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Double Fine Adventure spared employees a pink slip 15 Feb, 2012 / 17 comments

So reveals this interview with Tim that Giant Bomb published yesterday.

GB: Do you consider this validation for what you’ve been doing your whole life? This is such a different scenario than the way you traditionally sell a game, where you get the money afterwards and hopefully it’s a success, but this is people, upfront, telling you how much they believe in what you’ve done before you’ve even produced anything.

Schafer: That’s been really flattering and touching. It’s been really emotional for the whole team, I think, because we’ve had a roller coaster ride in the last couple of years. Just last month we had a project cancelled, and it was really hard on us, and we were like “Are we going to have to lay people off?” But instead, we decided to keep everyone together, and having that at a time when we’ve been struggling, to have this huge outpouring of love from the community and the fans and other developers...it’s just been something that reminded everyone at the company that what they’re doing is noticed by people and matters to people.

Do not settle for that snippet! It's an excellent interview.

Source: Giant Bomb

17

17 Comments

  • Avatar
    SurplusGamer on 15 Feb, 2012, 21:23…
    The good news is that it's just been announced that a video update is in the final stages of editing!
  • Avatar
    jp-30 on 15 Feb, 2012, 20:28…
    All it'll probably take is a new press release with some confirmation of platforms & maybe a rough plot outline and/or concept sketch and the figures may get a boost.
  • Avatar
    koosjebig on 15 Feb, 2012, 19:01…
    @SurplusGamer:
    Agreed, the slope is decreasing every day.
    My only prediction is that they'll hit 2M in 3-4 days. I could be a few days off. Let's hope 1.85 M is not the asymptote of this curve ;)
    The 35 days extrapolation is just a gimmick (which assumes that the current rate is maintained) :p I assumed that was obvious.
    I've been updating this graph since day 1, but the shape is hard to predict anyway. The Timjustraised graph has a lot of noise, I'd prefer to see it per day. not per hour.
    Anyway time will tell, due to the unknown effect of interventions by DF, there is no mathematical function that can accurately predict the total amount on March 13th.
  • Avatar
    SurplusGamer on 15 Feb, 2012, 18:47…
    Also, just to be clear, a day or two ago I was also predicting 2 million in the next few days. But I've changed my mind based on what I've seen especially in the last 24 hours. :)
  • Avatar
    SurplusGamer on 15 Feb, 2012, 18:30…

    koosjebig

    @Surplusgamer: in the first 2 days it was closer to $700k/day than $70k/day. Now it's closer to $30-40/day.
    We'll see when they'll hit $2M :)



    Don't mean to be an asshole but I think you have misinterpreted things in a few ways. I didn't say it started out at 70k per day. It was at 70k per day only a couple of days ago and has declined sharply since. Your graph seems to assume the rate has been quite constant over the past few days, but it hasn't. If you inspect the first graph you can see the last two days have been much slower than the days before that, but you have made your prediction by flattening out that downward trend, making it overly optimistic. Looking at the current trend, it is unlikely the 2m will be hit within a week without Double Fine intervention. If the rate slows much further, much more than 2m will be a struggle.
  • Avatar
    ThunderPeel2001 on 15 Feb, 2012, 18:23…
    Wow, I think you're prediction is a bit off! :) You've zoomed out so far that the curve becomes a blob. I still wonder if they'll reach $2M by the end. Time will tell!

    koosjebig

    @Thunderpeel
    Surplusgamer was ahead of me....
    Anyway, I made another graph with the actual accumulated money raised:
    Money Raised Graph
    My prediction is that they'll hit $ 2M in 3-4 days.
    On March 13th they might raise 3M $, if the current rate is kept.

  • Avatar
    koosjebig on 15 Feb, 2012, 17:39…
    @Surplusgamer: in the first 2 days it was closer to $700k/day than $70k/day. Now it's closer to $30-40/day.
    We'll see when they'll hit $2M :)
  • Avatar
    koosjebig on 15 Feb, 2012, 17:36…
    @Thunderpeel
    Surplusgamer was ahead of me....
    Anyway, I made another graph with the actual accumulated money raised:
    Money Raised Graph
    My prediction is that they'll hit $ 2M in 3-4 days.
    On March 13th they might raise 3M $, if the current rate is kept.

