You're also talking about a game that
was stuck in pre-production for a year and a half while they were waiting for the bulk of their team to finish with the much-delayed Wasteland 2. So I wouldn't be surprised if there were monetary issues. They've also been recently making cuts to the game, which apparently has created some problems.
Definitely has issues. It's been almost
3 years since the KS campaign (not the TTON's team fault completely, but it is what it is), and the console release of WL2 bombed.
The thing about not having the bulk of your team is that you don't have to pay them:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/874905
Well, the math is right there. 20% spent in pre-production with the "bulk of the team" working on WL2. Also, the "development budget" is important here, as obviously not all of the money goes towards development, but I'll get there.
2 years and 10 months later and at the same rate (basically the cost of the employees who worked during that time), it adds up to ~57%.
First of all, Kickstarter eats 5% and payment processing takes 3%.
That's also without programmers, animators, scripters, artists, sound designer, VA, localization, marketing, QA and so on. Later on there's also the cost of making the physical backer rewards and shipping them.
Look at PoE's team distribution:
Animation, QA and Programming are more than 1/4. Design (in which they included the writers) is just ~30%.
Art is more than a third, and
Torment's development information page only has the concept artists. The rest of the artists seem to be part of their "1.5 system".
Worth mentioning that PoE's team was much smaller. It peaked at 35 and had ~20 people for most of development. That page alone has 22 people and it's missing at least half of the team.
So, back to what I said: unless they're all being paid peanuts, it's very hard to believe the KS money hasn't been spent.
Wasteland 2 managed to double its budget and all inXile had to sell back then was Bard's Tale ARPG on mobile. The idea that they would run out of money now when they have WL2 itself bringing in money AND a larger KS budget to begin with is fairly ludicrous.
"Managed to double its budget" is PRspeak. They funded the rest of the development with early access money because they were going to run out of it. It's not like the EA release just gave it a boost and everything was going to be fine and dandy with or without it. The fact it took the money from the actual release to finish the game properly speaks for itself.
Also, I was very specific about KS funds, not InXile's as a whole.
Yes, I do know. (And thank you.)
To play the pessimist's advocate, the Fairfax Theory (TM) doesn't really have much to do with the quality of the beta. Obviously, the early areas are going to be more polished, but what about the later ones or the game as a whole? I think the concern here is how much of the later-game content is going to be sized down or of lower quality or outright cut in order to make the 2016 release date / save up money / cover up BN's extravagant coke habit.
I straight up said the I think the beta will be good, but Infinitron seems to ignore what "half-assed" means. I do think Fargo/Keenan will rush it and cut as much as they can to make money out of EA and then get it over with, and that's my main concern.
Disagree with that entirely. I played every version of Wl2, D:OS, and POE's betas. The D:OS and WL2 methods worked much better than PoEs. It gave the player who was seriously interested in feedback a much better idea of how the character system was supposed to work because you started from the ground up. Being tossed into the middle of a leveled up character gave people all kinds of wrong impressions in the early days of PoE's backer beta. And as the betas went on, much more significant feedback was integrated in both WL2 and D:OS compared to PoE. Even with the additional noise of early access players. Also it's worth remembering that both WL2 and D:OS did not start out as early access and were put up much later than Torment is going to be. If there's a mistake being made with Torment, it's making the difference between backer launch and EA launch of only a couple weeks. Even with that though I think InXile has shown themselves to be reasonably skilled at filtering noise during the last early access.
PoE was bad initially, and in certain configs even still is. But the Torment Alphas were on another level beyond shit. If they are selling it as Early Access it will have to be better or it will be refund city.
Yes, Sawyer decided to ignore most of the meaningful feedback and stick to his guns, but that doesn't mean the structure of the beta itself was poorly planned or executed. I was talking about how and how much of the game was included.
Despite the fact it didn't matter in the end, it was clearly something thought out where they tried to give both sides what they wanted. What they did with the information is a problem in the final release, not the beta.
