f13.net

And hey look and it's even on that "Super pro crowdfunding site for pros that aren't those scrubs on kickstarter" thing:

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/psychonauts-2

I'm just linking it because it's gonna be sprayed everywhere after being featured on the game awards which is a thing I didn't know existed until I noticed it today?

My point is I'm pre-empting any other topic to tell you not to give this man money. You should know better.

Fuck Tim Schafer.

Edit: A $3.3 million goal???  Double Fuck Tim Schafer.

Seriously fuck those guys.

Fuck crowd funding middle-aged, well-off white guys to indulge their nostalgic fantasies of still being relevant in an industry they no longer understand.

1) Who is Tim Schafer and why do we hate him again?

2) What he says in the video: "Hi, I am Tim Schafer and 15 years ago..."

What I am hearing: "I used to be someone! *sob*"

Aww, poor guy.  :heartbreak:

I'm torn on this. I liked Psychonauts, and Tim's work at LucasArts was great. Is there still that much butt-hurt over the Broken Age Kickstarter fiasco?

It sounds like he could probably get publisher on board to help fund the game sans crowd-funding, since Psy 1 sold decently enough.

I'm guessing you didn't hear about Spacebase DF-9 then?

And the "Broken Age fiasco" should be enough by itself to ensure that Schafer never gets any more money to make anything ever, unless it's under several layers of solid oversight.

Eh. I'm not lining up to throw money into there, but I'm glad that it looks like it's going to get funded.

Basically, I'm gambling with other peoples money on the game I want getting made.  :grin:

Psychonauts is massively overrated.  

Schafer hasn't done anything worth a shit since 1998.  People need to stop giving him money.

Pretty much how I'm feeling now that I've had time to think about it. The guy may be a shyster, but I can't say that I didn't enjoy the first game.

Yeah, Psychonauts was great. Great enough that I'm not sure there's a lot to be gained from a sequel, the first one accomplished its purpose so thoroughly.

Something where your actions inside people's heads have more of an impact on the world outside could be a neat hook, I guess. Have different paths open up based on who you convince to make friends with each other, or something.

If the game exists and has good reviews I'll likely buy it. Not before then, though.

This is the guy who started the whole "indy but not" studio begging for money to make a shittastic game that doesn't get made.  It turned out as badly as I said it would back then, and started a veritable shitstorm of similar campaigns that did nothing but take money out from actual, viable small startups.  Fuck him.

If I can get a competitively priced midrange multirole spaceship or freighter at under $250, I'm in.

 :awesome_for_real:

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1739972/web-images/approve.jpg)

I'm aware of Schafer's name, but don't think I've played any of his stuff, and so am overwhelmed by indifference.

Anyone up for a simple explanation on the "Broken Age Fiasco"? A link would do, as long as it's brief.

Broken Age raised a bunch of money, but then they ran out of money halfway in and had to break the game up into two separate chapters with sales of the first funding the second half.

His studio's books weren't balancing (because they hadn't really been relevant in a long time) so they drummed up some shittastic unmentionable game to make their bottom line work; leveraging Shafer's work from the 90's basically.  They were pretty much the 1st to try it, and they made $3m+.  Kickstarter has not been the same since.

And then they did Spacebase DF-9, which they wrapped up and labelled as "released" long before all of the promised features that they raised funding on the basis of were completed.

Basically Tim Schaefer is a crook who abuses crowdfunding and has done a large part to poison the well for others.

And it was 2 1/2 years late.

Broken Age was one of the first "big nostalgia" kickstarters, with an original goal of $400,000 but eventually pulled in almost $3.5 million.  But even with that budget Schafer couldn't finish the game so he had to release the first half early to pay for the second half.  They blew tons of money on celebrity voice actors like Elijah Wood, Jack Black, and Will Wheaton while the gameplay was apparently pretty underwhelming (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPz-dAgXS1s) to the people who thought Schafer was some kind of genius after his old games (the old Lucasarts adventure games and Psychonauts mostly).  There was also some kind of sketchy stuff with the pricing, I thought, like them sending out loyalty coupons to previous DoubleFine customers for 25% off Broken Age and then putting the game on sale for 33% off days later.

