Support NeoGAF

[bender]

What's the story with Hack and Slash not panning out? I hadn't really followed the development of the game.

 

[Geedorah]

What's the story with Hack and Slash not panning out? I hadn't really followed the development of the game.

I think it did pan out, or at least that is the general consensus - got like an 80 metacritic and met most if not all of the stated "goals"

 

[Parsnip]

I think your post is entirely too reasonable for this thread Stump.


I only played DF-9 back when it was the AF prototype, and when they put the real game on EA, someone said to me that there was barely anything more in that then what was in the 2 week prototype. I don't know if that was hyperbole or not, but it didn't inspire confidence and so I never bought it. Also I kind of preferred the look of the prototype.

I wonder if this was JP's first "real" project lead gig.


Also, someone mentioned Iron Brigade being a broken earlier in the thread, in what way and specifically the PC version or all versions? If it's network related, maybe the Steamworks patch will fix it.

 

[HariKari]

I mean, on the one hand, it's clear SB DF-9 didn't sell enough to justify continuing to have 4 people working on it full time. So I can't blame them. If Minecraft hadn't taken off, Notch would have dropped it at some point. No one is going to work on things indefinitely while losing money. And it's pretty clear SB DF-9 isn't going to happen. They've tried promotions and discounts and there's not much interest and no one who is playing seems very enthused. It seems like an appropriate project to fold.

People aren't going to be enthused about a husk of a game with development that moves along at a snails pace. There's still nothing to do in the game beyond making "pretty" bases. A lot of the objects don't function. It's very, very bare bones. I'm not surprised there were only four people working on it. Double Fine shouldn't be surprised that such a small team is unable to move along a game that relies heavily on features, and that such a game is not selling well.

There are plenty of people enthused about the genre. The concept? A Startopia/Theme Hospital/Dwarf Fortress style game in space? Hell yeah. They just never came even remotely close to delivering on that premise.

Why would anyone expect sales to help such a situation? It's on the developers for not getting the game into a more playable, enjoyable state. It's not a problem with the market, the genre, or the concept itself. DF just failed.

 

[Rapstah]

Right, because the only options are to never buy a Double Fine game ever again or to blindly buy their games regardless of quality. Or, you know, if you don't like what's happened with their crowdfunded and early access games, stop buying their games before they're finished! Wait until they're done and then decide if it's worth a purchase. Delays, budget problems, and cut features are a reality of game development. They may be bad at managing things, but they're not intentionally trying to scam anyone.

To the people who are saying they're never buying a Double Fine game again, it's obviously a matter of trust between them and Double Fine. Most of most of my posts is jokes.

Edit: What happened to Autonomous?

 

[Parsnip]

Edit: What happened to Autonomous?

AFAIK they polished up the prototype and released it for the Leap Motion controller. Nothing else, probably.

 

[PaulloDEC]

AFAIK they polished up the prototype and released it for the Leap Motion controller. Nothing else, probably.

Yup, I don't think there was ever the intent for a full game of that one. Not that they've ever announced, anyway.

 

[Azure Dream]

AFAIK they polished up the prototype and released it for the Leap Motion controller. Nothing else, probably.

I just got a Leap the other day, I was shocked to see it in the App Store.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Lengthy response to the situation from Tim Schafer, if it hasn't been posted already:

Hi everybody. I want to apologize for the delayed response from me on recent announcement of Spacebase v1.0. Most of Double Fine’s publishing staff and I are currently attending Fantastic Arcade in Austin, TX, and have been trying our best to keep up with the situation via our phones while we’re on the road. But now that I finally have time to sit down with a laptop, I’d like to answer some representative questions we’ve seen on these forums.

Here’s the first question!

“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”

We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn’t. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.

“What happened to the devplan? What happened to the beta stage? How can ANY game go from Alpha 6 to a “finished” 1.0?”

In traditional development, “Beta” refers to a time when no new features are added but bugs are fixed. Things are different in early access where the game is in players’ hands at an earlier state, so the team has been fixing bugs all along as features are added. In the remaining dev time, there will be both bug fixes and new features so it’s true—calling it “beta” is a little inaccurate. But the amount of time fixing bugs is comparable to that of a traditionally-developed game.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to silently pull the plug?”

We are not silently pulling the plug. We are announcing our finishing features and v1.0 plan. I know it’s not a lot of advance notice, but we’re still here telling you our plan instead of vanishing quietly in the night.

