It went from a $400k game to a $3m one. Work started in March which began ”four months of pre-production” to decide its shape. They’re ”still definitely a long way off.”
The team have got some levels and characters in though with some of the puzzles solvable. One of the ”most amazing parts so far” is that adventure veteran Tim Schafer is penning the script.
”When we set our goal originally it was $400,000 and we ended up getting over $3.3 million, and that definitely changed what the project was, and we had to scramble as the project was being funded, to come up for a new plan of what we could do with that amount of money,” Double Fine’s Greg Rice told VG247 in an interview.
”I had a lot of friends come to me when we launched, saying that they thought it was a large number and that we were crazy for asking for that much. We definitely hoped we would get more, and when we did we were very excited, but it caused a total shift in our minds of what the project was.”
Attention for the Double Fine Adventure exploded on Kickstarter and began a serious shift in focus for the crowd sourcing website as a viable tool for independent studios to appeal to gamers directly for backing.
”It went from being a project that was a small team of around three people for six months, to now being a project that would span an entire year, and with 11 people on the team,” continued Rice.
”But it also meant adding a lot of new features like new platforms, adding actual recorded dialogue for the voice-over, so we were definitely able to use that money to expand the project into something even bigger and better.”
Part of the reason they didn’t start before the Kickstarter campaign ended was because they wanted to make sure they gave the hired documentary team access right from the start, but they also had to wait to see what scope the project itself would take in terms of community funding. ”…obviously it wouldn’t have done us any good to start planning up front, because our smaller game would have been a lot different to our $3 million game.”
”So we started in March, as soon as our Kickstarter ended, and we started brainstorming with four months of pre-production, which took us up to July,” Rice said. ”We’ve been in full production now for only a few month, but we’re starting to see actual levels and characters from the game, and some puzzles that you can now solve in the game. We’re making progress but we’re still definitely a long way off.”
”Tim is writing the script currently and he is a brilliant writer. The script is one of the least things I’m worried about as I’m sure it will be brilliant, and full of amazing characters.”
Double Fine ”definitely haven’t shunned the $60 boxed game, and it’s something that we could totally come back to in the future,” added the producer. Many wondered if the studio would be giving up the publisher route altogether and sticking with crowd sourcing and free-to-play models. ”…we definitely could – one day – do a boxed game.”
One title the studio is working on right now is Middle Manager of Justice, which accidentally released an early build of the game that Double Fine decided to call a ‘beta’ so gamers could stream in feedback.
Check out the full interview between Greg Rice, Kee Chi and VG247.
