Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!

[Berzee]

Hmm, I didn't realize until just now that the game is being released in two acts. I will put it back in the Unfinished Bin (the bin itself is finished, but its contents are not) and pay attention it to it again after Act 2 is ultimately released. When I start playing an adventure game, I like to know that it will be possible for me to beat it and see the ending, even if the entire development team is eaten by voles tomorrow night.

[Bjorn]

The RPS piece on it is interesting.  On one hand, they rightly point out that the game feels designed for tablets, and that explains much of the simplified interface (very likely true, and a bit frustrating). 

 

But in the original version of the story (still there, but struckthru), Walker comes off sounding a bit whiny and privileged about how he's not allowed to write more about it.  I thought it was clear that the embargo was to give backers an early chance to play the game before every major news site was writing reviews of it.  You know, as a reward to the people who funded the game. 

[Tanukitsune]

He does have a point, if you're a backer, you already have the game... reviews are for people who haven't bought it... or people who have bought it and need validation.

 

Then again, non-backers will have to wait quite a while to play it anyway.

[mikemariano]

Walker comes off sounding a bit whiny and privileged about how he's not allowed to write more about it. 

 

One of the most horrifying human beings on the Internet!  I was wondering why I didn't see any Broken Age coverage on Rock, Paper, Shotgun; it's because I have Walker killfiled in my feed reader.

 

I started this game last night but put it down after escaping a sea monster—I felt like the game was rushing me!

 

I'd like to see some Valve-style stats on who chooses which storyline first.  Right now for me only Vella exists and I never looked twice on the right-hand side of that opening screen.  I guess that icon in my inventory would switch to the other person, but I have no in-game motivation for doing that at all.

[Bjorn]

I'm more likely to read a review of a game that I've played than one that I haven't, to get another perspective on it.  I mostly avoid reviews for games I want to play, other than maybe skimming the first and last paragraph of a reviewer I really respect to get a basic impression. 

 

And yeah, non-backers can't buy it for 2 more weeks, so it's not like he needs to get that burning hot review into their hands now.   He's being personally inconvenienced, and wanted to complain to the internet about it.

 

That's why I said whiny and privileged. 

[Jake]

Also the review embargo got lifted.

[mikemariano]

Also the review embargo got lifted.

 

'BROKEN' 'BARGO BUSTED

[Tanukitsune]

It's kinda weird, isn't two weeks too much time for reviews? A couple of days before the game is released, yeah, that makes sense, but two weeks? Who remembers a two week old review?

[Professor Video Games]

It's kinda weird, isn't two weeks too much time for reviews? A couple of days before the game is released, yeah, that makes sense, but two weeks? Who remembers a two week old review?

 

The game is only released to backers and press right now. I think the public release is in two weeks.

[Nachimir]

If you're playing on Mac, make regular manual saves. Mine had some obvious graphical trouble in the final bit of Vella's story (one character only appearing as random polygons floating around, another showing parts of a texture that were supposed to be masked), then crashed just as I started Shay's bit, resetting all of my progress. It's not taking long to blast back through Vella's part now I know the puzzles, but still. Grr.

[mikemariano]

If you're playing on Mac, make regular manual saves.

 

Wow, thanks for the heads-up; sorry you had to be the example!  I will start doing this.

[Nachimir]

It happened three or four times while playing through Shay's part too; game just bailed to desktop. Still enjoyed it despite that frustration, really excellent ending

[Thrik]

Oh dear. No kind of crash report/log thing to help them fix such despicable nonsense?

[Nachimir]

Uh, there was something but I oh so selfishly quit it to relaunch the game.

[SecretAsianMan]

Just finished Act 1.  Can't wait for Act 2.  Also found out if you type during the credits, you can search for a name in the list of backers. 

 

 

[Merus]

I think the most instructive thing through this entire process is how poorly the enthusiast press has handled semi-public development. Basically every bit of news throughout this project has been leaked by some press person or another that thought they were entitled to post it (without any of the context).

