Wasteland 2 devs open Kickstarter

piscian18 said:
You gotta wonder though. I mean Brian got the door slammed in his face so many times if now that Obsidian, who has recently really gotten the shaft from publishers, publishers arent starting to get a little like "oh fuck its itunes again."
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Well, you know how quickly cyclopean publishers react... I'm sure there are some rumblings, but the game publishing industry still has many billion to milk from the current model. Though, if they aren't adapting soon, in a few years some will die out hard. More and more, devs will be able to sell directly to consumers.
 
Krenum said:
For sure , we just needed someone to come along and be the flag bearer.
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We'll have to see. Remember this game may not be a massive success. Even if it is an extremely good game we may discover that those of us who like such a game are in the minority, that they don't sell many more copies than what they did on Kickstarter. They've basically got about 35,000 preorders right now. Maybe there's only a market of 40-50,000 people who will actually pay for a game like this.

Now that's fine and will be a success from their standpoint of they got to make the game they wanted and didn't lose money doing it. However it won't be much of a commercial success, they won't have the funding to make another one, without doing something like Kickstarter again or securing funding through other means, and it isn't the kind of thing that'll really get publishers, even smaller ones, excited.

Believe me I hope the game does amazing, but you have to remember not everyone likes what you like. "Mass market" games are mass market for a reason: Lots of people like them. Like CoD MW3. I hate that shit. I have it only because it was given to me for free (friend works for a hardware company and they got a bunch as promo giveaways). However it has seriously sold like 25-30 million copies. It is extremely popular, every frat bro in the nation has to own it :).

So while I'm excited about Wasteland 2, I'm realistic about how it might do and what it might mean for the genre over all. It may not be some standard bearer that reintroduces Iso TBT type games on a large scale. It may just be a game that a small number of people like, and perhaps lead to a few more.

We'll just have to see when it launches.
 
There is a pretty large existing market for turn based RPGs. I really would be surprised if this game doesn't break 300k total sales within the first month of release.
 
Sycraft said:
We'll have to see. Remember this game may not be a massive success. Even if it is an extremely good game we may discover that those of us who like such a game are in the minority,
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Games like this usually draw from a minority, but that's ok. The original Fallout's we hailed as some of the greatest RPG's ever, and rightly so, but they didn't sell anywhere close to what your modern COD's or your Battlefields sold. Only when Bethesda came along and turned the franchise into a god awful FPS game did the game come out of shadows. In fact I would be willing to make a bet that more than half the people that played Fallout 3 , never played the originals.

I hope this game is successful but I think Brain is a realist and he knows this game is only going to cater to a strict minority of people weather it be fans of the first game or fans of the post-apocalyptic genre.
 
Sycraft said:
I think the problem is that Fargo was insisting it be an oldschool game. So the Fallout sequel was in the same universe, but was a modern game in every other way. The important ones:

-- PC/console cross platform, not PC only.
-- 3D first person/3rd person.
-- Realtime.

Those seem to be the things that publishers believe you gotta have. No big deal in Bethesda's case, for one they were self publishing and also it was a sci-fi world remake of their Elder Scrolls type of games. They already made RPG like that, just fantasy.

Fargo seemed very set on that not being what he wants. He wants Wasteland 2 to be like the original in the whole overhead, turn based, tactical, all of that shit. So while I'm sure some publishers just said no period, others were interested but then wanted to change it in ways he wasn't ok with.

Now I think that is dumb, I think there's a market for this and I think this funding is showing there is.
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It's the Hollywood blockbuster mentality, but in the gaming industry. Nobody wants to take a chance on anything that doesn't adhere to a specific formula, because they always try to go for the next potential CoD or WoW franchise. From a purely business perspective it makes sense, but for a medium that should be more about the art than the dollars (like the movie industry originally was) it doesn't.
 
Looks like they added 2.5 and 3.0 million milestones and shuffled the rewards around.
 
The kick it forward thing is catching on some, it's on the Shadowrun ks as well.
 
They broke $2million + ~$40k from PayPal.

There is a bit of a surge going on right now, probably for closing in on that Chris Avellone goal.
 
