Double Fine Needs More Money to Finish $3.3m Kickstarter Project
Tim Schafer proposes releasing game in two parts.
Double Fine has had to do a double-take of its finances recently, as studio head Tim Schafer admitted that development of its Kickstarter-funded adventure game, Broken Age, will require more than the $3.3 million raised by last year's crowd-sourcing initiative.
In a rather frank and honest message to backers, Schafer explained that he ended up designing 'too much game' for the project to be completed in a satisfactory time frame. The original 2012 Kickstarter only asked for $400,000 worth of donations, but the decision was made to build a bigger game to justify the huge $3.3m total that Double Fine ended up getting.
Because of this, Schafer revealed that the studio hit a financial brick wall much earlier than expected. After some calculations, the game looks set to release in two parts - the first in July 2014, and the rest in 2015. The creative suggested that this was not an option, and has instead proposed a new approach to releasing the game which will see Broken Age released much sooner.
"What if we made some modest cuts in order to finish the first half of the game by January instead of July, and then released that finished, polished half of the game on Steam Early Access? Backers would still have the option of not looking at it, of course, but those who were sick of waiting wouldn’t have to wait any more," wrote Schafer. "They could play the first half of the game in January!
"We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May."
Kotaku has the full message from Schafer, otherwise only visible to Kickstarter Broken Age backers. Double Fine recently succeeded in reaching its crowd-funding target for another project, as well.
In a rather frank and honest message to backers, Schafer explained that he ended up designing 'too much game' for the project to be completed in a satisfactory time frame. The original 2012 Kickstarter only asked for $400,000 worth of donations, but the decision was made to build a bigger game to justify the huge $3.3m total that Double Fine ended up getting.
Because of this, Schafer revealed that the studio hit a financial brick wall much earlier than expected. After some calculations, the game looks set to release in two parts - the first in July 2014, and the rest in 2015. The creative suggested that this was not an option, and has instead proposed a new approach to releasing the game which will see Broken Age released much sooner.
"What if we made some modest cuts in order to finish the first half of the game by January instead of July, and then released that finished, polished half of the game on Steam Early Access? Backers would still have the option of not looking at it, of course, but those who were sick of waiting wouldn’t have to wait any more," wrote Schafer. "They could play the first half of the game in January!
"We were always planning to release the beta on Steam, but in addition to that we now have Steam Early Access, which is a new opportunity that actually lets you charge money for pre-release content. That means we could actually sell this early access version of the game to the public at large, and use that money to fund the remaining game development. The second part of the game would come in a free update a few months down the road, closer to April-May."
Kotaku has the full message from Schafer, otherwise only visible to Kickstarter Broken Age backers. Double Fine recently succeeded in reaching its crowd-funding target for another project, as well.
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