Kickstarter

Creator slot9 on April 26

It was SO amazing to see tim's reaction to the trailer and the tension as he waited for the audience. Wow! Thank you 2pp!

Creator Peter Arentsen on April 25

@Rinu They showed trailer and the name to the people in the forum first. But some people couldn't handle that they didn't see that post before it went live to public.

Creator nodata on April 25

Hi Tim & team,

I just heard about Ron's departure. It's really sad but that's life (which is also one of my main takes on life philosophy.. simple isn't it?). I haven't posted any suggestions for the game so far, but I have one! I was thinking that you guys could feature Ron in the game for a brief moment. This might be late in the game but it also reminds me of Herge almost always featuring himself (for a single frame) in his Tintin adventures. That could be a nice tribute to your game big brother.

:)

Creator Rinu on April 25

I understand that some people can feel little neglected by telling the name and showing the trailer to public first however Double Fine keeps making a great video updates and keep at least me (I don't want to sound as The Speaker for Everyone :)) updated on the whole process.
I have had a faith in Double Fine despite the fact that I didn't connect with Broken Age at first. It's wrapping quite nicely now and the good, unique adventure game according to Tim Schafer & Co. is all I ever wanted from this project.

By the way, give The Realm Game KS a try. It's a futuristic adventure game about a small girl traveling in world with a huge mystic creature. It looks lovely, has this Ghibli vibe and music is done by Mass Effect composer. :)

Creator Maryokutai on April 24

I never comment on these Kickstarter pages and I don't visit the forums because I don't feel the need to do so. However, the sense of entitlement some people here seem to have is almost frightening. Double Fine launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new adventure game. Plus they promised to make a documentary of it with 2PP. That's it. How someone can feel personally offended by not knowing the name of the game the exact _minute_ Tim decides how they're going to call it is something I don''t understand. I gave Double Fine money on the promise they were doing a new adventure game. And apparently, they are doing just that -- and the game is looking very promising thus far. So, please, remind me why I should feel offended and betrayed by DF when they're simply doing what they promised they would.

Creator Robert Lunghamer on April 19

I don't know why people are complaining. Yes, the name and trailer release was a whoops and they admitted that. We've been kept in the light regarding delays, progress and pretty much everything else. The video series has also been fantastic(and has explained a lot of these things if you watched it). While there are currently failed projects that are in the middle of severe legal issues(there's a big one you can look up) that prove you have to be careful on Kickstarter, I believe it is really unfair to group DFA within that. No game development and publication has ever gone completely smooth. Valve time anybody? It's part of the industry. They've done a great job so far at handling this.

Creator Marc Aranha on April 16

It's going to be odd calling this Broken Age now :) I like the name, though. Fun trailer.

Creator James Doe on April 16

It's cool that you have a name now. Congratulations.

Creator William Stull on April 16

Please check out this kickstarter for an adventure game by zeebarf and clickshake games http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clickshake/a-small-favor-2d-side-scrolling-adventure-game

Creator Roger on April 14

@Michael Southwick
You should not take this project as example how information that matters will be handled. There are several examples of projects that keep their backers on track with regularly updates. Secondly, they have collected much more money as they originally planned so they have expanded scope and indeed the timeframe. But as I remember correctly they have shown this in one of the episodes. So my expectation is that they are shipping end of this year or early next year. I am happy with this because the more time they take the better the game will be.

Creator Arkrite on April 12

The fact that they haven't released the game yet is something I'm easily willing to forgive.

The brought in over eight times as much money as they were hoping to get, this means that they could invest that money back into the game and make it bigger and better than they could have originally hoped.

The downfall of a bigger and better game? It takes longer to make.

Creator Daniel S. on April 12

No other game project that I've seen on Kickstarter has been for the complete process from getting the basic idea of what the game will be to the release of the game and to be well into the alpha build (maybe pre-alpha in some areas) stage isn't bad going. On a typical game production cycle, now is the earliest we would normally ever hear of the game. So if this wasn't funded in this manner then the anticipation period would begin now, instead of essentially starting 13 months ago.

Creator Peter Arentsen on April 12

@Michael And with date you mean the missing the april date its only gonna be off several months from that its pretty normal that they wont make dates that are thought up so far ahead. If you mean the October date they knew after the first day of kickstarter that would never happen.

Creator Peter Arentsen on April 12

@Michael Southwick Sorry but that is gamedevelopment that's why normally a project isn't even announced at this stage because people expect it to be done fast then.

Creator Michael Southwick on April 12

I had no idea that there was a name and trailer for the game until today; just randomly checked up on this page while watching the Veronica Mars Kickstarter. Really, really disappointed that this news was never shared. Almost as disappointed as I was when they were waaaayyy off on the release date. I've learned my lesson though, I don't plan on ever backing a game in development on Kickstarter again.

Creator Roberto Zaragoza Gascón on April 10

@Arkrite Also, it's been weeks now and not a single update about it. Seriously, I doubt even half of the backers regularly check gaming news sites or the forums, so a lot of people doesn't even know that it's got a name and a trailer already. And, as I stated before, they even hired a guy to handle their social media! What's he doing right now? Having a milkshake? I like to think he reads the comments in the KS page, not just abandoned it altogether, but that means he has read all we've written and thought: Meh, I'm not updating nothing until I have a video to copypaste.

