Double Fine (Tim Schafer ) - Crowd Source/Kickstarter adventure game project.

it would be awsomer if they made it with unity and supported Flash,Mac,PC,IOS,Web and android

 

No, it wouldn't because it's about the game not the technology underneath, you ridiculous fanboy! ;O)

But you know if someone was clever enough at Unity then he would have contacted Double Fine immediately as soon as this project got public and some momentum and offered them Unity, also for free just for the promotion. They needed to have some Linux version secretly running in some basement.

 

PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android!

Beta will be on steam.

Release will be DRM free.

Source: New vid on the kick-starter page.

 

Well its all very exciting and the goal deadline isn't even up yet.

Pledges had slowed down by yesterday, but over night it still jumped up by almost $50k! Looks like someone else dropped another $10k pledge too!

 

Gentlemen, some people have said that the funds you get from Kickstarter are "taxable".... In your business you pay taxes on your net, not your gross. If, during the year, you spend $300K building something (and all other operational costs) and make $500K you're company would be taxed on the net $200K of profit. If you spent $300K and made $30K, you are net negative and pay no taxes. In fact, you'll have a tax loss carry forward... but I won't get into that.

 

Many people simply wanted to know if their wishes will get fulfilled and for what the already funded money will be used for. After this was announced a lot of people seem to be quite happy and therefore things roll again.

 

@nsxdavid: KickStarter funds are taxed, see other posts in this thread.

Whether it counts as income or investment is complicated. There is also the issue of sales tax on the 'rewards'. It is very mirky and not as simple as tax free investment capital with tax free rewards for the supporters.

 

Has any post in here provided any evidence or rationale to suggest that all income through kick-starter is taxed regardless if it is gross or net?

 

Oh for goshness, ill go make a kickstarter not tell the government.... if i go to jail you will all know that you do need to pay tax on it

 

Wow, that is a lot of doe. However I sort of feel bad for the other game projects having their kickstarter at the same time. I mean congrats to Double Fine! But other things like Code Hero (a game about how to program in unity) even seems mostly unnoticed, even among the unity folks.

 

The only thing which would have been even better is if Tim would have made a funding where people also get some return of investment. This would have lead to a even higher funding and been great for people who believe into this project, support it and get some money back for their investment. Just for those who have a love for games as well as a business sense. :O)

This way i wonder how many copies will be sold on all these platforms afterwards by people who didn't fund the game and if this also was part of a plan to fund the next project and/or keep Double Fine living and independent.

Anyway, i'm happy with how things are nonetheless! :O)

 

Except that I believe its against the T&C of Kickstarter

However I know what you mean, but I suspect though the legal and business implications might make it impractical to achieve.

I do believe that Kickstarter with Double fine is a bit of a watershed moment though and can't help but feel there will be other 'funding innovations' in the years to come. It will be interesting to see where it all leads to, assuming the current media industry allows it to happen.

 

hahaha I love the video they've put in kickstarter!

if they can make a video that funny, imagine what their game will be like!!

 

There has been no evidence that it is tax free. I have provided rationale: it is revenue in exchange for goods/service. From what I've read it is not cut-and-dry but there a tax concerns both ways, particularly sales tax. The burden of proof lies with you.

 

Given that the idea is that you spend the money on making your product, you should theoretically have very little tax.

In general you pay tax on your revenue - expenditure, if you spend all the money on building the game and making the movie then you should be paying tax on $0.00. You might pay wages out of that in which case employees will pay income tax, but that's not a company tax.

That said obviously tax varies widely from country to country and there may be all kinds of extra taxes (sales tax, etc) that may or may not apply in any given scenario.

 

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.

 

Excuse me, that's my rationale!

You do not pay income tax, unless your in a very different environment than I understand, for revenue.

Company income subject to tax is often determined much like taxable income for individuals. Generally, the tax is imposed on net profits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_tax

If you to state sales tax fine - but what are the laws regarding it? I know in Aus it's 10% GST and Europe ~ 17.5% VAT [IIRC] - but you only pay them if you reside within the countries - buying outside [e.g. me renting a server in Europe] means I don't have to pay GST or VAT.


In short - normal business tells us this claim is wrong. The claim itself has no supporting evidence whatsoever. While it may certainly be true [though I doubt it] the burden of proof is with you!

