Fund Tim Schafer's next game YOURSELF!

[Murdoc]

Not to mention that a lot of money needs to go into testing, cross platform, trademarking, advertising, and just getting it approved on console networks.

I'd say all that alone is half the budget, the rest goes into software licensing, utilities, administration and employee salary. Granted they are sharing it with other projects, but still a bit of the budget goes into keeping the lights on.

I'm excited about this and hope they take a few more chances about content and ideas so that it's a little out there.

[MrHoatzin]

They could totally end the cross platform woes and expenses if they worked with the community and opened their source at least a little. Just the guts that pull it all together. Let the fans help you port and test the shit. Fans are also super likely to keep porting stuff to every platform under the sun for the entirety of the foreseeable future. Just look at what SCUMMVM did without any help.

Notch used the fans quite effectively in making Minecraft. Several times during development he just incorporated random plugins into the code, sometimes wholesale, sometimes he tweaked them a little. No reason this couldn't be done with multiplatform testing and development for another project. Their tools may even profit some from peer review. There are many ways to do this. They don't have to release any of the assets or proprietary middleware.

I totes plan to proselytize at length about the insurmountable benefits to this approach if anyone over there will listen. We'll have to see what the planned community will look like. Could use some loudmouthed help in this department.

EDIT—one more thing: Worst case scenario, no one helps or touches the code so DF is left doing it all themselves (which is what they would've done anyway). Best case scenario, free co-developers super excited to have the opportunity to help DF out, mountains of dedicated, free testers.

[Murdoc]

"Fans" are also likely to pirate that shit. I think for a singleplayer game classic adventure game, sending it out there may not be a great idea. At that point it'll just be out there for free or people will have seen/experienced a good portion of what you expected them to pay for. Or do I have this all wrong, they have a kickstarter to make the game, but they are still selling it when it's done, correct? Or is it freeware? I didn't read the details:)

Also I think public tests are cool for finding a certain set of issues, but not in the way of professional testing that actually needs to be done before you release a solid game.

But I do like the idea of crowd sourcing your game in some kind of form, I just don't know if it would work with the type of game they plan on making. But again, if it's freeware, then ya, they should do that.

[Roderick]

Is the Double Fine Adventure going to be pirated? Yes. Should anyone care? No. If you look at this whole scenario, one thing becomes blatantly obvious: people want Double Fine to succeed, they want to pay for their games. Everyone who is genuinely interested in playing a hardcore adventure will either have already payed through Kickstarter, or will gladly plunk down 15 Dollars or whatever for the product down the line. I wouldn't worry too much about pirating in this specific case.

[Murdoc]

I understand people are going to buy it, it's pretty clear already because of kickstarter, but I imagine DF would like to see sales outside of people that donated. It's not one of those things that's a huge concern, I just think if you send your game out there to test and people get the option to download it for free, they'll do it, because that's what people have done time and again.

[Chris]

Is the Double Fine Adventure going to be pirated? Yes. Should anyone care? No. If you look at this whole scenario, one thing becomes blatantly obvious: people want Double Fine to succeed, they want to pay for their games. Everyone who is genuinely interested in playing a hardcore adventure will either have already payed through Kickstarter, or will gladly plunk down 15 Dollars or whatever for the product down the line. I wouldn't worry too much about pirating in this specific case.

People are definitely going to pirate this game. I'm sure a whole lot of people will. That doesn't mean worrying about it is the correct course of action, but it will clearly be pirated.

[MrHoatzin]

They don't have to give away all the assets. Just the executable bits and a small representative demo of sorts to make sure there is some sort of thing to benchmark.

