the project bigger/better and
start planing the project anew within the new budget.

Lets talk about the truth (like i see it) about the current situation with KS.
KS was the idea for newcomer getting money to finance a project.
Now after the success of some of the projects (success means they got BIG money not that they delivered)
there are many professional companies who just want some of the cake. Established companies with publishers.
They see it as an easy way to drop costs.......a nice presentation at KS thats around 50k $.
Even if they don't get the money they have success....because they can see if their idea is good....This is something which publishers invest significantly more money.

People have been saying for a while that eventually one of the big, multi-million Kickstarter projects would fail spectacularly and possibly end the whole Kickstarter craze. I didn't think it would be the first one though, the big one that started it all. I really hope they will find a way out of this mess.

They haven't run out of money just yet. It's just that they don't have enough to make it to the finish.

double fine, indeed haha


How can you not have enough when the original goal was $400,000 and ended up with $3,336,371, nearly 8 (eight!) times in excess? :)

Now I realised that the fact they got more than they asked for meant they increased the scope of the project, but what kind of fool do you have to be to increase the scope beyond the budget increase?

1. Ask for $400,000 to make a game
2. Get over $3m
3. Start making a $6m game. They screwed up way worse instead, they managed to promise something they didn't even have the rights to do.