 

The question is whether it counts as funding or revenue. I know traditional funding is not taxed, Kickstart is clearly not traditional funding. Considering it as investment capital with expected ROI of 0% is pretty out there. Then of course there is the issue of promised goods/services. It is clearly not a traditional relationship between the 'investor' and the studio. It also not a non-profit enterprise so it cannot be considered a tax-free charitable donation either.

My point is that it is very clearly a non-traditional source of funding, and in most cases when money changes hands there is tax to be paid. I have searched around and I haven't found any proof either way, if you cannot provide any either, then we can leave it an open case.

I originally assumed it was tax free until I searched around and found quite a bit of discussion about it. I don't know if there has been a case go through the courts, but it's pretty obvious this is not cut-and-dry business as you suggest.

 

This has a bit of infomation on the subject(i just skimmed it)

 

Sorry to interrupt you professional and hobby financial experts but i just wanted to say that we passed 1.91 million dollars. I'm out again, don't want to disturb you any further.

Pssst: @Noisecrime I agree, their concept isn't perfect and leaves room for improvements but for a start it's fine enough, i guess.

 

Why?

If it counts as investment you yourself claim it's not taxed.

If it is revenue then it is not taxed [baring sales if that applies], but forms part of your gross income [which may contribute to net profit which is taxed IIRC].

Either way these numbers of 30-40% don't appear to have any grounding.

 

Unless you're a 501c3, it's income.

 

Double Fine, Double Million!

 

Great update with new rewards!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure?ref=category

like:

DVD/Blu-Ray of the documentary
Boxed Version of the game
Double Fine Adventure Book (filled with 100+ full color pages of concept art, original photos, developer bios, excerpts from the game’s script, deep dark secrets, and more)

And a great video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re_LWmRJK-g

I wonder if they use Unity as their engine or code it on their own.

 

Considering you yourself said that it supported linux i presume it is not unity

 

U3D runs on Linux, and more support is coming IIRC.

Next.

 

Say whaaa? how?

 

Magic!

Honestly, the support has been there for a wee while now - just need to pay attention.

 

Any chance of letting the beans spill?

If you mean flash or Nacl then it dose not count....

 

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/01/25/unity-3-5-developer-preview-expanding-horizons/

According to what definition? It's the ability to play U3D games on Linux - exactly what people have been wanting. How it does it is unimportant.

 

I mean i already wrote that it would make a lot of sense for Unity to get into this due to all the promotion of being part of such a important production as well as being shown in the documentary and after they announced all these platforms and if you knew that Unity was on its way to Linux it all made more and more sense choosing Unity. If they'll implement their own engine then it really would be cool if they would share the engine as a crossplatform tool for 2D adventure production. On the other side they also could share every SCUMM like system they intend coming up with for Unity as well. This would be interesting for Unity due to a number of reasons as well.

Anyway this is one of the most important things happening in my video games related life recently and i'm extremely excited and just so insanely happy!

@Unity
If you haven't already, how about making a big pledge as well?! And just in case you don't have time to go to dinner with Schafer and Gilbert, i'm sure i could find some. :O)

And just because it's so beautiful, 2.14 million dollars passed.

 

Its good to see this is still going, with new updates and new rewards.

Was very close to switching my pledge to $60 for the book, until I realised it was only a pdf version! What's the point in that, if I buy a book, especially a 'coffee table' one I want a physical product. Unfortunately to get a hardback version of the book you need to pledge $500, which is way over the top, its not even signed.

Its a shame, especially with self-publishing getting popular with books that they couldn't set up some system for a pledger to select a 'print' option for an additional cost over the pdf reward. I suspect it would be possible to do that anyway with just the pdf, but it wouldn't feel right.

What would be really nice is for the $60 pdf reward they gave you the right to print a single version, even if that meant having to go through an accredited publishing company via Double Fine and assuming the print cost wouldn't be more than £25 or so.

With that it is also tempting to jump to $100 tier to get a blu-ray of the documentary stuff, partly as that's almost as big a reason for pledging as getting the game.

Mind you with these new media tier rewards I really hope they don't just 'knock them out', for who they are and the support they've garnered I feel they need to go that extra mile. So the blu-ray shouldn't just be a collection of all the documentary video, but should have some easter eggs and additional cool features.

 

The value of the PDF version is the content and not the paper it will be written on. I don't know if you've ever read a design document of one of the LucasArts adventures but if you're interested in such information then this is highly entertaining. And as entertaining as the so far released media has been already, i strongly doubt that the final documentary will let you down.