Giving something away at one point doesn't mean that you will never be able to charge for it. You shouldn't confuse handing out the source code with piracy. And you shouldn't bring freeware into the equation, it has nothing to do with freeware. People are going to crack your game no matter what. Prolly on the first day. You shouldn't bother trying to "solve" that. Rather than spending obscene amounts of time on ineffective DRM strategies, might as well spend that time and effort reaching out to the fan willing to give you $10K for a date. One is an excruciating and expensive losing battle (which only publishers care about), the other is a tidy little lump sum with words "I love you this much" written on it. And in that latter case, you can also be sure that people who appreciate your work will port your games to whatever wacky gadgets we'll be dragging around in ten years. If TP2K1 had the source to GRIME, we would already have widescreen support and higher poly models by now. Lucas Arts is effectively wasting money by sitting on this source code. If they released it, they could still be selling Grim Fandango—as it is, they're not. That is the bottom line! No real effort = profit. As magical and as simple as that.

This kind of thing in the context of games sure as fuck hasn't been tried—but it has been a resounding success otherwise! Look at all the open source technologies that are beating the hell out of proprietary solutions. Again, look at Minecraft. That game was BASICALLY developed out in the open with crazy community support yet is not open source or anything.

[SiN]

Two points from a software developer's (not in the Video game industry, mind you) perspective:

1. On the budget thing, a starting position as a software developer in the States is around $65-$80/yr. Artists, testers, producers, etc have comparable salaries.

2. On the crowdsourcing development thing, it's somewhat naive to think that "more people = more productivity". "Playtesting" means something very different to your average gamer vs. a professional tester. That's why most companies don't bother. It's only worthwhile for load-testing (and sometimes balancing) multiplayer games.

As for porting to other platforms, the overhead required to document code for open-source usage, managing check-ins, testing external changes, etc, etc is almost always more than the overhead of just doing the work internally.

I know it's nice to think that the community can solve these things, but software development is very complicated, and as things scale up the coordination overhead outweighs the productivity benefits.

[syntheticgerbil]

$65-$80/yr. Artists...

This is about correct for artists in California dollars, so yeah. $33 is low there for cost of living, but I'd take it in a second here.

[toblix]

I think, if someone just tries one more time, they'll be able to make an uncrackable DRM.

[Erkki]

I think, if someone just tries one more time, they'll be able to make an uncrackable DRM.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Giving something away at one point doesn't mean that you will never be able to charge for it.

Actually that's a pretty huge barrier. It's known as the "penny gap". As soon as something is seen as being free, it's VERY hard to get people to pay for it.

[MrHoatzin]

There is so much dead weight in traditional management that people are perfectly content to live with, but alternative solutions are thrown out due to unverified truisms that at first ring true. Like, for example, all of this:

As for porting to other platforms, the overhead required to document code for open-source usage, managing check-ins, testing external changes, etc, etc is almost always more than the overhead of just doing the work internally.

Is the overhead really that serious a problem? Are people deciding not to open source random widgets left and right because this is a prohibitive expense that is totes not worth it? Bull. Programmers should already be documenting code in some way for internal usage. And I seriously doubt there's going to be a ridiculous mess of random garbage committed daily to require some poor slob to sift through laboriously at expense. Hell, if the community is cohesive, you can have reliable and proven members of the community doing the preliminary screening of the submitted code.

I know it's nice to think that the community can solve these things, but software development is very complicated, and as things scale up the coordination overhead outweighs the productivity benefits.

If this manner of observation re scalability of complicated work is all that is at play with software development, Linux wouldn't exist, let alone continue existing for two decades with former powerhouses like MS flailing stupidly, trying to catch up.

Running this kind of project is not easy. It doesn't require the same skill set that ordering people on your payroll to toggle bits does. But if you have a highly energized community of competent people excited to help, it should totally be possible to leverage to some end. I am not saying that Double Fine should throw all their files up on http://doublefine.com/have-at-it and come back when the game is done. A lot of the work will still happen in-house. Someone needs to look over all the shitty commits. But some people will be more serious than others and will approach (in their utility to DF) an extra sets of programming hands, for free. There is likely to be many of such people. I mean look at that: $1,767,440 and climbing. I bet there are programmers out there willing and excited to be able to donate quite a lot of their free time to the project. This is not something to automatically scoff at. The value of this input is not as tidy as a perfectly liquid $1,767,440 (and climbing) but that is no reason to disparage it.

