The official Double Fine thread (brought to you by J_C)

[Major_Blackhart]

So how the fuck do these guys get 10k per month per person as an annual salary?
That's three times the fucking avg for game designers.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Meh, San Fran is a shit city to do business in. Too expensive. Cali is bad enough, but San Fran is the absolute fucking pits.

 

[RK47]

What a shitty company... promise X, grab money, deliver half-assed Y, rinse and repeat. Fuck those losers.

Spacebase is looking to be a complete, playable, decently complex base building game. They were too ambitous and overpromised. But the end product is still good game. Sure, it could have been even more complex, but I'd rather enjoy what I have instead of crying over what was cut.

- Nonexistent pathfinding. Dudes will walk out of airlocks, but can't come back in, leading to everyone dying in space.
- Security forces are useless, as they are guaranteed to panic and flee at the first sign of any enemy.
- Enemy raiders have perfect accuracy and weapons equal to top tier researched items that you can make.
- If a citizen flees for any reason (raiders, hull breaches, low oxygen, etc.), they will never stop fleeing for any reason. So if/when your O2 filters start failing because the game will eventually reach the point where it will be impossible for any number of technicians to keep them fixed, the game essentially ends because all your dudes will go into panic spirals until they die.

AFAIK there's no way to have multiple games going at once, you start the game and it auto loads your save, so you can't make a new base without abandoning your current one.

Pathfinding is indeed borked, generally guys can find their way to where they need to go but they don't choose the optimal path. This is problematic because if they're outside the station, they're running on limited air, so you lose a LOT of miners who turn back to the station when their air gets low but don't head to the nearest airlock, instead floating across the map to the airlock on the far side of the base.

There's also the issue that builders keep building themselves into inescapable rooms. In this game, you designate rooms to build by click-dragging a box, and that tells the construction guys to build that room and surround it with a wall. Unfortunately, they tend to seal themselves in to these rooms, so you have to immediately get a door built or your guy won't be able to get out of his suit and will suffocate.

The bigger problem, IMO, is that there's only maybe an hour worth of content in this game. In Dwarf Fortress, you've got tons of complex systems like dwarf politics, trade, and crafting to keep you busy for days. In Gnomoria, there's still stuff like crafting and traps to give you something to do once you've settled in. But in Spacebase, there's nothing, you build five or ten rooms, and you're done. You can make your colony larger, but you're just making the same thing you just made, again. There's no crafting system, no workshops, no special resources to track, no social relationships, no trade, nothing. It feels like the skeleton of a game with no core to keep you moving. It's like playing From Dust in sandbox mode, there are game systems there and it's a fun sandbox for a bit but those systems aren't very deep and there's nothing else to do.

I've disliked DoubleFine since Brutal Legend. They are dishonest pieces of shit. Their primary business is not making games, it's in moving from one scam to the next. They ran out of publishers to scam so they moved on to scamming consumers directly, first with KS then with Steam EA.

The lead developer of Spacebase has "fights for the users" as part of his Twitter profile. What a fucking joke. Tim Schafer is busy blabbing on Twitter about social justice wank while actively scamming people. What about the simple justice of not selling people early access for a game you have no workable plan for completing?

These guys are scammers, pure and simple. "It was outside our control." Bullshit. You make the budget, you make the promises, you make the decision to sell the game as Early Access. Every day you looked at how much work there was to do and how much money and time you had to do it with and knew they didn't match up.

Spacebase didn't fail because of some unforseeable act of god, it failed because they planned only for the best-case scenario. The only way Spacebase was going to be finished was if they won the lottery and it became one of the best selling EA games. That's not acceptable planning. A plan that leads to people being ripped off 95% of the time is a scam.

It genuinely makes me angry and I'll be glad when they go out of business. "But but but developers will lose their jobs!" Good. These aren't 16-year-old kids who bit off more then they can chew, they are supposed professionals who are paid to know better.

 

[J_C]

What a shitty company... promise X, grab money, deliver half-assed Y, rinse and repeat. Fuck those losers.

Spacebase is looking to be a complete, playable, decently complex base building game. They were too ambitous and overpromised. But the end product is still good game. Sure, it could have been even more complex, but I'd rather enjoy what I have instead of crying over what was cut.

