Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions confirmed that Act II of Broken Age has been funded sufficiently to go ahead with it. Broken Age was broken into two acts during development because the original Kickstarter funding was not sufficient for the entire game to be made in one go. The Kickstarter funds went into Act I and Act I was then meant to fund Act II which has worked out well. Act II will now be released as a free update once it’s been completed. He also said that Broken Age itself will arrive more platforms in the future with an iPad version in the works.
Speaking to Gamesindustry, Schafer made the following comments about the responsibility that comes with being crowdfunded –
We’ve shipped enough that people can see we weren’t kidding, and that’s a big relief. Because I think there’s a lot of pressure on Kickstarter projects, especially the really big Kickstarter projects, to just not screw it up for everybody else. It’s such a great, positive thing for us, and being able to be funded by our fans opens so many doors for us to do original, creative things that we just wanted to live up to [expectations]. If you take money from a publisher, it’s a contract you fulfill or they’ll sue you. Here it was just a moral contract with the backers to do right by them, and that felt in some ways a lot stronger. If you found a loophole in a business contract, you could get out of it and not really feel that bad. But here, if the backers were happy, we succeeded. And if they weren’t happy, we didn’t.
He addressed the negative reaction that accompanied his announcement of splitting the game into two acts and the how it confused those who hadn’t been following the project since its beginning. He admits it was jarring to move from the “Sea of Love” that Kickstarter had been to the “Cold Pool” of internet hate and how he dealt with it by putting himself in the shoes of his celebrity voice-actors and what they had been through . He has learnt his lessons though and now intends to be even more transparent with his next Kickstarter funded project – Massive Chalice, a tactical role-playing game expected to arrive in Fall, 2014. The forums of the game are already open to the public and the game has been livestreamed apparently ever since it was capable of being livestreamed.
All that’s left is to wait for Act II to arrive to conclude the story and complete the game in a satisfying manner.