Again, Minecraft shows us is that people are absolutely willing to enjoy buggy games as long as they are marketed as unfinished and honest about the bugginess. The fact that "playtesting" means something different to normal people and professional testers is moot. It is a matter of education. Sure, a bunch of people will come to it, be annoyed that the beta is buggy and go away. The number of people who will stay is not going to be irrelevant enough for one to completely ignore its benefit or not entertain it to begin with. A motivated person doing something for the fun of it is always a superior choice to a surly teenager on minimum wage, falling through the same clipping error a million different ways, in the same shitty game he wouldn't play of his own volition, just for summer money or a chance at doing something more interesting related to gaming maybe in 5 years if he's lucky and able.

[MrHoatzin]

Actually that's a pretty huge barrier. It's known as the "penny gap". As soon as something is seen as being free, it's VERY hard to get people to pay for it.

That is because they see the THING as a manufactured good—which it isn't. If they see it as a way of supporting an artist who makes the thing they like, I suspect the dynamic changes. It is no longer just the cold, efficient market at work. Still, some people are not going to care. Those people were gonna pirate whatever anyway.

[ThunderPeel2001]

That is because they see the THING as a manufactured good—which it isn't. If they see it as a way of supporting an artist who makes the thing they like, I suspect the dynamic changes. It is no longer just the cold, efficient market at work. Still, some people are not going to care. Those people were gonna pirate whatever anyway.

That's a pretty bold claim. I don't think anyone really knows how much people would get, but I imagine the support for something that's freely available will be along the lines of the amount ScummVM gets in donations.

[Erkki]

That's a pretty bold claim. I don't think anyone really knows how much people would get, but I imagine the support for something that's freely available will be along the lines of the amount ScummVM gets in donations.

khm humble indie bundle khm

[SiN]

Kingz, sorry, but you're just wrong.

There is so much dead weight in traditional management that people are perfectly content to live with, but alternative solutions are thrown out due to unverified truisms that at first ring true. Like, for example, all of this

The idea that "more people = more productivity" is false is not an unverified truism. Have you heard of The Mythical Man-Month? The main thesis is:

Brooks discusses several issues that impact on scheduling failures. The most enduring is demonstrating Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Complex programming projects cannot be perfectly partitioned into discrete tasks that can be worked on without communication between the workers and without establishing a set of complex interrelationships between tasks and the workers performing them.

Therefore, assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later. This is because the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project and the increased communication overhead will consume an ever increasing quantity of the calendar time available.

You can call that an "unverified truisms" if you want, but said book is (to quote again) "widely regarded as a classic on the human elements of software engineering."

Is the overhead really that serious a problem? Are people deciding not to open source random widgets left and right because this is a prohibitive expense that is totes not worth it? Bull.

No harm in open sourcing something. But NOBODY open sources their PRIMARY source of income, and then DEPEND on open source contributors.

Programmers should already be documenting code in some way for internal usage.

Yes, they should. And they do. But it's a very different flavour of commenting versus external usage.

And I seriously doubt there's going to be a ridiculous mess of random garbage committed daily to require some poor slob to sift through laboriously at expense.

If you're lucky there would be! That's easy to spot! But it takes just a few lines in a few-hundred line check-in to mess stuff up in a way that's more-or-less invisible. A "ridiculous mess of random garbage" isn't the problem. Bad code masquerading as harmless, good code is the problem.

Hell, if the community is cohesive, you can have reliable and proven members of the community doing the preliminary screening of the submitted code.

Heh, sounds kinda like the so-called "dead weight in traditional management".

I don't know where you get the idea that managers at software development studios "[order] people on your payroll to toggle bits". Managers are actual developers who also manage a team of developers. A good software developer lives and dies by the quality of it's management.

