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Psychonauts 2
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04-12-2015 9:14am#1Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,458 CMod ✭✭✭✭Join Date:Posts: 28169
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Cult classic. Commercial failure. Calls for sequel. Eventual announcement of sequel. Crowdfunding.
Alright, Mr Schafer. Have to admit I'm more game for this than most sequels, because the premise of the game lends itself to even wilder flights of fancy and unique situations than they could fit into just the one game. A bit concerned after the frustratingly uneven Broken Age, admittedly, but fewer circus-esque levels and more milkman-esque levels and we'll be golden
https://www.fig.co/campaigns/psychonauts-22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iVtgZUe-fYComments
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This video is a bit long, but it's actually very well researched and presented.
The company and it's crowdfunding attempt seems like a COMPLETE rip off and scam, it's unbelievable.
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Copied down some of this stuff for my better understanding, maybe helps some of you too.If the company goes bust, you are only going to get paid after the creditors and after Loosetooth pay themselves.
Considering they only have 120,000 dollars of assets, and are totally insolvent this basically means you are not going to get a cent back.
You'll be investing in shares with a par value of 0.0001 dollars going for a premium of 500 dollars each.
For your purchase you get NO voting rights, or rights against the company, and you have to hold the shares for at least 6-12 months.
The business' accountants have expressed a doubt that the business will even be around in the next 6-12 months and the business is leaking money.
In the event the company does go bang you are obviously not going to get anything because the company is already insolvent, and you'll be taking all of this risk on, all of it,
with only the promise that eventually,maybe, somewhere down the line the game comes out and turns enough of a profit for you to get paid if they're feeling generous
(The game needs to make 15,000,000)
What's going on ? It's a very carefully built financial deathtrap straight into Tim Schafers pocket.
If Figg publishing were to go under in the next 6 months what would happen ?
Well....all of the investors would be unable to sell their stock ...BY LAW...and as the only rights they have are to a profit through the company, they would literally lose everything.
And then we get to the best part, what would happen to all the money they invested ?,,,it would stay with Tim Schafer and Doublefine.
Figg is a crowdfunding website, being used by DoubleFine.
Time Schafer in on the advisory board of Figg.
Figg is run by Loosetooth Ind.
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Given how awful Broken Age turned out, I wasn't going near this in a million years. The change to this new Fig company raised my suspicions somewhat but I glanced past it pretty quickly regardless.
Tim got too much money and hadn't got a clue what to do with it. I originally wanted a 2D style game such as Thimbleweed park, and he couldn't even deliver that and had to go looking for more money![:\](https://www.boards.ie/resources/emoji/confused.png ":\")
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,458 CMod ✭✭✭✭
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Merged with existing thread.
I thought from the very off it was made clear Double Fine (and InXile and Obsidian) and Fig were intimately linked entities? Certainly I've never been under any illusions to the contrary having followed it since launch a few months ago.
Very important thing to note here: the investment and crowdfunding aspects of Fig are separate categories. And while I won't pretend to know anything substantial about financial investments, I know enough to state that anybody who invests in a company or project without sufficiently doing their homework is a ****ing idiot. Fig is a new, financially risky endeavour engaged in commercially challenging projects - I'd hope anyone with an ounce of sense would see that, even without the financial figures. It could easily fail in a crowded marketplace. if people are happy to throw four, five figure sums at it without having sufficiently researched it or come to an educated decision, then they are asking for trouble. No more than any other new (or indeed struggling) company looking for investment, there's any so much responsibility Fig can take for people's ignorance.
(As an aside, even a cursory glance at the videomaker's Twitter profile will show that he has a very strong ideological investment in making Double Fine and Tim Schafer look bad, no less than Fig's stakeholders have a vested interest in making the service look attractive. Always worth bearing these interests in mind!)SirLemonhead wrote:Tim got too much money and hadn't got a clue what to do with it
I'd argue the opposite, actually. Broken Age was the prototype for 'big budget' crowdfunding, and like other projects since hit a significant problem: a seemingly record-breaking crowdfunding take is for many projects not even enough to maintain a mid-tier project. $3.3 million is actually quite a limited budget - more so when Kickstarter fees and the substantial cost of reward fulfillment are taken into account. I'd go as far as saying maybe only two-thirds to a half of that money was actually straight-up development money. Not at all surprised they hit a wall with a project of Broken Age's scale and production values (for the record, I thought the first act was one of the best games I've played in years, and the second act one of the worst). I'd consider Thimbleweed Park a different class entirely - Broken Age wanted (and IMO mostly succeeded in terms of art and production design) to offer a legitimately modern take on the old school style, not emulate it directly.
