Speak for yourself. I wanted something at least in the vicinity of the same ballpark as Grim Fandango.They promised nothing more than an old school point and click adventure game. That does not mean retro pixel art.

Nope. The scope grew and they decided to get more money to finish it, instead of cutting it.

Sure, that is true. Not at the current scope.

A bigger game will take longer to make.

I am not saying that. I'm mostly just pointing out some of the misconceptions.

Surely that's up to them what kind of game they make. And if they put in a bunch of their own money to do that, what is wrong with it?

Funnily enough, this is for the most part already the case.

Fine, but Tim Schäfer clearly stated that $3 million was more than enough for that project.

Erm, no. Tim openly said that he misjudged the budget.

He never changed the release date until the very last moment when it was already overdue. If the project was expected to last longer, he should have known this.

No, you've been playing down DF's mistakes. There's a difference.

Because that was not what was agreed when gamers donated $3 million of their money. It's not a difficult concept. You enter into an agreement, you honour that agreement.

"I'm going to make an in-depth CRPG."
*Gets $3 million*
"Ah fuck it, I'm going to put in $1 million of my own money and make a military FPS."

I presonally don't care about release dates. Take all the time you need, Tim.

What I DO wanna know is this:

What's the projected total cost of the game?
How much money have they amassed so far (and how much is still needed) ?
How much money is still left of what they have amassed so far? Basically, is development going to halt at some point, whilst they gather more $$ ?


(Notice the two dollar signs, that' right DOUBLE MONEY)

thanks for putting everything I wanted to say in nice words ;)

Yes, but it would be released in March 2874.

Don't worry. I'll wait.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's a bigger detriment to a project to think you have more money than you need, than it is to only just have the amount you need. Generally the Kickstarter projects I've backed or followed that have only just made their goals have done fine, regardless of experience (or lack thereof) or of whether the total was $10,000 or $1,000,000. The ones with the big budget or time blowouts seem to be the overfunded ones. I daresay scope creep doesn't help (as apparently in this case), but I wonder if there's also a misleading feeling of unlimited resources that comes with "hitting it big" on Kickstarter.

Obviously your thought process is "we gave Tim Schafer three million dollars to be an artist with." That's fine. A lot of people however cared about more than that, and the stated goals of the project. You mention Grim Fandango, which was not a point and click. He specified "old school point and click," the most advanced of which is probably Grey Matter.

Anything outside of that is him saying "well I'd rather do X so fuck the plan," which I have very little sympathy for (especially when it goes way over budget and over time).

I found this on Ron Gilbert's blog, a 2004 estimate of the cost of a 2D adventure.
Not entirely relevant, but..

Erm, no. He said he designed too much game.

What release date? The October 2012 one? That has been the only "release date" so far and it's utterly unrealistic to expect them to have finished the larger game by that time. Even the current release date is not an official one. Just an estimate given to backers.

Did Tim design a game that's too big? Yes. The only question here is whether you agree with their solution of getting more money instead of cutting the scope.

There was no agreement that they would use only the money from the Kickstarter. And most of the backers agree with them putting in their own money.
The game is still point and click. It's not a 3D platformer or an FPS or an RPG.

Not too irrelevant. In the hypothetical budget, the game is big enough to be completed in one year's work, and the majority is allocated to paying staff (programmers and artists). Given that Double Fine realised that their game is big enough for the first half to be finished in July 2014 (making the entire game about a 4.5 year project) you can see that staff costs would be phenomenal.

The quote from Daedalic shows they make excellent adventure games on a much lower budget, presumably in part because they take nowhere near that amount of time to create one game.

Well you're the one talking about Grim Fandango. And the point is a point and click adventure game doesn't need the money and time he is pouring into it.

I said, and I quote...

I didn't say I wanted a game like Grim Fandango.

Maybe you wanted a small point and click to the tune of Edna and Harvey, and I don't blame you, these were fun games, but I wanted something Tim Schafer and Double Fine are capable of.

Am I taking a risk with Double Fine? Sure. But that's what Kickstarter is. It's not pre-order, it's not investment, it's patronage. The sooner people realize that the better.

It's easier to manage less, the question becomes whether or not you have enough to deal with any unexpected items that come up. You can't always plan for every contingency, so it's a good idea to have some extra funds in case something really unexpected happens, like your lead art director being eaten by a grue when the power goes out.

Something close to Grim Fandango with 2,2 millions? Yeah, right. Talk about being realistic. Yes, old school adventure game doesn't mean pixel art graphics, but it doesn't mean cutting edge 3D graphics either, especially with a 2,2 million budget, which is FAR from the budget a AAA game requires. I expected something like the games made by Daedalic.