“If you were going to end development, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

One of the biggest lessons we have learned in this, our first early access title, is about communication. There should have been more communication to the players about the state of the game, and we apologize for that. But for us, it was never clear whether development was going to end because we always hoped that the next update would turn it around and allow us to extend development. So I suppose, ultimately, the answer was we always had hope we weren’t going to end it, until the end.

“Why put the game on sale (while internally knowing that development of the game was stopping)?”

Frequent sales are part of the Steam marketplace. We’ve had multiple sales throughout the game’s early access period in attempts to create a bigger audience for the game. As for the version of the game that people bought in this most recent sale, we are still working on it, fixing bugs and adding the final features to make the 1.0 version of Spacebase a fun and complete game.

I understand that the recent announcement was a disappointment. It was for you, and it was for us. We wanted to keep working on Spacebase for years. But Spacebase spends more money than it brings in, and that’s just not something we can afford to do any more. Set up against the expectation of the game being in development as long as Prison Architect or Dwarf Fortress, it’s hard not to find fault in the game by comparison. But we continued to sell the game, and will continue to sell the game, because we feel that based solely on its own merits, Spacebase DF9 is still a fun, clever, hilarious, beautiful and complete game.

It’s hard for me to see JP and his team get eviscerated on these forums, after I’ve watched them put their blood, sweat, and tears into Spacebase for the last year and a half. Telling you that they are hard-working and talented developers who toiled in good faith to create this unique work of entertainment probably isn’t going to change your minds about how you feel about this game. But I hope you might at least consider that no one is more disappointed than them that they will not be able to work on this game for years and years to come for reasons mostly out of their control.

We have stumbled awkwardly through some new territory with this game, and in terms of early access communication we fell short. But we are still proud of the game in the end, and are happy to have it on the roster of Double Fine titles. I hope you are able to reserve judgment on version 1.0 until it comes out, and then enjoy it for the unique and entertaining experience that it is.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for playing Spacebase.

-Tim

 

[KJ869]

So Basicly steam needs more rules on early access. For example if developer promises any feature as up and coming, they have to set them as milestones and clearly state how many % they set to gain from making it. This way people would see how mutch belief the developer places on the features making it. Df-9 would had 0 milestones so we would have known they had made no real commitment and could have made more educated guess how the developement would go.

 

[AlexMogil]

From Tim's response I'm a little lost on early access but I'm admittedly very ignorant about it. If early access to the game was funding development and it went into the red where they had to self fund some of the development, shouldn't the revenue from the *completed* game then make up for any monetary shortfall? So they finish the game and sell it and make money? Is the development of the game supposed to generate revenue? The point of selling a product is to sell the finished product, right?

It's probably a really bad interpretation, but this is how it feels.

 

[Alex]

I always wanted to bite but it never seemed like it was far enough along into its goals to even bother toying around with it. Friend nabbed it from a Steam sale and thought what was there was fun just that there wasn't much to it and advised I wait... Well, for once it's nice to have not squandered my money, truly a first for me!

Double Fine could have probably handled this a lot better. Although honestly,while I respect their creativity and goals I've been far from thrilled with their output on the whole so I'm not too terribly broken up (or surprised).

On a side note, Prison Architect is an early access sim that I always vouch for. Great game, well maintained. I guess sometimes the program works sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Aureon]

Let it be known that, from this day onward, game revenue doesn't come from actual sales of complete games anymore!
*shrug*.

 

[d1rtn4p]

Let it be known that, from this day onward, game revenue doesn't come from actual sales of complete games anymore!
*shrug*.

Didn't that start with Day 1 DLC?

 

[DMiz]

edit: Looks like everybody has more or less covered this at this point.

This is one of those things that's made me hesitant at buying Broken Age. As much as I love Double Fine for who they are, it's becoming apparent that they certainly didn't anticipate the 'Kickstarter' success and are now dealing with the realities of being frontiersmen with this sort of business practice.

 

[saunderez]

Let it be known that, from this day onward, game revenue doesn't come from actual sales of complete games anymore!
*shrug*.

They want to have their cake and eat it too. The entirety of the risk in their business model is placed on the consumer as they can drop support and discontinue development at any time. If the future of this studio is predicated on this business model it's not goimg to be a very long one. It's not going to take many Spacebase level abandonments before most gamers start giving them a wide berth.

 

[KingV]

From Tim's response I'm a little lost on early access but I'm admittedly very ignorant about it. If early access to the game was funding development and it went into the red where they had to self fund some of the development, shouldn't the revenue from the *completed* game then make up for any monetary shortfall? So they finish the game and sell it and make money? Is the development of the game supposed to generate revenue? The point of selling a product is to sell the finished product, right?

