My problem isn’t them supporting a money loser. It’s the fact that it seems like one kickstarter is really funding other projects, and that they’re caught in a spiral downwards. Eventually they’re going to have to stop the bleeding. Is that going to be with Massive Chalice? Or Grim Fandango reboot? Or Broken Age?
We don’t know, but this robbing peter to pay paul methodology doesn’t work, even in software.
As for “game development” being quick and straightforward, it is as quick and straightforward as you make it. There are hundreds of indie devs that aren’t expanding beyond their costs and who aren’t relying on repeated kickstarters to seemingly fund last years project.
I work in the software industry, I know just how deadlines and tasks and other things work. DoubleFine’s problems are an example of bad management, not an indicator of the industry or the larger software engineering industry. Period.
I think the easy solution is to stop funding their projects. I don’t have any particular problem with Broken Age, but I’m definitely not giving Double Fine any more of my money.
I’ve never considered Kickstarter as anything other than a risky proposition. People give developers money to make stuff that wouldn’t otherwise get made. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. If the alternative to crowdfunding is the massively stagnant AAA industry, then I’d rather take the risk.
My last one was Massive Chalice. I didn’t put all this together until they announced the big miss of the act two of Broken Age (which was timed til after Massive Chalice got funded).
If that one fails (or any other), then yeah, no more money ever.
I have and enjoyed a bunch of the games (Broken Age, Fract, Hohokum, KR0, Nidhogg, Monument Valle, Super Time Force) listed here. Man do I regret trusting that and trying Fjords. What the hell is going on in this thing. I am no longer a ten-year-old kid sitting in front of my c64 with all of five pirated games to play. It totally creates that sensation except now I have a PS4 sitting in the next room with lots of games that are not deliberately obscure.
Some of these games sound like they may be interesting to me, but they all sound like they’re designed for niche audiences.
I tried Mountain, out of curiosity. Why not? It’s only a dollar. I’d say it’s entertaining for roughly 30 seconds. You’ve got a cone-shaped mountain that rotates. The weather changes. Occasionally, random objects strike the mountain for no reason, and there are a few other events. If you learn the right sequence of keypresses (there are lists on the Internet), you can force those events. And that’s it. The mountain’s appearance varies slightly between runs, but very little.