Creator Arkrite on April 10

I'm going to disagree with that sentiment.
87,142 people chipped in varying amounts of money for this game. Without them it wouldn't be going in the form it is right now. It's just polite to keep them in the loop.

Now, again, I don't think anybody wants them to waste their time with constant updates to the backers, but significant landmarks should be addressed.

Personally I don't have the time in the day to go lurk in the forums of everything I've kickstarted. This does mean that I'll miss out on a lot of minutia. I can accept that.

But the fact that there was something to do with the backers picking the name, and then the actual discovery of the name was something that should have never been left for outside sources to inform us.

"Hi, backers! We're taking suggestions for our new game's name. For those of you who'd like to be involved, please check out (URL here)."

"Hi, Backers! We're taking a poll to see what our game will be named! To participate please go to (URL here)"

"Hi, Backers! It's official, we have a new name! It'll be revealed on (website name here) on (date here)."

"HI, Backers! The word is out, our new game is called (name here), you can read the full story at (website name/url here)"

So... that's, what? Four updates... took me less than five minutes to write, covered that there was a significant event happening that backers could be involved in, wasn't invasive or (hopefully) annoying.

So why couldn't we even get that much?

It's pretty obvious by now that doublefine isn't really keeping track of things here anymore so I doubt I'll get a response.
But, yeah, these things do tend to change how people feel about the next one in line. Maybe I'll still chip in for their next game.
But I seriously doubt it'd be for more then the bare minimum.

Hopefully I'm the minority, but it seems a shame to lose anybody for something that could have been prevented with a simple two or three sentence e-mail.

Creator Peter Arentsen on April 10

@Michael sorry the only thing you are not getting is the fast updates. You get everything on each episode mostly.
Sorry but find it just elitism what often happens on kickstarter, if people don't want to go to the creators forum they will get stuff later big deal. You decided not to watch that part.

Creator Michael on April 10

@NihilistRoinin That may be but it was launched here on kickstarter. Keep your core updated

Creator NihilistRonin on April 9

It's like the people commenting here have completely ignored the multiple instances of the Backer forums being mentioned... There are plenty of updates there.

Creator Jason Gallagher on April 7

I was sad when Disney brought Lucasarts, as was an end of a era. They did say then the future was phone games. So many classic games.

Creator Jonathan Doyle on April 5

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22028682

BBC piece on Monkey Island

Creator Jonathan Doyle on April 5

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22028682

Creator Jiexun Li on April 5

Double Fine is setting a terrible precedence.

This isn't just about Double Fine. With gaming studios dropping left right and centre (RIP LucaArts), Kickstarter is one of the avenue where we could ever hope of seeing dead genres reviving. This poor handling of Backers is going to leave a sour taste in some people's mouths, making them stay off backing another project.

Double Fine, Tim Schafer, DO SOMETHING about it. Until they do, I hereby swear I will not back another Double Fine project NOR purchase any Double Fine products. I will also tell all my friends to do the same thing.

Creator Michael on April 4

lol and they named the game without mentioning it on here.

They are lucky they are the studio Double Fine

Creator Michael on April 4

I'm glad I didn't sink much money into this. They were all about the backers when they were pulling in the millions. Now there is nothing.

Creator Alan Murphy on April 4

@Roger I agree completely. I heard about it while surfing RPS. An update here, even the day of the press release would have been acceptable... I'd bet there are backers that haven't heard about the game they help fund yet. That's sad.

Creator Rob on April 3

R.I.P. LucasArts :( http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/end-of-an-era-disney-shuts-down-internal-game-development-at-lucasarts/

Creator Yaron Golan on April 3

Just wanted to specifically state the RSS feed (open): http://www.doublefine.com/dfa/dfarss/. Still agree that we should be updated first here, though.

Creator Roberto Zaragoza Gascón on April 2

Also, didn't they hire a community manager exactly for this kind of stuff? Like keeping us all in the loop?
How hard was it to pop an update saying we could vote for a name in the forums? Another one saying they had chosen a name and had a trailer. Link to the forums. Done. Everybody happy.
They could even has just copypasted what they had in the announcement over at the forums if it was so hard and time consuming to come up with something special for KS.
Anyways, they didn't and haven't had the decency to even acknowledge that. Shame they will wait until they have a new episode and say: Hey! We have the name already! Didn't you know? Why don't you follow our forums? What do you mean you've backed 60 other games and it's asinine to expect to follow every single one of them?
Anyway. I guess we play the waiting game until the next update.

Creator Roger on April 1

@Peter:
My expectation was not they should show me the name and the trailer before the public, my expectation was that they should have informed me about that they have chosen the name (but not the name itself), that they publish a website and a trailer and where I can see it on which date. Thats all. Maybe others expected more, but this should have been the minimal communication at least. That's why I am disappointed. Doesn't matter they publish all the things one month later. When I see other Kickstarter projects and their communication this is a shame!