- Nonexistent pathfinding. Dudes will walk out of airlocks, but can't come back in, leading to everyone dying in space.
- Security forces are useless, as they are guaranteed to panic and flee at the first sign of any enemy.
- Enemy raiders have perfect accuracy and weapons equal to top tier researched items that you can make.
- If a citizen flees for any reason (raiders, hull breaches, low oxygen, etc.), they will never stop fleeing for any reason. So if/when your O2 filters start failing because the game will eventually reach the point where it will be impossible for any number of technicians to keep them fixed, the game essentially ends because all your dudes will go into panic spirals until they die.

AFAIK there's no way to have multiple games going at once, you start the game and it auto loads your save, so you can't make a new base without abandoning your current one.

Pathfinding is indeed borked, generally guys can find their way to where they need to go but they don't choose the optimal path. This is problematic because if they're outside the station, they're running on limited air, so you lose a LOT of miners who turn back to the station when their air gets low but don't head to the nearest airlock, instead floating across the map to the airlock on the far side of the base.

There's also the issue that builders keep building themselves into inescapable rooms. In this game, you designate rooms to build by click-dragging a box, and that tells the construction guys to build that room and surround it with a wall. Unfortunately, they tend to seal themselves in to these rooms, so you have to immediately get a door built or your guy won't be able to get out of his suit and will suffocate.

In Dwarf Fortress, you've got tons of complex systems like dwarf politics, trade, and crafting to keep you busy for days. In Gnomoria, there's still stuff like crafting and traps to give you something to do once you've settled in. But in Spacebase, there's nothing, you build five or ten rooms, and you're done. You can make your colony larger, but you're just making the same thing you just made, again. There's no crafting system, no workshops, no special resources to track, no social relationships, no trade, nothing. It feels like the skeleton of a game with no core to keep you moving. It's like playing From Dust in sandbox mode, there are game systems there and it's a fun sandbox for a bit but those systems aren't very deep and there's nothing else to do.

Get back to me after release, we will see if they fix those. No point in arguing about this when the game is under development.

The bigger problem, IMO, is that there's onl maybe an hour worth of content in this game.

Bullshit.

I've disliked DoubleFine since Brutal Legend. They are dishonest pieces of shit. Their primary business is not making games, it's in moving from one scam to the next. They ran out of publishers to scam so they moved on to scamming consumers directly, first with KS then with Steam EA.

They released half a dozen games without a problem. They are out to make games. Even Massive Chalice, which even I thought was a KS scam is coming along nicely, the game is playable. The only problem was the mismanagement of Broken Age and now Spacebase. It is a shitty thing to do, but let's not get edgy and say that they all they do is scamming people. Because you are a filthy fucking lier if you do.

These guys are scammers, pure and simple. "It was outside our control." Bullshit. You make the budget, you make the promises, you make the decision to sell the game as Early Access. Every day you looked at how much work there was to do and how much money and time you had to do it with and knew they didn't match up.

Do you know what scammers actually mean? Because they use it too often. They mismanaged the project, sure, if you think they went into the project with the intention of steeling the customer's money, than you are an idiot.

What happened is what you said:

Spacebase didn't fail because of some unforseeable act of god, it failed because they planned only for the best-case scenario. The only way Spacebase was going to be finished was if they won the lottery and it became one of the best selling EA games. That's not acceptable planning.

Yes that is mismanagement.

A plan that leads to people being ripped off 95% of the time is a scam.

No, let me repeat again, that is mismanagement. Repeat: mismanagement and scam are not the same things. Repeat is some more.

 

[RK47]

Repeat it some more to make money.

 

[J_C]

Repeat it some more to make money.

This is not relevant in our discussion, I don't know why are you quoting this.

 

[RK47]

Repeat it some more to make money.

This is not relevant in our discussion, I don't know why are you quoting this.

It kinda is, since it's a DF Dev making that claim that they will not pull the plug on any game in-development.
Your willingness to accept and forgive their failure to deliver the promise is what's surprising for me.
But for non-fans who were told 'eh, we kinda ran out of money, but please don't feel betrayed - this game is STILL GOOD, COMPLETE AND FUN!' - how are they supposed to react after testing it and finding it broken and unfinished when a release version is looming? Belief in miracle patch is fine - but skepticism is wrong?

Oh, I forget - in RPGCodex we make fun of early backers and call them 'suckers' when the whole game fell through, like Pillars of Balancing for Eternity.

I didn't back this Double-fine game, but the general consensus from those who did is it's in no way close to 'release quality' and already they've moved on to the 'prepare for release phase guise.' This isn't mismanagement anymore - it's more like 'we kinda fucked up but let's not admit it, string them along and hope the Early Access sales can keep going.'

