People are majorly not happy with Double Fine’s handling of Spacebase DF-9, so company boss Tim Schafer has taken to the game’s Steam Community page to answer questions.
It was announced last week that the space-based sim would be moving out of Early Access and into full 1.0 release in October, minus several features that fans were promised during production.
The game started out as one of Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight game jam concepts (where the Double Fine team split into groups to brainstorm new game ideas), and was fully funded just a couple of weeks after it hit Steam Early Access. There was an extensive list of planned features, listed here, many of which will now never see the light of day.
“We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan,” explained Schafer, ”hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it.” That didn’t happen, hence the cessation of development.
“We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.”
Schafer denies that Double Fine are abandoning their project post-haste. “We are not silently pulling the plug. We are announcing our finishing features and v1.0 plan. I know it’s not a lot of advance notice, but we’re still here telling you our plan instead of vanishing quietly in the night.”
It’s a statement that has, unsurprisingly, received a mixed response. Plenty of owners remain unhappy with the state of the game, which in terms of ambition and variety is way, way short of what was initially promised. Schafer says the team at Double Fine has learned valuable lessons from Spacebase DF-9’s development, but I’m not sure that’s much comfort to disgruntled fans.
”We have stumbled awkwardly through some new territory with this game,” Schafer says, ”and in terms of early access communication we fell short. But we are still proud of the game in the end, and are happy to have it on the roster of Double Fine titles. I hope you are able to reserve judgment on version 1.0 until it comes out, and then enjoy it for the unique and entertaining experience that it is.”
