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[de_la_Nae]

 !!!!

http://www.humblebundle.com/

[GarandMarine]

Damn! That's a pretty solid pack! $8 is worth it for Psychonauts and Brutal Legend (I hear the latter is good...)

[mtmerrick]

Meh. I almost never wind up touching humble bundle games. Those i do, I tend not to finish.

Which is weird for me because I usually play a game nonstop till I'm 100% done with it. (which makes minecraft difficult )

[ackblom12]

Sheeeeeeeeeeit

[de_la_Nae]

I actually already own two of those, but I might have to toss some money that way anyway.

[Masterpiece]

I'm seriously considering because I haven't played Stacking and Costume Quest yet. But then I know I'm not playing that much anymore, so no.

But do buy it! The proceeds will likely go towards Broken Age!

[Blue Kitty]

[Masterpiece]

Not a valid youtube URL
oh my god it's so bad, it's spot on

[ackblom12]

I love Double Fine so very very much.

[Masterpiece]

yes

[ackblom12]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fines-massive-chalice

Kickstarter has a new Kickstarter for a turn based strategy game called Massive Chalice. The video they made for it is amazing and includes a vomit spewing satanic publishing executive.

[snalin]

I think it's time for Tim Schafer to stop developing games.


And start his acting career because that was fucking brilliant. "and shave that beard!"

I think I'll back this one - I didn't back the adventure game because I'm not really that into adventure games, but xcom/ff tactics is right up my alley.

[Game and Watch Forever]

I got the latest Double Fine Humble Bundle for the sake of Brutal Legend and Stacking. Didn't think I'd like Costume Quest so I figured I'd give it a 15 minute playthrough before dismissing it completely from my mind... and then that turned into two hours. I'm not sure I understand why I even liked the game... its gameplay is rather shallow, but that didn't stop it from being fun at all.

I'm going to have to look into getting The Cave (watched my boyfriend play the demo and it looked fun!) and back this particular game. I'm a huge Fire Emblem fan and love the bloodlines aspect of this. Kind of a wonder that this is the first time I'm hearing this being thrown out as an idea, since it makes perfect sense.

[de_la_Nae]

Well certainly the elements of it have been used time and time and time again, but... I'm coming up blank so far as to time where they've been put together quite this way. From the description at least, we'll see what the actual game is like.

[Game and Watch Forever]

I suppose I meant more the combination itself. I mean... there's been enough monster breeding games that explore "bloodlines" at least on a shallow level. But I imagine this will go a little deeper than that, since it's meant to be replayable.

[ackblom12]

Man, this article just makes me love Double Fine more and more.

How Kickstarter Got Gay Marriage into Massive Chalice

[ackblom12]

So as I'm sure most of you know by now, Double Fine announced that they're going to be releasing the first half of Broken Age in January. the 2nd half will not be released until probably early 2015. The game's scope is larger than the budget allowed for, so they're bankrolling the rest and selling the first half on Steam to supplement. Personally, I think this is a good compromise and I think that the customer base is going to have to accept that stuff like this is part of the design process if we want to be a legitimate publishing base for games that are stuck in that area between Indie and AAA budgets.

Double Fine's Adventure Game Snapped in Twain. Fans Taste the Fun of Being a Publisher

[GarandMarine]

Alex at Stoic Studios (home of KS success The Banner Saga) wrote a great piece on KS and the publishing experience.

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

I concur personally, oh no! Shit happens while the companies I backed are trying to give me the absolute best possible bang for my buck and produce a truly quality gaming experience! Curses! XD

[ackblom12]

I'm super excited for The Banner Saga. I think I've got about half a dozen games in the KS queue right and they're all higher on my list of wants than anything AAA.