If this manner of observation re scalability of complicated work is all that is at play with software development, Linux wouldn't exist, let alone continue existing for two decades with former powerhouses like MS flailing stupidly, trying to catch up.

Do you seriously believe that Linux is developed by a bunch of developers in their spare time, for free? That's absolutely not the case.

Unix was (and continues to be) developed by *paid* employees at major corporations like IBM, Sun, Oracle, Apple, etc. Similarly, Firefox is backed by and primarily developed by the Mozilla Foundation (a not-for-profit), and WebKit (the rendering engine behind Safari, Chrome) is primarily developed by Apple.

You cannot crowdsource mid-to-large scale, consumer-facing engineering projects. There's a lot of value in open source, no doubt. APIs, tools, a good deal of web architecture, programming languages, are all great uses of open source. But the assumption is that the project will evolve over a long time, and be unstable, incomplete or buggy for a good deal of the time. This works for tools, but does not work for consumer facing products.

As for your Linux example: what's the most successful iteration of Unix to date? MacOS X. Closed source. And when will "Linux be popular on the desktop"? Next year, as they say every year.

But some people will be more serious than others and will approach (in their utility to DF) an extra sets of programming hands, for free. There is likely to be many of such people.

The people who donated more than the $15/30 minimum buy in could afford that because they work 9-5 jobs. Those are the people you want, and those people could not give their 100% because, well, they have jobs! See the "Mythical Man-Month" above for why "10 developers giving 10% is just like a free employee!!" is not the case.

A motivated person doing something for the fun of it is always a superior choice to a surly teenager on minimum wage, falling through the same clipping error a million different ways, in the same shitty game he wouldn't play of his own volition, just for summer money or a chance at doing something more interesting related to gaming maybe in 5 years if he's lucky and able.

This is not what testers do. Again, from my experience, testers make the same $65-80k starting salaries as developers, artists, producers do.

[ThunderPeel2001]

khm humble indie bundle khm

? The games in the Humble Indie Bundles are not Freeware.

Edited February 15, 2012 by ThunderPeel2001

[ThunderPeel2001]

I'm with you on the rest, but...

This is not what testers do. Again, from my experience, testers make the same $65-80k starting salaries as developers, artists, producers do.

GAMES testers do not earn anything like that. They are the lowest rung on the game development ladder. That said, Kingz's portrayal of them is totally inaccurate - at least from my experience. And it's one of the few jobs that I would NOT leave to passionates - It's dry, repetitive work that requires a methodical and professional mindset. Even a die hard fan doesn't do a full playthrough on LucasArts's adventures every time a new version of ScummVM is released, but that's precisely the level of testing that needs to be done.

[Erkki]

? The games in the Humble Indie Bundles are not Freeware.

You were not talking about freeware, but freely available, and I count "pay what you want" as pretty close to freely available. Sure, there's the charity bit involved what makes it a bit different, but there are many other "pay what you want" examples, in music too.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You were not talking about freeware, but freely available, and I count "pay what you want" as pretty close to freely available. Sure, there's the charity bit involved what makes it a bit different, but there are many other "pay what you want" examples, in music too.

I was specifically talking about open source/freeware - I should know!

[syntheticgerbil]

GAMES testers do not earn anything like that. They are the lowest rung on the game development ladder.

I don't want to argue any of this, but I wanted to throw out that in Bioware Austin, testers make about $8.50/hr, which is about what you'd get paid in a Walgreen's photo lab for reference.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I don't want to argue any of this, but I wanted to throw out that in Bioware Austin, testers make about $8.50/hr, which is about what you'd get paid in a Walgreen's photo lab for reference.

Yep, I got paid a little above minimum wage when I was a tester for Sony.

[Forbin]

QA in other industries may make a bit more, but not really. Especially when you compare it to the salaries of the engineers working on those projects.

Either way, this seems like an awful lot of backseat budgeting. Double Fine's best track record is with low scope, low budget titles, so I assume they've figured it out.

[ThunderPeel2001]

First announcement!

TFKwplDBmgg