It's probably a really bad interpretation, but this is how it feels.

I agree 100%. I was very excited about the concept of this game but was waiting for release...

 

[HariKari]

Is the development of the game supposed to generate revenue?

Apparently. Tim talks about they "hoped each update would turn things around." I think it's not hard for people to understand here that a team of four doesn't do much in a month. They needed to put more faith in the product and more resources towards the development. I hope DF realizes how much goodwill they burn by doing crap like this.

Are all of their games like this? Will the lights be turned off other projects if they run out of kickstarter or early access money?

 

[Ravidrath]

I hope DF realizes how much goodwill they burn by doing crap like this.

And not just Double Fine's good will is being burned here - a high profile breach of trust like this is going to make Early Access harder on all devs.

 

[ebullientprism]

“Why put the game on sale (while internally knowing that development of the game was stopping)?”

Frequent sales are part of the Steam marketplace. We’ve had multiple sales throughout the game’s early access period in attempts to create a bigger audience for the game. As for the version of the game that people bought in this most recent sale, we are still working on it, fixing bugs and adding the final features to make the 1.0 version of Spacebase a fun and complete game.

Yeaaaaah. Thats a bullshit answer Tim.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Yeaaaaah. Thats a bullshit answer Tim.

I guess the key difference here is that a lot of people on GAF think the game in its current form sucks and is irredeemable, whereas the developers don't. Opinions and all that.

 

[ebullientprism]

I guess the key difference here is that a lot of people on GAF think the game in its current form sucks and is irredeemable, whereas the developers don't. Opinions and all that.

Thats not really the point.

Its pretty slimy to put a game on sale as Early access knowing fully well that you are about to stop development on it next week. If it was just a regular sale or if they really had confidence in the product then why not wait until the announcement of 1.0 and let people buy it then if they chose to?

Pushing it to 1.0 when its not ready could be just the result bad circumstances, understandable and forgivable. This on the other hand is knowingly misleading your customers, its just disgusting.

 

[Kinyou]

I wonder how viable Early Access even is as business model. Usually the games get the most buzz when they're first released, which however at the same time, is also when early access games are in their buggiest and most feature less state, so they usually make a bad first impression. Tim Schafer says that they were always hoping for more sales after each update, but honestly, as someone who wasn't directly following the game, I had no idea when and what kind of update the game received. There was just zero media buzz, and the update alone also wont make it appear anywhere on the steam front page.

 

[JNA]

I smell another Kickstarter!

Relevant:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZPXOvNKdvUw

 

[exmachina64]

I wonder how viable Early Access even is as business model. Usually the games get the most buzz when they're first released, which however at the same time, is also when early access games are in their buggiest and most feature less state, so they usually make a bad first impression. Tim Schafer says that they were always hoping for more sales after each update, but honestly, as someone who wasn't directly following the game, I had no idea when and what kind of update the game received. There was just zero media buzz, and the update alone also wont make it appear anywhere on the steam front page.

Not true. Valve usually featured each update on the front page.

 

[LurkerPrime]

I wonder how viable Early Access even is as business model. Usually the games get the most buzz when they're first released, which however at the same time, is also when early access games are in their buggiest and most feature less state, so they usually make a bad first impression. Tim Schaefer says that they were always hoping for more sales after each update, but honestly, as someone who wasn't directly following the game, I had no idea when and what kind of update the game received. There was just zero media buzz, and the update alone also wont make it appear anywhere on the steam front page.

Double Fine were out of their minds, somehow anticipating Prison Architect/Don't Starve-levels of success out of the game, enabling years of updates. (I can only assume these are the some of the "alpha-funded" inspirations Tim cites)

The problem is, neither of those inspirations predicated their development on monstrous success. It was only once they struck a chord with an audience that they began to really ramp up their size and ambition.

 

[Wereroku]

Double Fine were out of their minds, somehow anticipating Prison Architect/Don't Starve-levels of success out of the game, enabling years of updates. (I can only assume these are the some of the "alpha-funded" inspirations Tim cites)

The problem is, neither of those inspirations predicated their development on monstrous success. It was only once they struck a chord with an audience that they began to really ramp up their size and ambition.

There is a lot of problems with their plans if they involve funding them solely from Early Access funds. I am guessing they did not plan to spend any company funds on the project which should have been disclosed at the start of the project.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Thats not really the point.