Creator Peter Arentsen on April 1

http://www.gametrailers.com/games/hfo8yl/broken-age/videos-trailers#sortBy=most_recent&category=Features
Parts of episode 9
High chance they also kept the name/trailer on the down low is because no leaks will make publicity allot better which they got a chance with the gametrailers stuff and GDC.
Also they seem to be using this place for official looking posts only and they cost some time to make which they didn't have.
Ah well when episode 9 comes out everything will be posted on kickstarter and then everyone is in the loop.

Creator Paul Chaplin (@CottlestonPie) on March 31

Just posting to completely agree with the preceding comments about the lack of significant information being disseminated via Kickstarter. I simply don't have time to keep up with forums, and I even thought I was subscribed to the several major threads on DF's forums so I'd receive email updates, but evidently I was wrong. If an update had been posted to Kickstarter, I'd've got it.

This comment from Stephen Delvecchio below echoes my sentiments perfectly:

"What the Fu... hell? Just heard some news that this is apparently called 'Broken Age' and saw some teaser on Youtube.... Heard about this purely from some third party news source mind you....

Not a single update here?! Voting on Names..? DaFuq? Is it implied and expected that all 87 thousand of us would just mosey on over and sign up to the forums (along with the plethora of other Forums from other Kickstarter Projects that expect us to do the same)

Yeah. No. Would be nice to be kept in the Loop of the project that I 'Donated' more than 3 times as much as I would normally spend on any other AAA title, ya know?"

Creator Arkrite on March 31

To be fair, I wouldn't expect them to detail every little thing.
That would be a little unreasonable.

But the big things? The big achievements, and decisions should probably get mentioned. Heck, if they are mentioned on the forums why couldn't they copy and paste it into a kickstarter update?

Creator Marie-Andree Poisson on March 30

I'm with Roger and Stephen, obviously.

Creator Roger on March 29

Hey Peter, do yourself a favor: Respect the needs and opinions of us others. If one of us wanted to be acknowledged by Kickstarter then it is how it is. It doesn't help that you are always pointing to the forums. For me it doesn't even matter because I was in the forums, I participated on the poll, but missed the announcement of the game's name. But even then I have to fully agree with Steven. The forums cannot substitute Kickstarter updates. The forums cannot substitute proper communication to us backers. There should have been some sort of information or heads up at the same time they started their marketing activities. If you Peter don't feel this way, that is totally ok. But Peter please respect our opinion too!

So in the particular case I totally agree with Steven on this. If there is a major information that information should shared with your backers (investors). And there is a tool for it --> KICKSTARTER.

Creator Stephen "Stoibs" D on March 29

Funny how I'm constantly being made up to date with what's going on with Torment, Project Eternity, Shadowrun, Dead State, Cryamore, War for the Overworld, Wasteland 2 etc... without the need to sign up to and follow even more forums/websites which I and obviously many others don't want to bother with (and subsequently have about 30 or more of these login/password credentials to remember if we did this with all projects)

It's great to want to promote the homepage, but this almost cult-like fanboy broken record response of "Follow the forums" doesn't change the fact that something as MAJOR as a teaser trailer/Name of the entire project being chosen would have been quite easy to let us all know here.

I guess I just can't fathom Doublefine's rationale behind the decision to not use an update feature implemented into kickstarer designed specifically to .... update kickstarter contributors.

Creator Marie-Andree Poisson on March 29

Well, let leave it at that. Circular argumentation is not my cup of tea.

Creator Peter Arentsen on March 29

That you cant take the time to signup to one threat on that forum that will give you instant updates if anything happen its you not wanting to know instantly if something gonna happen.
Subscribe to this theat: http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/6794/ and you will never miss anything anymore.

Creator Peter Arentsen on March 29

Its what they promised on kickstarter development updates from 2pp its what they are delivering.

Creator Marie-Andree Poisson on March 29

@Peter Arentsen. Well, an update each 1 or 2 months is generally not enough. I'm not asking for details, but a least to know on Kickstarter that the game now have a name and a concept! Like many others, I learned it by an outside source.

Creator Marie-Andree Poisson on March 29

I pledged on around 50 projects in here. I certainly don't want to have to go to seperate forums, sites, etc. to see what is going on with them. I understand the need to have these sites for detailed info, but major updates (like the name, concept, production steps, releases, etc.) should be post on Kickstarter. WE are the backers! I noticed that games creators tend to do this and it's pretty bothering.

Creator Peter Arentsen on March 29

@They do inform they make big combination posts with the video + all the updates. But if you want instant posts like people are demanding here watch the doublefine forums.

Creator iprigg on March 29

But @Victor every backer has exclusive access to the specific section of the Double Fine's forum.
Moreover all production oriented updates, are also posted here. After all that is what DF promised: to show you how the game is made, not to post every single event. Probably the next episode to be posted here will have the name choice process also.

Creator Victor Pinto on March 28

@Peter you are the one that's being illogical. The game was financed by kickstarter backers, so, the company at least SHOULD be informing the backers about what's happening. Not that they have to, but it's the polite way, don't you agree?