This is going to be a sweet, sweet game. I just know it!!!! I've been wanting these types of games to come back and now we got Wasteland, BG1, BG2 (and possibly BG3), as well as the UFO Xcom on kickstarter soon! This is going to be the second coming of the golden age of PC games!
 
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!

I cannot wait for this game, but I have to. Yay to Chris Avellone!
 
So stoked to hear that MCA is on board. His writing is fantastic, and his interviews are always enthralling. His speaking voice is like hearing Vogon poetry recited, but I still think he's one of the last greats with some personality and soul in the gaming industry.
 
I just read an article on President Obama’s Jobs Act getting bipartisan support and being signed into law. When the Obama White House AND the House Republicans can agree on something it is a pretty big deal. While the bill is not just about Kickstarter, it is about small companies, like inXile, turning to the internet to get funding that they need to grow and create jobs. I know a lot of you are involved in this project mostly because you are excited about the game, but seeing the news today about this Jobs Bill reminded me of some of the real impact this Kickstarter will have on the lives of the people that will be working hard the next 18 months to make the game.


All of the money we raise through Kickstarter is being spent on making the game. Most of the cost of development is in paying for the team to create the game. There will be a team of engine programmers, game-play programmers, UI engineers, character artists, environment artists, animators, effects artists, UI Artists, sound designers, composers, writers, game designers, systems designers, level scripters, and testers. Not to mention all the interns it will take to handle the mailing out of the physical goods. It is simple math that the bigger this budget gets, the more jobs it will create. The bigger the team, the deeper and bigger the game gets. If you want a deeper and larger game, and we think that you do, you want us to raise as much money as possible to spend on the game.


Did I just hear all 43,000+ of you say ‘How can we help?’

I am glad you asked!!

One thing you will notice in that list of potential jobs above is that nowhere in that list do you see ‘Marketing Lady’ or ‘PR Guy’. That is because we don’t have these positions, nor do we plan to hire them. We want to spend the money on the game, and only the game.


This is where you come in…


All 43,000+ of you are our marketing and PR team. We need your help to get the word out that the Kickstarter countdown is on.


• Post to your Facebook pages with links back to the Kickstarter.
• Follow @BrianFargo on twitter and retweet my Wasteland related tweets.
• Post it to forums where you think it is relevant.
• Send emails out to everyone you know.
• Go to our website and put our Doomsday countdown clock on your website.
• Get a friend or family member to buy in.
• Shout it from the rooftop.
• Do some early shopping for Christmas 2013!


If every person who has pledged manages to get one more person to buy in for $15, we will increase the budget by over $600,000. You can help the project in very tangible ways by helping us get the word out.


Lastly, I am very excited to release the first official piece of Wasteland 2 concept art. We asked the very talented Andree Wallin to help us establish the look and feel of the Desert Rangers. I think this image speaks for itself…

Hope you enjoy it,

Brian
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Reassuring to know that they are not going to waste any money on marketeers and PR drop kicks.

Also, here is a new RPS interview with Chris Avellone:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/07/interview-obsidians-chris-avellone-on-wasteland-2/

RPS: That in mind, then, is Kickstarter just what the industry needs? Something that gives developers options beyond the traditional developer-publisher model?

Chris Avellone: I’d argue Kickstarter isn’t what the industry needs, it’s what players need. Who’s to say “dead genres” are dead? Are they? Who made this decision? And worse, who decides that those games won’t be financed? Publishers have every right to watch their bottom line, but for a long period of time, that was largely the only financial model developers had – and the only way most players were going to see games get produced.

Kickstarter changes that, and asks the players what they want. You’re not asking a publisher about an R.O.I. You’re asking players if they’d pay to see a genre they love be produced. It’s voting, it’s targeted people directly. It’s a fresh perspective, and I think it’s a great agent for change for games that often wouldn’t make it past a publisher pitch stage – adventure games, for example. As such, assuming there’s a demand, and there is, then suddenly you’re able to meet that demand. Sounds like everyone wins. Publishers don’t have to worry about returns, and developers have an outlet for their games.
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I never played Wasteland, but I absolutely loved Fallout 1 & 2. So I put some money in the second I heard about it.

