American McGee: Hyperbole Against Double Fine is “Through the Roof and Completely Unproductive”

Spicy Horse founder American McGee recently came out in support of Double Fine Productions after Tim Schafer announced that it require more funding to complete their first Kickstarter-funded title, Broken Age.

McGee posted on his blog that, “Just want to say to all the press, public and others who are gnashing their fangs at Kickstarter, Double Fine and anyone they think look ‘fishy,’ you can’t have it both ways.

“You can’t complain about big publishers and their bad business models – highlighting all the times they’ve pushed overpriced, buggy, unfinished product onto the shelves in hopes of a quick buck. Then when an indie developer lays bare their business model and struggles, crucify them for taking risks and being honest.

“In both cases the hyperbole is through the roof and completely unproductive.”

“The games you play cost huge amounts of money to develop and market. Productions are insanely complex, which means there are many places where they can breakdown or fail. Outcomes aren’t predictable, so that money to fund these things is nearly impossible to come by. Simply put, this shit is hard.

“Things are going to go sideways and sometimes horribly wrong. Instead of wanting to murder someone when they level with you about these facts, embrace them. The choice is yours – support transparency, honesty and constructive involvement…or don’t complain when the industry shrugs and shifts back to a model dominated by monolithic, uncaring publishers.”

While Broken Age does indeed require more funds, Schafer announced that Double Fine would not be asking more money from Kickstarter backers. Instead, the game will be released in two parts with the first part releasing on Steam Early Access and funds from this being used to complete the second part. Kickstarter backers will still receive beta access earlier than Access users, but most importantly, this step was taken in order to ensure that Broken Age doesn’t get pushed back all the way to 2015.