RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[HoonDing]

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125596-Ubisoft-Reveals-Online-Security-Breach

 

Someone has hacked into Ubisoft. They might have your user name/email address and encrypted password.

 

Then at least someone knows my password. I sure don't.

 

Password:  m1lfluv3r

Edited July 2, 2013 by Drudanae

[Zoraptor]

Guys ever heard of a game called Outcast?

 

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/praise-the-lord-outcast-to-be-revived-more-news-coming-later-this-year/

Saving my monies for the kickstarter. Moscow Symphony Orchestra stretch goal here I come.

 

With that and Larian Belgium may become famous for more than waffles, eurocrats and the worst variant of the Brassica genus known to man. What sort of warped mind sees lots of little cabbages attached to a stalk and thinks "hey, awesome"- the sort of minds that make good games it appears...

[melkathi]

 

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125596-Ubisoft-Reveals-Online-Security-Breach

 

Someone has hacked into Ubisoft. They might have your user name/email address and encrypted password.

 

Then at least someone knows my password. I sure don't.

 

Password:  m1lfluv3r

 

 

So I have the same password as Mike? Awesome!

[ManifestedISO]

I remember the years before Ubisoft. French games weren't often very good but they were certainly different than those from other countries. Now they've got Ubi, which is EA with a funny moustache wearing a mime outfit, and much like EA the thing they do most often is show their customers the finger.

 

How, exactly. Show me some evidence for willful corporate malfeasance.  

[Serrano]

The Double Fine Adventure game is reportedly projected to be over budget by a sizable amount.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Serrano

[ShadySands]

I didn't back it but it seems like most of the games that I've backed have all gone over budget

[Bester]

The Double Fine Adventure game is reportedly projected to be over budget by a sizable amount.

 

Scamstarter at its best.

[Malcador]

The Double Fine Adventure game is reportedly projected to be over budget by a sizable amount.

Hooray for PM failure.

 

Think the update was backers only

 

Hello, Backers of Adventure!

 

Those of you who have been following along in the documentary know about the design vs. money tension we’ve had on this project since the early days. Even though we received much more money from our Kickstarter than we, or anybody anticipated, that didn’t stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money.

 

I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is.

 

So we have been looking for ways to improve our project’s efficiency while reducing scope where we could along the way. All while looking for additional funds from bundle revenue, ports, etc. But when we finished the final in-depth schedule recently it was clear that these opportunistic methods weren’t going to be enough.

 

We looked into what it would take to finish just first half of our game—Act 1. And the numbers showed it coming in July of next year. Not this July, but July 2014. For just the first half. The full game was looking like 2015! My jaw hit the floor.

 

This was a huge wake-up call for all of us. If this were true, we weren’t going to have to cut the game in half, we were going to have to cut it down by 75%! What would be left? How would we even cut it down that far? Just polish up the rooms we had and ship those? Reboot the art style with a dramatically simpler look? Remove the Boy or Girl from the story? Yikes! Sad faces all around.

 

Would we, instead, try to find more money? You guys have been been very generous in the tip jar (thanks!) but this is a larger sum of money we were talking about. Asking a publisher for the money was out of the question because it would violate the spirit of the Kickstarter, and also, publishers. Going back to Kickstarter for it seemed wrong. Clearly, any overages were going to have to be paid by Double Fine, with our own money from the sales of our other games. That actually makes a lot of sense and we feel good about it. We have been making more money since we began self-publishing our games, but unfortunately it still would not be enough.

 

Then we had a strange idea. 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. 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.

 

So, everybody gets to play the game sooner, and we don’t have to cut the game down drastically. Backers still get the whole game this way—nobody has to pay again for the second half.

 

And whatever date we start selling the early release, backers still have exclusive beta access before that, as promised in the Kickstarter.

 

I want to point out that Broken Age’s schedule changes have nothing to do with the team working slowly. They have been kicking ass and the game looks, plays, and sounds amazing. It’s just taking a while because I designed too much game, as I pretty much always do. But we’re pulling it in, and the good news is that the game’s design is now 100% done, so most of the unknowns are now gone and it’s not going to get any bigger.

 

With this shipping solution I think we’re balancing the size of the game and the realities of funding it pretty well. We are still working out the details and exact dates, but we’d love to hear your thoughts. This project has always been something we go through together and the ultimate solution needs to be something we all feel good about.

 

In the meantime, I’m hoping you are enjoying the documentary and like the progress you’re seeing on Broken Age. I’m really exciting about how it’s coming together, I can’t wait for you to see more of it, and I feel good about finally having a solid plan on how to ship it!

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Tim

[AwesomeOcelot]

I feel like this is the way to make buggy unpolished games with feature cuts and mechanics that don't work well. On the other hand if people backed because of Tim Schafer and his games: Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and Brutal Legend, then that's not a surprise. I'm glad DoubleFine have funding for 4 other projects, because I don't have much confidence in Steam Early Access raising funds. I don't think you can accidentally design a game 4 times larger than your budget would allow, they didn't just find out it'd take until 2015, and they haven't continued for this long without a plan for additional funding. Also the KickStarter wasn't "half fund a Double Fine Adventure for 2015" if my memory serves me. It does answer why they barely show the game in the documentary series, I think I've seen twice as much of Project Eternity.

[Cultist]

 

Thrilled to announce that I will be joining @Bioware as the Sr. Development Director on the next Mass Effect!

Chris Wynn, Former Senior Producer for Gears of War: Judgement.

CoD crowd would be ecstatic. I, for one, am glad that BioWare decided to be honest and drop RPG from Mass Effect and go full...popamole.

[Nepenthe]

Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded did deliver exactly what was promised, even if a lot later than originally planned. So it's really just gamers getting the publishers' eye view into game development: Some people can do what they said much later than they'd originally promised and others can't do even that...