If you can afford it i think the current sweet spot is the $100 tier. But you also shouldn't forget that it's about enabling the game at all and as good as possible, so apart from all the good stuff you will get and depending on how much you love these kind of games, worship creative design or are interested in their development process, this might be worth a lot more to you than just looking at what kind of rewards you get.

 

Nope, sorry from experience, its not going to be a design doc of any nature. Its an 'art' book, meaning, heavily on the images, light on content. That makes it a 'coffee table' book, something of little value other than the printed art, of which I have many, such as Bioshock 2 and Half-life. For that type of book you really need a printed version to make it worthwhile, not something stuck on your pc. Its something to be shown off, picked up by visitors and flicked through.

I'd agree with that, $100 does look like a good deal, apart from lack of a printed book. However its a lot to spend, despite wanting to support the cause, i've never been one to go for special additions or the like, which are usually around this price point and features.

Had the book been printed, even as just soft cover then I'd probably go for that reward happily. As it is, having just a pdf and not knowing if the blu-ray will include anything more than a straight copy of the online documentary makes it hard to go for.

 

I expect "...excerpts from the game’s script..." being part of the design document. If i'm wrong on this one, we should ask for it.

Due to the large gap between $100 and $500 i wouldn't be surprised if they introduce another tier with a softcover, maybe in a $120 to $250 range. They probably could make a lot more money with such a tier instead of the $500 tier which also excludes the signed poster if you're buying it now after the $250 tier got capped.

But then again i want to repeat myself that this isn't primary a how much do you get for your money thing. It's much more about enabling something wonderful and dreams coming true.

 

Well the Half-Life hardback A4 300+ pages has some of that, but its literally just a few pages. Interesting and useful, but not quite a design document

Yep, that would be a better idea.

Not necessarily. Sure there were three reasons I pledge, firstly to get the game made, secondly to get the documentary videos and thirdly to give some support. So I'm already 'supporting the cause', but only on the basis that I get something out of it, e.g. the game and the investment wasn't that much. So I disagree its purely about being 'enabling'. Granted some people would do that regardless of the rewards, but I don't think you can expect everyone to be that much of a 'fan'. Its also a two-way street, and I just feel a pdf doesn't really meet the expectations.


It is however fascinating and this ties into a lot of other stuff, but I have to go out now - i'll add more later.

 

Recently i had this discussion about Grim Fandango due to the Double Fine Adventure and ResidualVM and there we also talked about the Grim document and we just downloaded it again, looked into it and it triggered memories of the game, other design documents and puzzle design generally. So in my opinion these are treasure chests and i definitely would love a new one as well. As the development process is kind of open i would be surprised if we don't get one in this or the other way.

Obviously i do understand that there are different minded people inside the crowd who fund this project and that the motivation or expectation on what's enough of a reward is quite different. Nevertheless there is quite a hug amount of people who are doing it by heart and personally i can say from my point of view when a) looking at the facts for this genre and the games market as well as b) the way my heart is involved in a very unique way that this is way beyond a normal crowdsourced project in many ways and therefore it imo deserves a lot of love and attention.

All the quality and talent involved here, nothing confirmed but reasonable, Cornell for the soundtrack, Stapley for the gfx, Schafer (and Gilbert) for game/puzzle/character design and the dialogues, Double Fine for the execution. If this isn't amazing then i really don't know.

I also could go on and explain each point in detail but typing these things is kind of cumbersome, making a speech or talking about it in a bar is much more pleasing and effective. I'm really excited, walking around with this fuzzy feeling in my belly and checking out the counter a few times a day and sometimes at night. I mean... :O)

 

2.2 millions passed...

How about JohnBobby throwing in some serious bucks as well?! :O)

 

282kb of $ passed...

Who knows, maybe BobbyJohn were part of this.

 

Yeah been watching the progress of this one on kickstarter, rather interesting to see what can be done through crowd sourcing.

 

New video (outtakes) on the kickstarter site............. man this will be a ride.

 

... and that 'Tim will be doing an "Ask me Anything" on Reddit this Sunday at 1PM PST to answer any questions you have'

At the current rate its going to just about clear $2.5 million, but will be interesting to see if there is a last minute boost with late backers.

 

Kudos to Schafer for making his next game like this .

I wonder if he would be able to pull 10 million for Pysconaughts 2( not really a big game budget, he'll have to use an off the shelf engine .