Psychonauts 2, on t'other hand, seems to be more realistic, like Shenmue 3 and Bloodstained before it: crowdfunding isn't enough to sustain its development, and is instead used as a hype-builder / pre-order system (plus a bit of extra cash for development as a bonus). As the Fig page very clearly states:Double Fine will be putting up a significant portion of the development funds ourselves, and getting another piece of the budget from an external partner. This Fig campaign will make up the third piece of the budget.
Add to that a more realistic reward system - there's fewer expensive physical items, for example - and I think it highlights a much more sensible approach. Developers and players alike really need to stop believing even multi-million euro crowdfunding takes are sufficient to fully sustain ambitious, expensive projects - even with artistic compromises. A handful of studios can pull it off, others can't. And most of the recent big name projects seem to have very much learned from the mistakes (and successes) of those early few trailblazers.Nody wrote:Why anyone would give any money to Double Fine after their previous crowd funded game failures is beyond me...
One word: Psychonauts :pac:
The first game is one of the last great mid-budget titles of the PS2 / Xbox era, the sort of quirky and experimental titles to still justify a reasonably lavish production and retail release and that's all but extinct now. I'm playing through it again and it's impressing me all over again, displaying a level of ingenuity often akin to a main series Mario title. It, as I said above, also lends itself to a sequel like few others.
This is going to be the first Double Fine game I'm stupid enough to crowdfund (not invest :pac:), because the amount I'm putting in is IMO fairly insignificant, and it's a project I believe in supporting (Psychonauts is probably the only Tim Schafer game I'm particularly fond of). I only really feel the company has had one crowdfunding 'failure' (SpaceBase) and even that delivered 'a game', albeit not an entirely complete or satisfying one (Broken Age suffered from being a creative failure in its second half more than anything attributable to crowdfunding IMO). Throwing thirty quid at this is a risk I'm satisfied in taking, being fully aware of Double Fine's history (they have delivered plenty of fully formed games in recent years). €1,000 would be a different matter entirely
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 18,315 CMod ✭✭✭✭
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Why not simply wait and buy the released game?johnny_ultimate wrote: »One word: Psychonauts :pac:
The first game is one of the last great mid-budget titles of the PS2 / Xbox era, the sort of quirky and experimental titles to still justify a reasonably lavish production and retail release and that's all but extinct now. I'm playing through it again and it's impressing me all over again, displaying a level of ingenuity often akin to a main series Mario title. It, as I said above, also lends itself to a sequel like few others.
This is going to be the first Double Fine game I'm stupid enough to crowdfund (not invest :pac:), because the amount I'm putting in is IMO fairly insignificant, and it's a project I believe in supporting (Psychonauts is probably the only Tim Schafer game I'm particularly fond of). I only really feel the company has had one crowdfunding 'failure' (SpaceBase) and even that delivered 'a game', albeit not an entirely complete or satisfying one (Broken Age suffered from being a creative failure in its second half more than anything attributable to crowdfunding IMO). Throwing thirty quid at this is a risk I'm satisfied in taking, being fully aware of Double Fine's history (they have delivered plenty of fully formed games in recent years). €1,000 would be a different matter entirely
If anything Double fin has consistently failed to deliver no matter what they been given as their budget goal; this is going to be yet another failure to deliver. Yes they claim third party funding, yes they claim own funding but their own accountants state they have 120k USD left AND do not have a viable business at the moment with question mark if they will exist in six months. That does not give me confidence so why throw money at them instead of waiting for it to actually be completed? If they complete it they get the full "value" of your money; if they don't deliver you've not thrown yet more money into the hype and get yet another alpha green light game that's not completed.0 -
Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,458 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 28169
Why not simply wait and buy the released game?
I usually do - what I've done with their games so far, which I've been far less interested in. But given they're offering this at a price less than the final RRP, and my particular interest in supporting the game (I really am very fond of the original), I'm happy to put down 30 quid. I'm confident they'll deliver a finished game. I have no illusions it's anything other than a glorified pre-order, by the way, it's my decision, my money, my loss if anything goes to ****.
Edit: Also just to clarify the loss referenced in the video is for Fig, not Double Fine 0 -
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You realise of the nineteen projects (ignoring the Amnesia Fortnights) Double Fine have worked on since their inception, there have only been three publicised incidents of scheduling and budgeting issues? I'm loath to even include Brutal Legend in that because studios missing publisher set milestones isn't exactly uncommon in the industry and the game was dropped along with a bunch of other titles during the Activision/Vivendi merger and came shortly after some pretty fairly objectionable comments from the publisher.
I don't blame anyone for being wary for parting with their cash for any KS project, especially when it comes to game dev, but that's a pretty harsh moniker to apply based on the company's track record. One could easily apply the same criticism to Kojima and yet, simply on the basis of the quality of the finished product, he avoids it.
Wait, how did activision come to be in a position to drop future development of Brutal Legend games It was published by EA was it not?