 

 

 

 

Let's not kid ourselves, if the press didn't get a hold of it, it would have never been fixed.

And how exactly they wouldn't have gotten a hold of something as retarded as that?

 

 

We are talking about gaming journalism here? 

 

 

They might be the dregs of society, but like any wannabe tabloid journalist, they'll be all over anything with even the slightest wiff of a scandal. Which is what that would've been unpatched.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Nepenthe

[Zoraptor]

The Double Fine Adventure game is reportedly projected to be over budget by a sizable amount.

Hey, don't they have another kickstarter running?

 

Oh wait, that finished a couple of days ago didn't it. Good thing they only worked out they were over time and over budget on their previous kickstarter after it ended, else they might not have got so much...

Edited July 3, 2013 by Zoraptor

[alanschu]

I was expecting something like this to happen with Kickstarter, though I'll admit I'm a bit surprised that it happened with the first.

 

It's why I'd rather stretch goals be a nebulous "We'll make the game better" rather than a checkbox list.  There's an implicit commitment to deliver on those things.  Frankly I'd be okay if they just kept all the extra money and just made their $400k game.

[Nepenthe]

I was expecting something like this to happen with Kickstarter, though I'll admit I'm a bit surprised that it happened with the first.

 

I'm not, obviously the first time something's being attempted will make it more prone to error than subsequent ones. I have a lot more faith in, say, Project Eternity because they approached it as something that's definitely viable and could adjust their pre-kickstarted planning stage in such a way (as opposed to, "hey, let's give kickstarter a shot!"). Same with Larry and Shadowgate.

[alanschu]

Fair enough.  I was curious if there was going to be some level of "We can't screw up!" conservatism.  Although to be honest, the DFA seems to be a relatively serious one.

 

I do agree that the Massive Chalice Kickstarter comes across as a bit shady.

[Nepenthe]

Fair enough.  I was curious if there was going to be some level of "We can't screw up!" conservatism.  Although to be honest, the DFA seems to be a relatively serious one.

 

I do agree that the Massive Chalice Kickstarter comes across as a bit shady.

 

I'd say more than a bit, that kickstarter ended less than week ago.

[Majek]

I thought everyone knew about DFA money troubles for months. The only new thing here is the Steam Early Access idea.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Just downscope that ****er. You're developers, and there's likely stuff worth cutting in the designs anyway!

[melkathi]

So we can start a list of shady kickstarter practices?

Because Harebrained revealing that their promise for a DRM free game.... eh, well, let's nitpick about the letter of the promise and not the spirit, just after making a drive for pre-orders. that doesn't put them in my list of most honest developers.

Not that I am all that keen on hearing that one of the mos successfull kickstarters did not have the cash to implement proper savegames or lootable corpses. It may not have been as badly missmanaged as Double Fine, but it sure as hell wasn't managed well.

 

Makes you wonder (or makes me wonder) if there isn't a reason that some "big" names end up using crowd funding. Sometimes serial entrepeneurs have the "serial" part not just because they have loads of ideas, but because those ideas can only survive if the person who had the idea leaves it alone

[HoonDing]

I wonder how Tornquist will get his extra needed money for Dreamfall Chapters.

[Humanoid]

 

Fair enough.  I was curious if there was going to be some level of "We can't screw up!" conservatism.  Although to be honest, the DFA seems to be a relatively serious one.

 

I do agree that the Massive Chalice Kickstarter comes across as a bit shady.

 

I'd say more than a bit, that kickstarter ended less than week ago.

 

Yeah, while I'm somewhat disappointed overall, that's really the one part that really wafts of malfeasance. I mean the other stuff is unfortunate, but relatively unsurprising and can be worked through constructively. The reason it's not surprising, even for someone who hasn't been following development closely as a backer, is that beyond being the first project of its type, it's also the most unplanned and ad-hoc in terms of design - but I do note that that fact was a known quantity from the outset. I mean the whole vibe of the project was somewhat along the lines of "Hey guys, help us make a game and we'll let you watch us making it and you get the final product, whether it's great or if it sucks." The process was advertised as much as the end product, and without a real promise as to the end product other than "the best we can do", it was always a relatively large risk compared to other projects which were quite a bit farther along the pipeline at the time of their funding drives. Heck, the closest project in terms of going live without a clear plan was the failed one from Romero's company - I forget the name - and even that had a more definitive direction by the time it was pulled.

 

Anyway, not to say I'm excusing them for project mismanagement, but given the state the project is in currently, I'd say the method they've decided to pursue (the Steam thingie) now is at least a reasonable one.

[Dream]

So they ask for 400k, get 3.3 mil, and yet end up only being able to make 25% of the game? What exactly was their plan for the "original" game? A single room?

 

I also love how he still finds time to knock publishers in that update despite proving exactly why publishers exist (and why they do the things they do).

 

"Hey, fund a game for us, we only need 400k (I mean 12 million)"

[Drowsy Emperor]

True. Although the whole anti publisher rant was really populism from the start. Tim Schafer stopped getting to make games because the games he made either didn't sell well or weren't profitable on a scale that makes them worth the investment.

 

And {probably} because he can't manage money either. And now instead of getting his head on straight and doing what he was paid to do he's undermining the trust that's central to Kickstarter.

 

And the guy behind Blackwell adventures made four of them mostly on his own for a pittance. 

[Humanoid]

Well cost isn't directly proportional to the length of the game, since a lot of the costs will be frontloaded. But I'd still expect, and it's sort of implied by the update, that the remaining 75% will cost about the same as has been spent up to now.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Even if they cost less its quite a gamble hoping that Steam Early Access will cover that.

 

Why couldn't he have just planned a budget for a 2 mil game and then use the additional money to add more content to an already finished game.