But that's FINE to YOU, right?
Since they're releasing the game anyway which is what they promised and in Tim's own words... 'is still a fun, clever, hilarious, beautiful and complete game.'
They're not liars. They're GIVING IT THEIR BEST. SO THEY'RE FINE, OKAY?!

 

[J_C]

Repeat it some more to make money.

This is not relevant in our discussion, I don't know why are you quoting this.

It kinda is, since it's a DF Dev making that claim that they will not pull the plug on any game in-development.
Your willingness to accept and forgive their failure to deliver the promise is what's surprising for me.
But for non-fans who were told 'eh, we kinda ran out of money, but please don't feel betrayed - this game is STILL GOOD, COMPLETE AND FUN!' - how are they supposed to react after testing it and finding it broken and unfinished when a release version is looming? Belief in miracle patch is fine - but skepticism is wrong?

Oh, I forget - in RPGCodex we make fun of early backers and call them 'suckers' when the whole game fell through, like Pillars of Balancing for Eternity.

I didn't back this Double-fine game, but the general consensus from those who did is it's in no way close to 'release quality' and already they've moved on to the 'prepare for release phase guise.' This isn't mismanagement anymore - it's more like 'we kinda fucked up but let's not admit it, string them along and hope the Early Access sales can keep going.'

But that's FINE to YOU, right?
Since they're releasing the game anyway which is what they promised and in Tim's own words... 'is still a fun, clever, hilarious, beautiful and complete game.'
They're not liars. They're GIVING IT THEIR BEST. SO THEY'RE FINE, OKAY?!

Quote me on saying that I'm happy that this happened! I never said that, this situation sucks and I don't like Spacebase being rushed out. I even say that DF is in a downward spiral, and the fucked up. They have shit management and if they don't change this, they go down the shitter. What I say, and I always said:
1. This is mismanagement, and not a purposefull scam. I hate when people talk about DF as criminals, who should be banned from Steam and they should shut down.
2. I understand the rage and the disappointment.
3. I will wait for the release version, but I think the game is fun, it has interesting gameplay. I know that it doesn't have every feature promised, but even with its current state (ironed out the bugs and some small stuff, which was promised) is an enjoyable for a budget category game.

Sorry, maybe I'm just not as enthusiast about videogames anymore as you guys, and don't shout BETRAYED when this happens. I'm content with getting an enjoyable game and playing with it, instead of thinking about what it could have been. And since I have shit taste in gaming by Codex standards, I can enjoy a game like this.

And you can bet on that if it turns out that the game sucks after release, I will come back and apolgise. BUT I will look at the game as it is currently is, look at the gameplay in its current form and decide about it being fun or not. And not constantly being angry about what it could have been.

It is like when I talk about Eternity. I don't like some design decisions, I hate Sawyer's attitude in the project, but after all work is done and the game is released, I will enjoy it a lot, if it is fun. Might be a little disappointed about not being the best RPG of all time, but I don't care that much about that.

 

[Haba]

You charge the price of a full product for an incomplete alpha, promise lots of future improvements, stake your company name on it and then month later cancel the whole project calling it "complete".

Confidence tricks exploit typical human characteristics such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, opportunism, lust, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, desperation, and naïvety. As such, there is no consistent profile of a confidence trick victim; the common factor is simply that the victim relies on the good faith of the con artist. Victims of investment scams tend to show an incautious level of greed and gullibility, and many con artists target the elderly, but even alert and educated people may be taken in by other forms of confidence trick.

Also: it is illegal. Someone should really take DF/Steam to court over this, just to make Steam revise its early access policies.

BTW, this also rings a bell...

Accomplices, also known as shills, help manipulate the mark into accepting the perpetrator's plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be strangers who have benefited from performing the task in the past.

 

[J_C]

You charge the price of a full product for an incomplete alpha, promise lots of future improvements, stake your company name on it and then month later cancel the whole project calling it "complete".

Confidence tricks exploit typical human characteristics such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, opportunism, lust, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, desperation, and naïvety. As such, there is no consistent profile of a confidence trick victim; the common factor is simply that the victim relies on the good faith of the con artist. Victims of investment scams tend to show an incautious level of greed and gullibility, and many con artists target the elderly, but even alert and educated people may be taken in by other forms of confidence trick.

Also: it is illegal. Someone should really take DF/Steam to court over this, just to make Steam revise its early access policies.

BTW, this also rings a bell...

Accomplices, also known as shills, help manipulate the mark into accepting the perpetrator's plan. In a traditional confidence trick, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be strangers who have benefited from performing the task in the past.

