Oliver twins defend Dizzy Returns £350k Kickstarter
"At first glance it sounds like a lot of money to develop a game..."
The Oliver twins have defended the Dizzy Returns Kickstarter and explained why they asked for £350,000 to make the game.
At the time of publication the Dizzy Returns Kickstarter had raised £16,585 from 569 backers with 24 days to go - over £300,000 shy of the current target.
“At first glance it sounds like a lot of money to develop a game,” Blitz Games chiefs Andrew and Philip Oliver wrote on Dizzy Returns Kickstarter page.
“Saying that, teams of hundreds of people at large studios create AAA titles for consoles and PC and spend tens of millions of dollars in the process. It's also true that games can be made on a much smaller budget. There are independent developers creating mobile games for a fraction of that cost, sometimes individually or in small teams of just a handful of people.
“Our company, Blitz Games Studios, is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, employing over 200 talented and creative people, with game teams typically made up of anywhere between 10 and 70 people.
“£350,000 may sound like a lot of money to develop a 'simple' Dizzy game. We have big things in store for Dizzy Returns that are far from simple! We want to provide hours of satisfying and rewarding gameplay, and a fun and enjoyable gaming experience for both new and old fans that stands shoulder to shoulder with games of today. This may sound like a tall order, which is exactly why we decided upon on our goal amount. If we're successfully funded, we are confident that we can make an amazing game!
“At its very simplest the cost of making any game is a combination of content, people and time; the more content there is in a game, the more people working on it and the more time spent adding and polishing features will always mean a higher cost. We believe that £350,000 is a realistic amount that reflects the number of people, the amount of time, and the amount of content we want to dedicate to Dizzy Returns.”
The Olivers said Blitz is assembling a team of at least 12 people to work on the game for six months. It will be “big” - “over five times larger than the original games”. There will be at least 10 game areas arranged around a central hub, and each of these will be scrollable in all directions and not made up of individual screens.
Two versions of the game will be developed simultaneously, one for PC and one for iOS devices. The game content will be the same across all versions but optimised for each platform.
Dizzy Returns will include over 200 puzzles. These will be a combination of physics-based, light-based and time-based puzzles. As for the graphics, Blitz said it is shooting for “console quality”, with 3D characters with full 3D animation and "highly detailed worlds”.
“We want Dizzy Returns to be the best game it can be, and we know that with £350,000 we can make a game that we and our fans can be proud of,” the pair said.