The one that really cheeses me off is Spacebase DF9, which they released in Early Access as "Dwarf Fortress in space".  They were criticized by SOME cynical assholes who don't like to support smaller studios during early development, and then proved those assholes right by abandoning the project when Double Fine realized they had already sold everything they were going to sell, and that actually finishing the game would cost them more than it would earn them in new sales.  This was around the time Gamergate was shitting up the internet and a fair amount of the response to this was tied up in that, with Schafer claiming that a lot of people were mad at him for his political stand and not for the games he was putting out.  It was a mess.

But generally, my opinion of the guy went from "he's one of the great minds behind the classics, give him a chance" to "I wouldn't loan him a dollar to buy gum unless he brought back a notarized receipt" over the course of a year or so.

And then he decided that Kickstarter was lame and he was going to start his own crowdfunding site with even less oversight.  

I can't even express it.  Like, imagine if Star Citizen limped towards an unfinished release and managed to put out something on the level of Strike Suit Zero before announcing that the money was gone.  Then, a year later, Chris Roberts is back to make a crowdfunding pitch for Wing Commander 5, but now he's got a more realistic funding goal so he is asking for millions of dollars up front, and he's not doing it on Kickstarter but on his own homebrew platform that he controls (which I guess he already is, but whatever).  And people are funding it.  That's basically where I'm at here.

It should also be noted that the original pitch for what eventually became Broken Age that sold people on the kickstarter in the first place was for a more low-key point-and-click, more on the level of Day of the Tentacle than what we ended up getting.

But then that original plan got scrapped when the money rolled in, and they went with something far bigger that they didn't have anywhere near the money for.

Do you want Brütal Legend 2? Better fund Psychnauts 2 then. (http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/brutal_legend/news/brutal_legend_2_more_possible_if_psychonauts_2_is_a_success_says_double_fine.html)

Shows just what an asshole Schaefer is.

One of the usual business strategies in videogames is to "get the publisher a little bit pregnant", draw them into funding a project partway, then tell them you need more money to finish (it should be mentioned that publishers play this their own way, giving studios partial funding and demanding concessions like signing over the IP rights to get the funding to finish).

Seems like something similar may be happening, not so much by intent, but by habit. Developers get more funding than they expected, then overscale their ambitions and go back to the well.

--Dave

I would assume that this will be the last go-around with people trusting Schafer enough to fund his games that the industry itself won't touch. But again, I sometimes have too high an estimation of people.

Those who like drama will remember that Notch was apparently interested in getting involved. Or not.

http://kotaku.com/5885525/bankrolling-psychonauts-2-was-just-a-semi-joke-says-notch

The interesting part in that article is they say the budget is $40 million. They are asking for $3.3 million from "the crowd", with the rest coming from themselves and from an unnamed third party. I can't stand these projects where they ask for less than they need and expect you to trust they'll come up with the rest somewhere.

That's because they are using the money to get more money, and they know they won't have to pay it back or produce anything.

It's one of the things I want Crowdfunding sites to put a stop to. If you want to put up something, you have to put up the WHOLE budget.

I'm not telling you guys about it if I ever set up a crowdfunding scheme.  Jeez!

Isn't this just a ploy to make Fig relevant?

Well, consider me informed. What a douchebag/man-child/both.

Just fyi this still hasn't funded with 11 days to go. Stalled out at $3.0 Mill out of $3.3 Mill.

It's gonna make it, but I guess the world wasn't clamoring for Psychonauts 2 enough to sign up for a site that wasn't kickstarter to throw money at it.

I don't understand how they got over $1m.  It's fucking Psychonauts.

I'll also throw in that DF's Massive Chalice was an Xbox Games for Gold freebie in its launch month, mostly likely because DF really, really needed that guaranteed revenue stream and player interest wasn't that strong for that title.


Yes. Especially after one of the early Fig projects flopped in its attempts to raise money, so they need some successes to steady that ship.


Because somewhere along the line gamers said they were sick of publishers not creating new IPs, only to throw free money at game devs who promise sequels / updates / "spiritual sequels" to nostalgic favourites.