AHAHAHAHA we are going to illegal territory now. Please, expleain the judge that how is not implementing a feature to a videogame is illegal. Because that is all that happened, some features are not going to implemented into the game. And users took the risk when they bought an early access game, it is written down.

Maybe we should take every developer to court if they didn't implement a feature.

 

[buzz]

Or maybe we should all just not reply to obvious J_C bait

 

[DeepOcean]

Yeah...I think J_C must be trolling at this point, at least, this is the only rational explanation I can think of. Fuck Double Fine, those dishonest hipsters and their scams.

 

[SuicideBunny]

AHAHAHAHA we are going to illegal territory now. Please, expleain the judge that how is not implementing a feature to a videogame is illegal. Because that is all that happened, some features are not going to implemented into the game.

false advertisement. i think most countries with basic consumer protection would even allow you to get a small partial refund based on the unimplemented features, like what happened to sony when they dropped linux support from ps3.

And users took the risk when they bought an early access game, it is written down.

doesn't change the fact that it's a major asshole move.

 

[Metro]

J_C you're a fucking halfwit. Stop defending this shit company.

 

[Western]

J_C has decided to go down with the sinking ship.

 

[DeepOcean]

I heard they had an indie fund loan of fucking 400.000 dollars for this game and paid said loan on the very first days of the Early Access but somehow they claim they don't have the resources to continue working on a fucking Dwarf Fortress clone, LOL. What will be next for Double Fail when they run out of scams? Squatting on kickstarter money?

 

[J_C]

AHAHAHAHA we are going to illegal territory now. Please, expleain the judge that how is not implementing a feature to a videogame is illegal. Because that is all that happened, some features are not going to implemented into the game.

false advertisement. i think most countries with basic consumer protection would even allow you to get a small partial refund based on the unimplemented features, like what happened to sony when they dropped linux support from ps3.

You do well know that this is not false advertisement, because they only told that we are trying to implement as many features as we can, but nothing is carved in stone.

doesn't change the fact that it's a major asshole move.

This is true, can't argue about it.

I heard they had an indie fund loan of fucking 400.000 dollars for this game and paid said loan on the very first days of the Early Access but somehow they claim they don't have the resources to continue working on a fucking Dwarf Fortress clone, LOL. What will be next for Double Fail when they run out of scams? Squatting on kickstarter money?

What is difficult to believe in this? They had a strong start with EA (they said this themselves), they paid back the loan from it. Then as time went on, they had less and less income, and at this point it doesn't make enough money to cover costs. And LOL, you are saying "Dwarf Fortress" clone as if was the cheapest game to make, when sims are the most expensive, except if you are one guy who makes games as a hobby (see Dwarf Fortress).

 

[SuicideBunny]

You do well know that this is not false advertisement, because they only told that we are trying to implement as many features as we can, but nothing is carved in stone.

i don't, because i didn't study law, but it strikes me as odd that they advertised with it being a "detailed simulation game" which is "constantly being worked on" and then stopped working on it without any warning, any polling of the community to ask which would be the most critical features to implement before they drop improvement as far as i can tell, and possibly (i assume, haven't bothered to research) dropping features critical to it actually being a detailed sim.

 

[felipepepe]

I heard they had an indie fund loan of fucking 400.000 dollars for this game and paid said loan on the very first days of the Early Access but somehow they claim they don't have the resources to continue working on a fucking Dwarf Fortress clone, LOL. What will be next for Double Fail when they run out of scams? Squatting on kickstarter money?

What is difficult to believe in this? They had a strong start with EA (they said this themselves), they paid back the loan from it. Then as time went on, they had less and less income, and at this point it doesn't make enough money to cover costs.

You are failing to see their harmful business logic here. They took money from investors, sold a prototype to the consumers, payed the investors, payed their employees and then left the consumers with an unfinished product due to bad management.

In olden times a company and its investors would take responsibility for bad management and suffer the consequences, but here it was all payed by the customers. Double Fine fucked up, but the investors made money and DF payed everyone (and possibly even made a profit). Only the consumer loses.

If Double Fine gave a fuck about their consumers they would take another loan, finish the game properly and hope that the full release sales cover the debt. That is what Larian and inXile did, they didn't simply stopped development once the kickstarter money ended, they took loans to make it a better product, betting on their ability to deliver.

 

[Destroid]

AHAHAHAHA we are going to illegal territory now. Please, expleain the judge that how is not implementing a feature to a videogame is illegal. Because that is all that happened, some features are not going to implemented into the game.

false advertisement. i think most countries with basic consumer protection would even allow you to get a small partial refund based on the unimplemented features, like what happened to sony when they dropped linux support from ps3.