Edit: Wait they dropped it during development didn't they.0 -
Sierra were the original publishers of the title. Following the merger between their parent company, Vivendi, and Activision, the newly formed company examined their portfolio of upcoming releases and cancelled a bunch of them. There's a section on the Wiki page here that goes into more detail. It was fairly well documented at the time, mainly due to the lawsuits filed by those involved.Deleted User wrote: »Wait, how did activision come to be in a position to drop future development of Brutal Legend games It was published by EA was it not?0 -
Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,458 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 28169
I have to say I've quite admired the way Double Fine has publicly handled any issues that have arisen over the years. I'd suggest they're one of the most 'public' companies out there in the way they've tried to be open and transparent about their development process (within reason) - culminating in the Double Fine Adventure documentary, which is a uniquely in-depth, intimate and comprehensive 'making of' for a game. At the same time, I can understand how the very same thing has made others very wary of the company - the warts-and-all 'open' approach they've taken is very much a double-edged sword. I'd say everything Double Fine has gone through is something most comparably sized studios have experienced, although perhaps behind closed doors. I can't imagine there's many 'auteur' developers out there who hasn't faced significant scheduling or financing issues over the years either - certainly I don't begrudge or blame Schafer on that front! Still, while there's definitely a few almost farcically anti-Double Fine folks out there (usually from a group who didn't like a certain sock puppet joke) I don't think either the majority of their fans or critics are being particularly unreasonable given the PR approach DF has adopted.
As gizmo said, though, I do think it's fair to point out that, even with a few stumbles here and there, they've delivered all of their games (Spacebase, again, being a semi-exception), and the number of projects with no major issues significantly outweigh the ones that have faced problems. Personally, even though there's only two or three of their games that I've felt have been total successes artistically speaking (a few admirable, 'almost there' experiments too), I still have a lot of time for a large independent studio that has continuously put out idiosyncratic, niche and creatively risky games. There's only a tiny amount of studios doing the kind of thing they're doing, and honestly I'm not at all surprised they've faced a few problems along the way. IMO they've managed to land on their feet (almost) every time, and for that reason I continue to hold plenty of respect for them, and will happily support the kind of work I appreciate seeing them doing (obviously not every project they've made appeals to me).0 -
They did not deliver with Broken Age though, they got half-way, ran out of money, begged for more, faffed about and then produced what is universally agreed to be a sub-standard product with the second half of the game that was fired out the door before they were facing bankruptcy and/or legal action. The debacle being played out in public only strengthens the argument that under Schafer's leadership, they are continually out of their depth when it comes to producing a software product on time and on budget. He's like Lucas, he needs someone to say a hard and firm "No" to keep him inline
The thing is Johnny, you're very into your "games as art" (and that's not any kind of criticism), so of course a studio like Double Fine appeals to your tastes I think our hobby is better off for their involvement, but I'm damned if I'd give them any money before I've got a finished product to assess. 0 -
Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,458 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 28169
They did not deliver with Broken Age though, they got half-way, ran out of money, begged for more, faffed about and then produced what is universally agreed to be a sub-standard product with the second half of the game that was fired out the door before they were facing bankruptcy and/or legal action.
As you can probably guess, I interpret the situation a bit more positively than you do As the guinea pig 'major' project for the mixed blessing that is crowdfunding, I think Broken Age hit the almost inevitable financial roadblock. But rather than go 'begging' for more money, I feel they hit on a clever and fair solution that allowed them to sell a substantial (and excellent) half a game, allowing them to finance continued production. Certainly my overall admiration for the studio probably means I'm inclined to put a more positive spin on things, but I still reckon they did a good job in tricky circumstances - not that your negative spin is any less valid.
You don't have to tell me the second half was substandard - it was because I liked the first so much that it was particularly crushing (****ing robot rewiring). But at the same time the first half was so good I feel they turned in half a masterpiece - which, ultimately, is a whole lot better than I get from 95% of other games! And the fact that I got it on sale quite a while after the release of Act One anyway softened the blow quite a bitThe thing is Johnny, you're very into your "games as art" (and that's not any kind of criticism), so of course a studio like Double Fine appeals to your tastes I think our hobby is better off for their involvement, but I'm damned if I'd give them any money before I've got a finished product to assess.
Yep, I'm actually generally very reluctant it comes to crowdfunding games, and more than happy to wait until release in the vast majority of cases. But the handful of projects I have put a bit of money towards - Amplitude, Dreamfall and now this - are ones I believed could use a bit of support because of what they're trying to do I'd support more smaller projects too, but they tend to be over by the time I'm even aware they're there. And hey they'll all show up on Steam eventually.
Having weighed the risks here, as well as considering my overall positive experiences with crowdfunding (I've supported a few film projects too, and they've all delivered), it's something I'm happy to put a few quid towards given my fondness for the series. Not that I blame anybody for being reluctant to do so, of course!0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFX0f_YUn1I
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