Its pretty slimy to put a game on sale as Early access knowing fully well that you are about to stop development on it next week. If it was just a regular sale or if they really had confidence in the product then why not wait until the announcement of 1.0 and let people buy it then if they chose to?

Pushing it to 1.0 when its not ready could be just the result bad circumstances, understandable and forgivable. This on the other hand is knowingly misleading your customers, its just disgusting.

I don't claim to know how sales are scheduled on Steam, but if they deliberately placed a sale after they knew development was winding down then you're right, it's slimy. I'd like to think it was more a case of oversight or steam sales just not working that way, but you never can tell I guess.

Double Fine were out of their minds, somehow anticipating Prison Architect/Don't Starve-levels of success out of the game, enabling years of updates. (I can only assume these are the some of the "alpha-funded" inspirations Tim cites)

The problem is, neither of those inspirations predicated their development on monstrous success. It was only once they struck a chord with an audience that they began to really ramp up their size and ambition.

They weren't really anticipating that kind of success though. Just hoping for it. They're nothing if not optimists at Double Fine.

 

[JNA]

Bingo Horrible at time management too.. I thought this was always known about Double Fine, even when Psychonauts was in its heyday.

Well if people didn't know before, NOW they do.

It's no wonder no publisher wants to deal with Double Fine anymore. All this time people keeps blaming the publishers for all the problems that happen with game development and we see one of the examples on how that's not the case.

 

[JaseC]

Lengthy response to the situation from Tim Schafer, if it hasn't been posted already:

Cheers, I'll throw it into the OP.

Edit: Since the post (the OP, that is) is a bit long I've moved the updates to the top so they're more immediately visible.

 

[Corsick]

I bought this as I really love city/base builder games like this, dwarf fort and Gnomoria. The development being halted is a sobering reminder of how tenuous game development is for smaller companies. I feel cheated, despite knowing the stakes going into it.

 

[Nairume]

I don't claim to know how sales are scheduled on Steam, but if they deliberately placed a sale after they knew development was winding down then you're right, it's slimy. I'd like to think it was more a case of oversight or steam sales just not working that way, but you never can tell I guess.

The other alternative, which Tim kinda alludes to, is that that last sale was probably them still trying to find enough of an audience to make it worth it and only really made the call to axe it after the fact.

 

[exmachina64]

The other alternative, which Tim kinda alludes to, is that that last sale was probably them still trying to find enough of an audience to make it worth it and only really made the call to axe it after the fact.

That's how I read it. It would be in line with his statement that they hoped for sales to turn around after each major update.

 

[Wereroku]

I bought this as I really love city/base builder games like this, dwarf fort and Gnomoria. The development being halted is a sobering reminder of how tenuous game development is for smaller companies. I feel cheated, despite knowing the stakes going into it.

But you really didn't know the full stakes on the game. In this case DF was not going to invest any additional funds into the project if it was not supported by pre-purchases. This should have been disclosed to the people who purchased it.

 

[PaulloDEC]

The other alternative, which Tim kinda alludes to, is that that last sale was probably them still trying to find enough of an audience to make it worth it and only really made the call to axe it after the fact.

That's how I read it. It would be in line with his statement that they hoped for sales to turn around after each major update.

I hope this is the case.

 

[Wickerbasket]

Did they seriously expect to fund development purely using early access? Because that's what tim's response reads like, and the idea seems really foolish.

They also seem surprised that they had to invest their own money into making the game.

The whole thing just makes my head spin.

Honestly, I'm not surprised the game in its current state wasn't drawing in sales, because it's really no where near a complete experience.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Good work on the OP, Jase. You're a vigilant OP.

They weren't really anticipating that kind of success though. Just hoping for it. They're nothing if not optimists at Double Fine.

You appear to like Double Fine a lot. That's fine.

But the defense you're giving them is even worse than the one I mentioned. Instead of a plan for this game, they would instead have a dream. If that were the case they may as well have been burning the money, because the end result would be the same.

 

[Ketch]

Woops! Nvm.

 

[scytheavatar]

Double Fine were out of their minds, somehow anticipating Prison Architect/Don't Starve-levels of success out of the game, enabling years of updates. (I can only assume these are the some of the "alpha-funded" inspirations Tim cites)

The problem is, neither of those inspirations predicated their development on monstrous success. It was only once they struck a chord with an audience that they began to really ramp up their size and ambition.