 

@Noisecrime

Yep, and here is another interview.

 

Unity forums desperately need a thx button, would half the number of bloody posts I end up having to make.

Few comments based on stuff in the video

1. Grim fandango cost $3m back in 1998!

2. Stacking (xbox live game) cost over $2m! Really surprised about that, it was a nice little game (though not one that enticed me to buy it), yet it didn't feel 'that' expensive. I don't think there was even any voice acting in it.

I seem to remember Braid costing at least $400,000 which seemed reasonable at the time, but to know that some xbox live games can cost as much as $2 million is scary.

 

$100,000 for 6 months of work is damn good.... isent it?

 

Just. Can't. Let. This. Pass.

 

@Noisecrime
Well, at least we talk - type - this way. :O)

I think these numbers can vary quite a bit depending on how things progress during development. Grim Fandango was their first 3D adventure and i wouldn't be surprised if this caused a number of issues on its own and slowed down the production. They also didn't implement a number of rooms&puzzles from the design document and ran into budget/deadline issues. But regarding Stacking i also was surprised that it costed this much. I guess DF just also has to deal with higher costs than a typical small Indie studio.

In many of those interviews or comments they state that this is money back from those days but i wonder how it compares to today. On one side you have inflation, higher costs and more expectations. On the other side you could consider reduced costs in development through already established and more streamlined workflow, all the experience gathered so far and more compelling development tools.

Obviously i don't expect it to be equal but it would be interesting to get some thoughts about this. And keeping this in mind, what would a Grim Fandango cost today or a Stacking back then?

 

Well for my shame I never played GF so can't really comment on that.

As for Stacking, off-hand I found it hard to believe it cost $2 million, then again that's only £1,250,000. It sounds a large amount but its easy to burn that up in a company with N employees over say 2 year development time, especially if you have to factor in buying hardware, office and utility costs etc.

Having watched a review of the game (previously I'd only played the demo) there does appear to be quite a large amount of content and certainly the content that I saw in the demo was of a high standard (modelling, textures, graphics audio fx etc). Then of course there is cost of QA, cost of MS QA, cost of fixing the bugs etc and then there is marketing. Marketing costs alone could easily account for 10% or more of the budget.

So upon reflection whilst I'm still surprised at the overall cost of Stacking, I can see how it could easily be spent in a mid-level games company. However I'm also sure it could have been achieved on a much lower budget if it were created by a group of friends in their garage, but I'm not sure that's a 'realistic' cost, i.e. one that could be continued into the 'real-world'.

Overall then I guess I'm saying there is no change in costs between old projects and new ones. As you state, there are massive improvements in efficiency, dev tools, engines etc but that's offset by higher costs due to demand for higher quality especially within 3D.

The only time this is not true is when its a bunch of mates creating something that does not conform to real-world costs (mainly as they don't charge their time at realistic rates, don't have the true overheads of a proper business etc). or alternatively if the game doesn't conform to the typical expectations of today's graphics, i.e. the game is stylized to reduce the overall cost of assets.

Conversely I also believe that 'necessity is the mother of invention'. So to a large extent the budget can be irrelevant, with the right minded people they will find a way to complete a project for whatever budget they can muster.



Going back to kickstarter themselves, I'd also say that I'm dis-liking them (and similar companies) more and more. I love the concept of crowd sourcing and like their website, but I simply can't see that they offer anything that really justify their 5% flat fee.

The only thing they do is provide a nice looking website with presumably a simple back-end database to link backers to projects, all incredibly basic stuff. They have zero liabilities, offer zero marketing (beyond their own home page), provide no assurances or insurance to either backers or creators, have zero dealings with the actual money.

In many ways its Tim and Double Fine that have given kickstarter a boost, an air of respectability/legitimacy, rather than the other way round, which of course is what is needed for other less known creators.

Assuming anyone could obtain the same financial deal with Amazon or pay-pal, with a 'promise' not remove funds unless a project goal is reached, then it would be far better to do it independently. The only issue is one of 'trust' between backer and creator, an issue which really kickstarter does very little to add to once you look into it.

What I mean by this, is if a company could offer the back-end to support this type of crowd-sourcing, just like many already do for e-commerce, then other than the 'trust' issue creators may well be better of buying in such a pre-made system.

Heck I can't see why Amazon or even Google don't enter this market themselves. They could probably finance it purely through the credit-card charges they apply.