Moosferatu

Psychonauts 2

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No.

 

I remember their previous crowdfunding campaign. "Double Fine is not a random fly-by-night indie dev and we are not going to silently pull the plug on Spacebase or any other in-development project. Doing so would be disastrous for our reputation" they said, one month before they announced they were pulling the plug on Spacebase.

 

I'm still angry, and my love of Psychonauts 1 will not magically repair DF's reputation.

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Holy shit, I want that case!

 

I will back it but Psychonauts 2 is not my favorite Tim Schafer game by far. Perhaps this can someday lead to the fabled Brutal Legend 2?

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In the FAQ at the bottom they pretty explicitly state "if this is successful, we'll definitely think about Brutal Legend 2".

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No.

 

I remember their previous crowdfunding campaign. "Double Fine is not a random fly-by-night indie dev and we are not going to silently pull the plug on Spacebase or any other in-development project. Doing so would be disastrous for our reputation" they said, one month before they announced they were pulling the plug on Spacebase.

 

I'm still angry, and my love of Psychonauts 1 will not magically repair DF's reputation.

 

Is holding a grudge over one unfortunate failure on a $20 early access game by a studio with an otherwise good reputation a little excessive? I think it might be.

 

Anyway, I'm totally into it.

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Also wasn't Massive Chalice after Spacebase, and nobody (as far as I know) has any complaints about how that campaign was run.

 

Also also Spacebase was a strange experiment with crowdfunding AND early access (where the "crowdfunding" was just "you can put more money in if you want"), and I think where they failed was the early access part, not the crowdfunding part. Both of their exclusively-crowdfunded projects have been completely solid.

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No.

 

I remember their previous crowdfunding campaign. "Double Fine is not a random fly-by-night indie dev and we are not going to silently pull the plug on Spacebase or any other in-development project. Doing so would be disastrous for our reputation" they said, one month before they announced they were pulling the plug on Spacebase.

 

I'm still angry, and my love of Psychonauts 1 will not magically repair DF's reputation.

 

Spacebase was not a kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

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Spacebase was not a crowdfunding campaign.

 

I was counting Early Access as crowdfunding, because they budgeted the game such that it would have to rake in top Early Access dollars to fund development to completion. It might not be traditional Kickstarter, but the game was funded by the crowd.

 

 

Is holding a grudge over one unfortunate failure on a $20 early access game by a studio with an otherwise good reputation a little excessive? I think it might be.

 

It might be. But then again, they're the ones who said it would be disastrous for their reputation.

 

I wouldn't be nearly so mad if they had just admitted they fucked up, but their official stance in announcements and on the forums was to act like they were putting out a complete game and everything was fine, rather than apologizing for pulling the plug after swearing not to. At that point it becomes about the principle of the thing.

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I bought SB and would say I'm loosely disappointed (though I actually played SB a bit, unlike a lot of games I've thrown money at and never even downloaded). Though, if the game was not selling enough copies to cover the salaries of the people working on it, are they obligated to keep working on it? If a publisher gives somebody money on speculation to make a game and pulls the plug when it's not up to par, do they owe the publisher additional labor for a good, finished game? 

 

You can't infer disappointment in having to cancel a game? Would you honestly feel better if you saw how much it probably hurt the people who believed in it to have to walk away?

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Not to mention there were layoffs shortly after Spacebase development stopped.

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You can't infer disappointment in having to cancel a game? Would you honestly feel better if you saw how much it probably hurt the people who believed in it to have to walk away?

 

I can't infer an apology.

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Let's have none of that talk!  After all, Spacebase lead JP LeBreton is excited for his old team's new venture!

 

Everything I wrote above is a lie and it's obvious that LeBreton's feelings are as raw as Ninety-Three's—probably more.  His life as it was is now in ruins, and in a matter of hours Psychonauts 2 has earned orders of magnitude more than his Patreon has in its entire existence.

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A Psychonauts sequel is a weird proposition to me.  The original is, without a doubt, one of my favorite games of all time.  I've got enough doubts about whether or not they can capture that same lightning in a bottle twice that I'm not sure I want to preemptively fund this.  But, I also have few doubts it will get funded, so I suppose I'll still get to play it anyways.