On the one hand, I can't wait, but I hope the 18 month deadline they've chosen doesn't force them to ship an incomplete game too early. Though on the other hand as long as they're willing to keep polishing for a year or 2 after release it should be alright either way.

Another thing, I mentioned this on kickstarter, but when it comes to initiatives like this, I would pledge a LOT more money, like 5-10x more, for projects that promised to release all developed assets(code, art, music, sound, etc) under open source licenses, 2-5 years after release.
 
stewartjm said:
I never played Wasteland, but I absolutely loved Fallout 1 & 2. So I put some money in the second I heard about it.

On the one hand, I can't wait, but I hope the 18 month deadline they've chosen doesn't force them to ship an incomplete game too early. Though on the other hand as long as they're willing to keep polishing for a year or 2 after release it should be alright either way.

Another thing, I mentioned this on kickstarter, but when it comes to initiatives like this, I would pledge a LOT more money, like 5-10x more, for projects that promised to release all developed assets(code, art, music, sound, etc) under open source licenses, 2-5 years after release.
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I think that's one of the things hurting games more than anything else is telling people as soon as they finish the game that's it done. Forget about it. Wait for the sequel. You'll notice some of the most well remembered games are the one people are still playing around with. Trying to save up $100 so I can donate with those rewards. If it gets close to end date and I can't swing it I'll do $15 and at least say I did something.

In the RPS interview Chris Talks about modern gamers and what they want. I definitely consider myself among the modern gaming crowd just because I love graphics but more than anything I just want voices acting. Ive got visual issues that make reading a ton of Dialog difficult. I don't even care who reads it. The drive through guy at wendys. It just helps it really does.
 
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piscian18 said:
I think that's one of the things hurting games more than anything else is telling people as soon as they finish the game that's it done. Forget about it. Wait for the sequel. You'll notice some of the most well remembered games are the one people are still playing around with. Trying to save up $100 so I can donate with those rewards. If it gets close to end date and I can't swing it I'll do $15 and at least say I did something.

In the RPS interview Chris Talks about modern gamers and what they want. I definitely consider myself among the modern gaming crowd just because I love graphics but more than anything I just want voices acting. Ive got visual issues that make reading a ton of Dialog difficult. I don't even care who reads it. The drive through guy at wendys. It just helps it really does.
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You can't voice all of the dialogue in a large, open world RPG. Especially not on a budget like this. I'd rather the game be good than for them to waste time/$ on VA. That said, most of the dialogue in W1 was kept to the essentials. There were occaisionally big blocks of text, but nothing like Planescape at all.

Think of it like Wizardry 7. Not a ton to read, just enough to give you lore, theme and relevant info.
 
Slight update. If the game reaches 3 million they will be adding a mod kit for modding it looks like.

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/blog/2012/04/04/so-what-next/


The third most asked about feature is for us to provide a mod kit to allow players to create their own scenarios. I have always loved those kinds of tool-sets to set players loose to keep the world expanding. To create these kinds of tools is time consuming and requires a separate team of guys to do it. While we are not ready to commit to that feature yet, we can say that if we were to hit 3 million dollars, it would be possible to do a mod kit without cutting into the plan for the main game. In fact, IF we ended up making the mod kit we would not release it until after Wasteland 2 shipped as our hands will be quite full to ensure things are done well. The game will also increase in scope as well so this is not a binary equation. As always, we will be posting polls in the forums to help with these sorts of decisions. Yes we are reading the forums!
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$2.4 mill and only 4 days to go. There's another update and a change to some of the rewards:

I have received many a question about details of the game and this video will help shed a bit more light. We will communicate all of the remaining points of our vision shortly after we start production next week and after we have spent more time on the forums. We want to get fan feedback on a few more items before we solidify our final vision document.