  • Avatar
    ThunderPeel2001 on 15 Feb, 2012, 16:53…
    Nice analysis!

    SurplusGamer

    The drop off has been SHARP in the last 24 hours. From making 70k per day previously, they only made 40k in 24 hours when I counted it this morning. And now they're sometimes making a third or less of what they were making 24 hours ago, so I'll be surprised if they scrape 20k by the end of this 24 hours.

    That's still enough for them to limp towards the 2 million even with some further decline (they need to be averaging about $8000 between now and the end, per day, last time I checked) but it's not going to be an easy 2mil. Some things they can do:

    * Add more reward tiers. With even a fairly conservative estimate, they could make another couple of hundred K just by upselling a small percentage of their $30 pledges to $60 and $100 to $150.

    * Define some over-funding goals: if people knew what they were getting at, say, 2,250,000 and 2,500,000 then that might help with the up-selling of current pledges.

    * Announce platforms and address DRM concerns. A lot of people want to see a Mac release, or have it on portable devices, and the sooner they can say an official 'yes' to these on the page, the more likely those people will be willing to part with their money.

  • Avatar
    SurplusGamer on 15 Feb, 2012, 15:35…

    ThunderPeel2001

    It'd be interesting if someone kept an up-to-date chart. I have a feeling we could more accurately predict where it was going to end then. I feel they might scrape $2 million, but the daily amount donated will presumably only get less each day.



    Ask and ye shall receive I guess: http://t.co/HiqXKXpH
  • Avatar
    SurplusGamer on 15 Feb, 2012, 15:30…
    The drop off has been SHARP in the last 24 hours. From making 70k per day previously, they only made 40k in 24 hours when I counted it this morning. And now they're sometimes making a third or less of what they were making 24 hours ago, so I'll be surprised if they scrape 20k by the end of this 24 hours.

    That's still enough for them to limp towards the 2 million even with some further decline (they need to be averaging about $8000 between now and the end, per day, last time I checked) but it's not going to be an easy 2mil. Some things they can do:

    * Add more reward tiers. With even a fairly conservative estimate, they could make another couple of hundred K just by upselling a small percentage of their $30 pledges to $60 and $100 to $150.

    * Define some over-funding goals: if people knew what they were getting at, say, 2,250,000 and 2,500,000 then that might help with the up-selling of current pledges.

    * Announce platforms and address DRM concerns. A lot of people want to see a Mac release, or have it on portable devices, and the sooner they can say an official 'yes' to these on the page, the more likely those people will be willing to part with their money.
  • Avatar
    Kroms on 15 Feb, 2012, 14:35…
    Dude, Tim. We help any way we can.
  • Avatar
    ThunderPeel2001 on 15 Feb, 2012, 13:19…
    It'd be interesting if someone kept an up-to-date chart. I have a feeling we could more accurately predict where it was going to end then. I feel they might scrape $2 million, but the daily amount donated will presumably only get less each day.
  • Avatar
    Strayth on 15 Feb, 2012, 10:41…
    Well, it's a niche game.

    And it's only talking to "english speakers" for the time being.

    So that thing had to slow down. It will still reach 2M though, by the end of the kickstarter.
  • Avatar
    jp-30 on 15 Feb, 2012, 08:09…
    Off the direct topic. An interesting twitter feed, the total raised by Tim's kickstarter in the last hour. It's dipped under $1000 for the first time today, but the total grows and shrinks with the time of day.

    https://twitter.com/#!/TimJustRaised

    From there I found this "Schafer Effect kickstarter graph. Might be too little too late for these guys, but interesting nonetheless.

  • Avatar
    Ceres on 15 Feb, 2012, 02:47…
    Only that it wasn't the fabled Ron-Tim combo game.
  • Avatar
    ThunderPeel2001 on 15 Feb, 2012, 01:46…
    Do we know anything about the cancelled project?

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