Games that succeeded in Early Access, like Divinity OS and Prison Architect, had devs who actually take in the feedback of the backers, communicate with them regularly, release regular updates and fix what that were broken before stacking more features. And they were able to get a steady flow of funds and backers because people have faith in those projects. DF-9 instead was like DayZ and Starbound, with devs who seem completely out of touch with their fanbase and are in denial of their game's woes even when fans have given up hope on those games.

 

[PaulloDEC]

You appear to like Double Fine a lot. That's fine.

Guilty as charged.

But the defense you're giving them is even worse than the one I mentioned. Instead of a plan for this game, they would instead have a dream. If that were the case they may as well have been burning the money, because the end result would be the same.

I was really just making the point that hoping for something and anticipating it are quite different things. Anticipating to me suggests some level of serious investment. Hoping just implies you're prepared to make said investment if the opportunity arises.

I suspect if Double Fine had been anticipating big things from Spacebase they might be in an even worse position now than they are.

 

[jetsetrez]

I really think Early Access and Kickstarter are very volatile and can be very dangerous to both a dev and its customers, and it seems to be resulting in very bad things for both parties on a lot of projects. There are so many things that can go wrong, from mis-managing budget, staff, assumed levels of success/allowable time commitment, scope of project, expectations of the audience on said scope and how the dev manages expectations, properly communicating things, and then following up and actually delivering those things.

As much as I love DF, I feel like their biggest mistakes of late are that they're just stretching themselves way too thin. There's this current SB debacle, we got half of Broken Age, Hack and Slash is just hitting, Brad Miur and friends doing Massive Chalice, and somehow they're also doing a full fledged sequel to Costume Quest for every platform under the sun in just a month. And I'm probably forgetting some stuff. They need to be careful, if they don't manage things right by their fans/customers, they run the risk of getting bit pretty hard.

 

[Nairume]

Did they seriously expect to fund development purely using early access? Because that's what tim's response reads like, and the idea seems really foolish.

I don't think it is necessarily foolish to go through that method, given other games in its genre have largely gone through the same early access method to fund development.

Granted, yes, the state of the game when they started to sell it was probably the foolish part.

 

[SirPenguin]

I'm not sure how he managed to avoid answering any of those questions with all those words but well, here we are

I was going to pick out a few of his non-answers to mock him, but honestly the entire post is really sleazy.

I think his answer to the question regarding "what happened to the dev plan" (you know, the one they took down a few days before this announcement) is the worst, as it just devolved into a meandering response regarding the definitions of alpha and beta

This went from shady to really gross. What the hell happened?

 

[Wereroku]

I don't think it is necessarily foolish to go through that method, given other games in its genre have largely gone through the same early access method to fund development.

Granted, yes, the state of the game when they started to sell it was probably the foolish part.

I am sure Klei spent their own money on the development of Don't Starve up until the point that it became a big hit. The problem is it seems that they started development knowing if it didn't become a success they would drop quickly. Since this wasn't stated most people assumed that the game would be financed to completion by DF even if it didn't take off right away. Even the dev post insinuated as much when people were worried about how quiet they were being. I am guessing that this will be a wake up call for them to not do something like this again though.

 

[PaulloDEC]

I think his answer to the question regarding "what happened to the dev plan" (you know, the one they took down a few days before this announcement)

They actually took that down way before the announcement iirc.

 

[mentallyinept]

So from what I read, they attempted to use Early Access like Kickstarter. Their attitude is that of a failed funding campaign.

To me, that is not the way Early Access should be used. It should be reserved for games that were going to be made even if Early Access didn't exist. If they didn't want to put up any company funds to develop the game, they should have gone to Kickstarter.

 

[Chezzymann]

This is why I only buy games that are actually complete.

 

[ramuh]

Another reminder. Don't hardly ever (few exceptions) buy Early Access. Fucking Trash.

 

[JNA]

Games that succeeded in Early Access, like Divinity OS and Prison Architect, had devs who actually take in the feedback of the backers, communicate with them regularly, release regular updates and fix what that were broken before stacking more features. And they were able to get a steady flow of funds and backers because people have faith in those projects. DF-9 instead was like DayZ and Starbound, with devs who seem completely out of touch with their fanbase and are in denial of their game's woes even when fans have given up hope on those games.

It's a shame that while Early Access is great in theory, but poorly executed (except of course a few devs you mentioned here) by most devs that just use it as a way to sell the game and hardly update the game at all.

 

[AlexMogil]

This is why I only buy games that are actually complete.

I don't know if a blanket statement like that can be made that applies to every case, but this certainly is going to give me pause from now on. I think I've bought... one.