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posted by martyb on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-pays-the-piper-calls-the-tune dept.

Three years ago, Double Fine started a crowdfunding campaign to fund the second installment of their successful game, Psychonauts. While it was known all along that some of the funds for the game development would come from the publisher, backers were surprised with a paragraph almost hidden in the middle of the latest blog announcement (emphasis in original; Javascript required):

[...]E3 kicked off with us sneaking into the Microsoft press briefing to adorn Phil Spencer in a Psychonauts shirt. We then snuck past Keanu to announce that we would be joining Xbox Game Studios, and that Psychonauts 2 would be published by Microsoft (instead of Starbreeze) as a first party title. Now, before anyone panics! We have confirmed that we will be able to honor Psychonauts 2 for every platform that we have already promised here, and that includes bringing the game to PlayStation 4!

While the first comments on the blog post expressed concern by the backers on the impact of Microsoft's acquisition, the later comments all read very similar, claiming that this acquisition will have a good impact, and trying to minimise also the impact of the additional delay (Psychonauts 2 should have been released by the end of 2018, is now delayed at least until the end of 2019).

Though there is a promise to still launch on other platforms, such as PS4, — that were promised from the beginning — there is a real risk of these platforms becoming "second class citizens" very quickly, now that Microsoft calls the shots. And becoming part of a behemoth probably won't do any good to Double Fine's originality.


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  • (Score: 2) by damnbunni on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:35PM (6 children)

    by damnbunni (704) on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:35PM (#865849) Journal

    It was announced at E3. How much LESS 'discreet' can you get?

    Microsoft has been taking a mostly hands-off approach with the game studios it's bought in the last several years. I don't think Double Fine's 'creativity' will suffer.

    Of course, I also don't think Double Fine has made all that many good games. Psychonauts was great, but I'm still pissed off about Brutal Legend.

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:53PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:53PM (#865902) Journal

      Stacking was good. Costume quest existed. Their foray into old-style adventure games drove off less of a cliff than TellTale's.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:56PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:56PM (#865904) Journal

      Microsoft wasn't very discreet when it bought The Linux Foundation in 2016.

      So why would they need to be discrete discreet when buying a game company?

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @10:16PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @10:16PM (#866002)

      but I'm still pissed off about Brutal Legend
      That game started off so strong. then about half way it got wildly boring.

      • (Score: 2) by damnbunni on Friday July 12 2019, @07:27AM

        by damnbunni (704) on Friday July 12 2019, @07:27AM (#866147) Journal

        I was mostly pissed that all the marketing and even the demo showed it as a third person action game.

        Then the meat of the thing was a real-time strategy with frustrating controls. Argh.

        On the other hand, it's worth getting the PC version cheap and just extracting the soundtrack from the game files.

    • (Score: 2) by jbernardo on Friday July 12 2019, @04:36AM (1 child)

      by jbernardo (300) on Friday July 12 2019, @04:36AM (#866109)

      First, "discreet" was changed by the editors - you can check my submission here. [soylentnews.org]

      Second, the discrete part about it is that there were no hints of it happening before the communication at E3, and afterwards backers all over the world were only informed in a paragraph in the middle of an apparently unrelated blog post, almost as a footnote.

      Third, there's a lot of prior history on how Microsoft treats products for other platforms, even with promises of support. Just look at Skype for Linux.

      And finally, it is another failure of the Kickstarter/backer system. Backers are mostly used just as quick sources of cash, and have no legal way to influence development or corporate behaviour, unlike big investors. And that was one of the promises of the Kickstarter model.

      • (Score: 3, Touché) by damnbunni on Friday July 12 2019, @07:20AM

        by damnbunni (704) on Friday July 12 2019, @07:20AM (#866144) Journal

        Okay, this is even LESS discrete than it is discreet.

        In fact, it's about Microsoft and Double Fine, who were discrete entities, becoming UN-discrete.

        -

        Most corporate buyouts aren't hinted at before the public announcement. More than once I've learned the company I work for was bought out when I watched the news.

  • (Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:58PM (1 child)

    by DutchUncle (5370) on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:58PM (#865906)

    regarding "won't do any good to Double Fine's originality": Corporate behemoths are usually smart enough to exert control on a creative artist's *distribution* without interfering with the art produced - after all, that creative artwork is what customers are willing to pay for, and what the behemoth has paid for. I agree with the concern re: other platforms, especially PS; on the other hand, since all of the development tools and licenses are already paid for, Microsoft might be perfectly happy to make money by selling Sony software.

    • (Score: 2) by jbernardo on Friday July 12 2019, @04:40AM

      by jbernardo (300) on Friday July 12 2019, @04:40AM (#866110)

      They are happy to make money, but won't surely fix bugs or keep feature parity across platforms. They've never done it before, at least.

  • (Score: 1) by CheesyMoo on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:53PM

    by CheesyMoo (6853) on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:53PM (#865961)

    I'm feeling generous today, so let me suggest that this COULD BE a really good thing.
    Imagine LucasArts in the 90s. A group of talented and quirky game creators (of which Tim Schafer was one) backed by lots of $tar War$ $$$
    Maybe Double Fine will be empowered to develop fun/wacky/innovative games without having to beg for cash on social media?

    What could go wrong? A point-n-click Master Chief / Clippit (Office Assistant) cross-over adventure?

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @10:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @10:31PM (#866005)

    Double Fine was already bought by Microsoft when they denounced the women and blacks of #NotYourShield for standing against Microsoft PR's claim that everyone opposing their corruption (Microsoft pushing its own "Indie" developers through Microsoft-controlled press) was a racist sexist white male. Microsoft pulled national security strings with the US, UK, Chinese, Saudi, Pakistani, and Qatari governments to have that shut down. This ended with Muslim spies in undisputed control of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the US education system, but at least the FBI, CIA, and MI6 were able to prevent random people on the Internet from saying that they disagreed with a few crazy people who had been Obama campaign PR staff back in 2012!

    Yes, the Deep State exists and was that partisan. Trump has his work cut out for him but he doesn't seem to have the attention span to do it.

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