I think this is great. Some people look at this and go hey, they should have kept this in scope. I work in game development, and I'm all too familiar with the insane budgets it takes to make things and it's a miracle anything ever gets made at all.
If you think they are spending way to much money, start doing some basic math. Lets say on the very low end, you maybe have some artists working at $20 an hour. That's one game you had to sell, to get one hour of an artists time. Lets say on the higher end it's $80 an hour for a programmers time. That's now 4 games you have to sell just to get an hour of their time. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, lets say 20-30 people working on this, production costs of electricity, software licenses, internet, health care, water/sewage, lease/rent, etc. That stuff all adds up super fast and money is always burning faster than anybody expects it to. Even in big triple A games. (And before you go that's way to much to pay them, you would have to tell that to all the other places they could go to to work and get paid that or better. That's what that talent is worth and I'm sure those guys aren't there for just the pay check at this point.)
Now how you should be thinking about it is, especially if you pledged for just the game, is rather than getting something that looks on par with Middle Manager of Justice, because that's what they could have afforded before with the original budget request, you are actually getting a $40 game for $20. The art in this thing is looking amazing with some cool tech, and that stuff doesn't come easy. It may be taking longer but it's because you are getting a far better product than you first though and the only thing extra it costs you is some time.
And in the larger picture, if you are in this as a supporter of Double Fine and what they do, this is much better for them at this quality. This is looking like something that could be a classic now rather than some 2 hour flash based game. Something with real mood and style instilled into every part of it that is memorable and stands out from everything else. You can ask for that all you want, and trust me every studio is trying to get that. We are essentially getting that for free here. And with any luck, they sell all the more games for it, and for those of you who don't like seeing how the sausage is made, you wouldn't have to because they could self fund hopefully.
But lets be clear. This is how the sausage is almost always made. You probably don't hear about it that much because mostly companies don't like to talk publicly about how much they are struggling because for some reason it doesn't instill confidence in publishers to take a bet on your studio to make a product when they are not sure you can afford your employees to finish it. Or, those companies went under trying to find funding and there was nobody left to tell you about it. One of the two...
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