You do well know that this is not false advertisement, because they only told that we are trying to implement as many features as we can, but nothing is carved in stone.

doesn't change the fact that it's a major asshole move.

This is true, can't argue about it.

I heard they had an indie fund loan of fucking 400.000 dollars for this game and paid said loan on the very first days of the Early Access but somehow they claim they don't have the resources to continue working on a fucking Dwarf Fortress clone, LOL. What will be next for Double Fail when they run out of scams? Squatting on kickstarter money?

What is difficult to believe in this? They had a strong start with EA (they said this themselves), they paid back the loan from it. Then as time went on, they had less and less income, and at this point it doesn't make enough money to cover costs. And LOL, you are saying "Dwarf Fortress" clone as if was the cheapest game to make, when sims are the most expensive, except if you are one guy who makes games as a hobby (see Dwarf Fortress).

I think Double Fine went into this with some rather ridiculous expectation that an unfinished early access game will be able to fund its own development in perpetuity. They have a bunch of art assets in the game now, they could scale back to one or two devs and keep working on systems at a slower pace. I'd like to see them release sales figures over time.

Some other tidbits from the thread, Tim stated that Double Fine will make a loss on DF-9 (although I suppose that depends on how it sells after "1.0"), he also said it would be unfair to borrow resources from other games (artists, etc) so it seems they try to keep the funding for each product quite isolated.

 

[J_C]

I heard they had an indie fund loan of fucking 400.000 dollars for this game and paid said loan on the very first days of the Early Access but somehow they claim they don't have the resources to continue working on a fucking Dwarf Fortress clone, LOL. What will be next for Double Fail when they run out of scams? Squatting on kickstarter money?

What is difficult to believe in this? They had a strong start with EA (they said this themselves), they paid back the loan from it. Then as time went on, they had less and less income, and at this point it doesn't make enough money to cover costs.

You are failing to see their harmful business logic here. They took money from investors, sold a prototype to the consumers, payed the investors, payed their employees and then left the consumers with an unfinished product due to bad management.

In olden times a company and its investors would take responsibility for bad management and suffer the consequences, but here it was all payed by the customers. Double Fine fucked up, but the investors made money and DF payed everyone (and possibly even made a profit). Only the consumer loses.

If Double Fine gave a fuck about their consumers they would take another loan, finish the game properly and hope that the full release sales cover the debt. That is what Larian and inXile did, they didn't simply stopped development once the kickstarter money ended, they took loans to make it a better product, betting on their ability to deliver.

Sure, they could take another loan. They could lay off a dozen people. But the way I saw it in the documentaries, Tim is doing everything to keep the company afloat and keep the people together, and from the comments it seems that he thinks that Spacebase wouldn't sell as much as it would be needed to pay off the loan.

So he could do 2 things:
1) get another loan and finish DF9. Costumers are happy, but if it wouldn't sell much, DF is done for. Consumers are crying and mourning DF.
2) don't take a loan, push out DF9. Consumers are angry, but they keep the company afloat.

Tim chose the 2nd one, and since families depend on jobs, I can't really fault him for that. It is not professional and ethical, but I can't do anything about it.

 

[RK47]

I heard they had an indie fund loan of fucking 400.000 dollars for this game and paid said loan on the very first days of the Early Access but somehow they claim they don't have the resources to continue working on a fucking Dwarf Fortress clone, LOL. What will be next for Double Fail when they run out of scams? Squatting on kickstarter money?

Here's why.

 

[J_C]

Question is, what kind of loan could they take, if any from banks? I'm not familiar with the US banking, loaning system, so I don't know if there was a possibility for that, or the only thing they could do is the agree to the Indie funds terms.

 

[Destroid]

Wow, those terms are quite horrific (unless you don't expect to make any money, in which case they are fantastic).

All spelled out here http://indie-fund.com/about/

J_C if you have assets you can borrow against those. Cash, IP, whatever, although I suppose a lot of game industry stuff might be outside of a banks usual realm of experience. The Indie Fund terms are lower risk though, since if the game falls flat on it's face you don't have to pay them back, unlike a bank. Probably would have been better off trying crowdfunding first though, especially since DF-9 already had public awareness and support.

 

[HanoverF]

Is anyone even working at Double Fine anymore? They're all busy developing their next Amnesia Fortnight pitches and Tim is busy carrying the SJW flag on Twitter.