 

 

Let's have none of that talk!  After all, Spacebase lead JP LeBreton is excited for his old team's new venture!

 

Everything I wrote above is a lie and it's obvious that LeBreton's feelings are as raw as Ninety-Three's—probably more.  His life as it was is now in ruins, and in a matter of hours Psychonauts 2 has earned orders of magnitude more than his Patreon has in its entire existence.

 

Goddam, that's a bummer.  I almost skipped the link and your spoiler and took you at face value. 

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Honestly I cannot see Psychonauts 2 being anything other than a mediocre-to-bad platformer that has great concepts they don't quite manage to execute on. At the budget that Double Fine's working with these days, I can't see it being anywhere near as meaty or as interesting as the first one.

 

I'd disagree that they bottled lightning, though; I can imagine Double Fine being able to come up with a ton of crazy concepts.

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The only thing that would get me to back this is more disclosure about their actual funding because there's no way they're making the game I want on that budget.

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I'll just post context for that JP LeBreton quote:

 

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/14960/

 

That was a forum thread asking if they were still working on SB9 because there hadn't been a wealth of announcements. JP's response was that they wouldn't "silently pull the plug", which they didn't. They had a big alpha release 2 weeks after that, and then 2 weeks further on they announced that they were stopping development at v1.0.

 

I didn't pay for SB9 early access, though, and I agree any further discussion should be taken over to that thread, so I'll just say I did back Broken Age and was very happy with how they handled that.

 

Re. Psychonauts: the original was great storytelling, art, voices etc on some slightly iffy gameplay (the platforming's not too fun until you get a few powers, and it's also a bit of a collectathon at the start, then it steadily improves but still has the occasional unfairly punishing level). My most optimistic hope for this game is more of the same with slightly better gameplay and higher res graphics. $33 as the lowest backing price to get a copy of the new game is a little bit steeper than I'm used to with crowdfunders, so I might wait a bit and see how the funding goes/how my finances are after Xmas.

 

Re. the budget, they say:

 

We’re asking for $3.3m.“$3.3m?!” you ask bewildered, "that sounds like 2D graphic adventure money! Surely that isn’t enough to make something as grandiose as Psychonauts 2!” Well, you are correct, you’ve seen right through us... are you sure you’re not psychic?
 
Yes, we do need more than that, as we've previously said we need to raise at least the same amount that went into making the original Psychonauts, which had a budget in the $10-13.5m range. In order to do that, we need to gather money from multiple sources.
 
Double Fine will be putting up a significant portion of the development funds ourselves, and getting another piece of the budget from an external partner. This Fig campaign will make up the third piece of the budget. None of these three parts on their own is enough, but together they add up to a sequel worthy of Psychonauts!

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Honestly I cannot see Psychonauts 2 being anything other than a mediocre-to-bad platformer that has great concepts they don't quite manage to execute on. At the budget that Double Fine's working with these days, I can't see it being anywhere near as meaty or as interesting as the first one.

That's my issue with it, it was very hit or miss in terms of the levels and often the controls felt too finicky.

 

I almost barfed on the Rollerball level collecting all the phigments. I had to lie down.

 

However, all of that said, I am confident Psychonauts 2 should play a lot smoother and have better controls. They must have learned something in all these years.

 

Also I know this is the basis of most of the game, but I did not care much about the camp storyline at all. I rather enjoyed the parts where you go into peoples heads. It also seems like from the video perhaps they will be moving away from the camp and it being more about Raz joining the grown up Psychonauts.

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I... I still haven't received the physical copy of Broken Age... I might fund for the digital copy? Except I don't even know if it will be worth 39$. 

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Tis a no from me as well i'm afraid. I'll get it on a steam sale. B)

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I think the finicky/unpolished nature is part of the charm! That might just be me though. My favorite movies, music, clothing, and games all have some unfinished edges. 

 

I think it's incredibly rare to be able to create something wild and unique on a large, highly polished scale. You either have resources to polish it for a mass audience, or you need to tamp the personality elements that might alienate potential users. 

 

Funds are tight, but I'll back it for sure. 

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I only played Psychonauts a couple of years ago, so I probably missed the proper time period to really enjoy it, but I found it kinda average-ish. The fact is that I just don't enjoy platformers anymore unless they're doing something really special.

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