Salka

Fund Tim Schafer's next game YOURSELF!

Recommended Posts

Fuck, I think I can scrounge money together for the $100 hopefully. This is going to suck.

The $500 pledge for the art book really sucks, because there's no way any time soon I would be able to do that without feeling a ton of guilt and not paying a few bills. I do really want that art book in actual book form though... maybe later on they can sell some off from the Double Fine store?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, $500 for the book is too much, since 60 gives you the PDF why bot give it with the 100 dollar tier?

I just watched the whole amazing 35 minute talk of Schafer and Gilbert, it was strange that they made it available to everyone though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's not that strange, Tanu, since this is prime marketing material. This will lure more people to the Kickstarter since it really delves into why adventure games are terrific!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess you're right, but I wonder just how many people saw that video who weren't backers already?

Are we encouraged to share this with non-backers?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You've got to remember that all the money they spend on producing the goodies eats into how much has actually been contributed. If they start giving away lovely printed books to all 5000+ $100 backers that's, well, a lot of money and work.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

KS projects that get overfunded are at some risk of not being able to deliver if they didn't make plans "just in case" they were wildly successful. For example: 50 t-shirts and 30 artbooks were fine when you were making a 5 cent loss on each one due to postage, but if it gets to 500 or 5,000, soon all the KS money has been spoken for just to send out rewards...

There's a discussion of this in the comments on Matt Haughey's post about a KS project gone bad. You may have to click "more comments" at the bottom of the page to read it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I assume printing the book itself will be pretty expensive?

Well if we use an estimate of about $20 per book, you're looking at about $100,000 to print a book for each of the $100-tier donators — and that'll only get you a relatively basic small book. The $500 tier only has about 20 donators right now, which is clearly a lot more manageable.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
KS projects that get overfunded are at some risk of not being able to deliver if they didn't make plans "just in case" they were wildly successful. For example: 50 t-shirts and 30 artbooks were fine when you were making a 5 cent loss on each one due to postage, but if it gets to 500 or 5,000, soon all the KS money has been spoken for just to send out rewards...

There's a discussion of this in the comments on Matt Haughey's post about a KS project gone bad. You may have to click "more comments" at the bottom of the page to read it.

For example, we are probably going to have to do a whole new print run of the Idle Thumbs Journal of Games, even though original the whole point of offering it was that backers would get one of the last remaining copies. It didn't even occur to us to limit the number of potential backers at that tier, since we expected so few people to pony up $200.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not to mention it'll take Chris, Jake and Sean a full year to handle all those $1000 dinner dates. The Idle Supper Cast.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
KS projects that get overfunded are at some risk of not being able to deliver if they didn't make plans "just in case" they were wildly successful. For example: 50 t-shirts and 30 artbooks were fine when you were making a 5 cent loss on each one due to postage, but if it gets to 500 or 5,000, soon all the KS money has been spoken for just to send out rewards..

I completely understand all of that, and I know printing full color art books is not cheap shit. I know this very well, as I collect a lot of artbooks, storyboards books, and sketchbooks sometimes spending over $100 on some of them. They are almost always limited editions for these sort of things because the creators try to only print enough to those who will buy. Consequently, the more you print of these books, the less you pay per production of each one.

So $500 is pretty steep for the simple benefit of an artbook which I think a lot of people might up their pledge more to something in the $200 range. Maybe art books are hard to get people to buy in general? I sure seem to have a hell of a time obtaining any that I've missed.

Obviously there's a lot of incentive for a high pledge that doesn't go to the printing of a full book, not sure why you guys are seeming to defend that if it were so.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh, I ain't defending nothing - my DF pledge remains at the lowest level. I was pointing out the possible downfalls of an overfunded KS in general.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Looks like they're more likely to hit about $2.8M now.

I'm super-tempted by the $100 rewards, but I'm not convinced the docu extras and the book will be worth $85.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's interesting how one starts to look at the rewards as though one is buying the rewards for the amount you pledge, rather than supporting the project with that amount and also getting a cool physable.

If you're wondering what a physable is, it's the new internet term for physical object.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, it's strange how we think we are buying something instead of funding it, I guess that how we have to justify it in our mind?

We see that 100$ gets us the physical version of the game, so we think the physical version costs 100$.

I'm kinda worried, they may have pledged nearly 3 million, but how much will they have left after what "they owe us"?

I also had no idea that the game wasn't even going to have voices with it's initial budget, so I'm happy they can afford voice actors now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I also had no idea that the game wasn't even going to have voices with it's initial budget, so I'm happy they can afford voice actors now.

Yeah, I don't think Costume Quest or Stacking suffered from text-only dialog, but I would have missed voicework here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the decision to have spoken dialogue, while not unexpected, will reduce both the amount of dialogue, and the hilarity of it.

The first reason for this is that — and I know I've spoken about this before — I always thought the jokes were funnier when I read them than when I heard them spoken by some actor. Obviously I can just turn off the spoken dialogue, so that's a dumb argument, but wait! I have a second argument also:

In the dialogue video they posted, they discuss how it was an advantage to have the programmers also write the dialogue. I'm pretty sure the extremely high quality of the dialogue in the early Lucasarts games came from the fact that they were able to sit for hours on end, right up until right before the game went into the game printing machine, rewriting and polishing the dialogue, replacing good jokes with great ones, adding extra dialogue paths, references to stuff that was added later, and so forth. Having spoken dialogue changes all this, with its casting and recording sessions and what have you, introducing much earlier deadlines and making revisions expensive.

The above argumentation is constructed in order to explain to myself why I still think the non-spoken dialogue in the earlier Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Indiana Jones games still is much, much funnier than that of the later games.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Another reason is that people usually play with subtitles on. As a result, you instantly read the joke, but then have to wait for the actor's delivery before you feel you can laugh, and that destroys some of the surprise and fun. You could play without subtitles, but I don't know who would.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Was it written with that in mind? If so, that blows a sizable hole in my argument boat.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I believe it was, although the Talkie version was released a few months after the floppy disk version. I believe Fate of Atlantis was the one LucasArts adventure game that was written without the writers knowing it would eventually be voiced. And of course, the Monkey Island remakes are examples of retroactive voicework as well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To be honest, I think Grim Fandango blows a monstrously large hole in any argument that voice acting somehow diminishes the wit or quality of a game's writing. If that game were produced without voices it would have been a sad, sad thing.

I do think the original two Monkey Islands' dialogue flowed better than their talkie versions, but I reckon that was more down to the dialogue specifically being written for reading rather than listening. Bit like how when I write on forums or websites I tend to do so in a different way to how I might talk through Skype, because some of my jokes and attempts at humour would fall completely flat (instead of mostly flat).

But anyway, I personally am 100% glad the game is getting voice acting — a McConnell soundtrack is another big plus. At least we know regardless of how the game turns out, it's going to sound great. :tup:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, I'm thinking of that specific type of dialogue that's hilarious all the time. Grim Fandango was funny, but not that funny. Or something. Maybe it has nothing to do with whether it's written or spoken, and I'm wrong.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Yeah, I'm thinking of that specific type of dialogue that's hilarious all the time. Grim Fandango was funny, but not that funny. Or something. Maybe it has nothing to do with whether it's written or spoken, and I'm wrong.

While I agree with you about voice acting dampening a lot of types of adventure game humor, it's still the case that I think Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, both written for voice acting, are the best-written adventure games ever. I guess to me the funniness isn't really the thing I value about the writing in LucasArts' adventure games--I love that they have levity, but I don't think I've ever really played a game where I was actually busting up all the time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now