[Thrik]

Yeah, the sense of entitlement I've seen is kind of sad. "Why shouldn't we share? THAT was never in the contract, sir!" kind of bollocks. Same applied to the polite review embargo request.

And fair enough, it isn't in any contract or NDA. But it's still properly lame. It's hardly going to encourage more developers to be open, so I guess we'll probably move towards most games being more like Broken Sword (i.e. they don't share much).

Maybe if they were to continue doing this kind of thing then NDAs would be the only solution.

[brkl]

But... They're the press.

[Thrik]

And that's why nobody is open. 

[Jake]

They should be MORE open. I think Double Fine Adventure's biggest flaw is that 100% of open development is behind the backer paywall. Right now they're being open exclusively with backers, but being open to your financiers is nothing new, whether they're more traditional like a publisher or VC investor, or something new like a Kickstarter backer collective. Being open to those people is not strange; in fact, they (including backers) usually demand it.

A world where the Broken Age documentary episodes and other content was occasionally day and date released to the public, and where all the rest of the content was time delayed a few weeks, would probably be pretty aimilar to our current world in most ways, but the public conversation about Broken Age would be healthier and more informed. (Also maybe even more people would buy the game -- those backer exclusives are great enthusiast marketing that can't be seen by anyone but people who already bought the game! In a way that's really cool, but it's also kind of a waste.)

[Nachimir]

Also found out if you type during the credits, you can search for a name in the list of backers.

 

Up and down arrows slow and speed them up too

[Bjorn]

They should be MORE open. I think Double Fine Adventure's biggest flaw is that 100% of open development is behind the backer paywall. Right now they're being open exclusively with backers, but being open to your financiers is nothing new, whether they're more traditional like a publisher or VC investor, or something new like a Kickstarter backer collective. Being open to those people is not strange; in fact, they (including backers) usually demand it.

A world where the Broken Age documentary episodes and other content was occasionally day and date released to the public, and where all the rest of the content was time delayed a few weeks, would probably be pretty aimilar to our current world in most ways, but the public conversation about Broken Age would be healthier and more informed. (Also maybe even more people would buy the game -- those backer exclusives are great enthusiast marketing that can't be seen by anyone but people who already bought the game! In a way that's really cool, but it's also kind of a waste.)

 

Isn't that system mostly a reflection of being the leading edge of the KS revolution?  In hindsight, having more than just backers involved makes a lot of sense.  But 2 years ago, promising all that as exclusive to people willing to blindly give you money also seemed like a brilliant way to get them to pay then. 

[Thrik]

I must admit that the 'backers only' thing has been pretty awkward at times. Over time it's also easy to forget what you're actually meant to talk to people about, so in my case I talk about nothing. It'd probably be much easier for everyone involved if open truly meant open, even if certain things didn't happen (e.g. releasing trailers early, the beta) in order to control the conventional marketing of the game. Whoever said it above was right that it's weird there was going to be a long delay between the game becoming widely playable and anyone being able to actually review it (fortunately now relaxed).

 

I guess they're still finding their feet, and Bjorn is right that the landscape has changed dramatically since Double Fine introduced Kickstarter to the world. It seems appropriate to be completely open about it nowadays. Has any other developer been as open as Double Fine thus far when it comes to this whole thing? I've only backed Godus (What even happened to that?) and Broken Sword aside from this, and those were most definitely not open. Also I know nothing about how Massive Chalice is being handled as I didn't back it.

[Bjorn]

Wasteland 2 and Torment have provided really extensive text updates, sometimes having multiple essays by different developers in a single update. 

[lobotomy42]

Man it is weird to me that people are still talking about the press coverage.  It seems to me that most of the coverage has been extremely positive. The only backlash moment that I can recall was splitting the game in two.  It's also weird to me to hear that there exist people in the games industry who DIDN'T back this game.  What is wrong with those people?