I did want to give some detail on what the definition of a party based game was since there seems to be some confusion. In specific terms you will be creating and customizing four Rangers at the start of the game and typically you would give each of them different skills to create experts in certain fields. Skills in Wasteland range from lock-picking to bomb disarming to even toaster repair. This creates the dynamic of having players taking very different approaches to exploring the world. In addition there will be three slots for non-player characters to join the party. They will be similar in most respects to a player created member except you will not have 100% control over them. They will have quirks that could range from momentary indecision with them not firing their weapons at an opportune time, to being trigger happy and wasting ammo or even stealing from your characters. This opens up a wide range of possibilities on which NPCs you decide to have join your ranks.

And while we have brought Obsidian into the mix, I think it is important to note that this is my baby, and I will be producing it and managing the programming here at inXile. There seemed to be some confusion on whether it will be a joint production, but the main facets of our involvement are with the use of their tools for asset integration and the design talents of Chris Avellone. Part of the charm and variety of Wasteland 1 came from the way different designers would approach their areas, and I wanted the same dynamic again. Only this time we have added the brains of Chris into the mix, and I am betting he will add ideas to Wasteland 2 that would have never been in the game otherwise.

Due to popular demand, we have added a backer only T-shirt to the rewards. Here is a preview of what a few of the shirts will look like.
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Here is the Q&A video with Fargo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHEgVIMS9pQ&feature=player_embedded
 
I'm honestly curious about who are those 11 people who pledged $10k :eek:

I don't think I've spend that amount of money on video games in my entire lifetime :p
 
I considered a 10k donation for a few seconds. Would've considered it a bit longer if the end result was guaranteed to be open sourced at some point. Though even then, my upper limit probably would've been .5k - 1k.

Anyways, there are plenty of professionals(probably mostly single) for whom 10k is not a very large amount of money. You can only buy so many cars, boats, and other expensive toys before they start to get boring.

And some subset of these professionals remember the "golden age" of computer gaming, and would like to see a game developed which lives up, or at least has a chance to live up to, their memory of how great games were back then.

While the greatness of the golden age is debatable, it's definitely true that when a game isn't trying to dumb itself down for broad appeal(more money), that it has a chance to be a much more interesting/deep/fun experience.
 
defiant007 said:
Here is the Q&A video with Fargo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHEgVIMS9pQ&feature=player_embedded
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The mention of Jagged Alliance around 5:09 is great, since it's the best turn based combat game I've ever played on the PC. The premise of the game sounds interesting, establishing a new Desert Ranger base in California. And overall, it sounds like they've laid a good bit of groundwork on the game. But still, an 18 month development schedule, seems a bit unrealistic. Guess we'll find out.
 
stewartjm said:
I considered a 10k donation for a few seconds. Would've considered it a bit longer if the end result was guaranteed to be open sourced at some point. Though even then, my upper limit probably would've been .5k - 1k.

Anyways, there are plenty of professionals(probably mostly single) for whom 10k is not a very large amount of money. You can only buy so many cars, boats, and other expensive toys before they start to get boring.

And some subset of these professionals remember the "golden age" of computer gaming, and would like to see a game developed which lives up, or at least has a chance to live up to, their memory of how great games were back then.

While the greatness of the golden age is debatable, it's definitely true that when a game isn't trying to dumb itself down for broad appeal(more money), that it has a chance to be a much more interesting/deep/fun experience.
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Well the good news is Fargo is already sorta committed to a modkit. Again if they make 3 mil. Then we can expect a modkit at launch. I think the concept of open-source on this kind of title is moot. They will not being using a closed system at any rate whether a modkit is released at launch or not. When this is released the only difference is ease of use. hmm now that I think of it I don't know though. It's a custom engine. Knowing Fargo I could easily see him giving it away for general use. Open source for private use definitely. Open-source for profit 50/50 well see.
 
Only 3 days left to go and they'd still need another 580K to hit the 3 mil mark.

EDIT: Maybe less, since Paypal doesn't seem to be factored in at all.
 
They probably can't do OSS since they are probably licensing at least part of their engine. Given the timetable they are looking at, I would presume they are going to license the whole fundamental engine which is a good idea. It is difficult to develop an engine and there's a lot to fuck up. Unless you have some real in house expertise, best to license. However even if not I can almost guarantee they'll license components to keep dev time and costs down.

Well that means no OSS. If they did components theoretically they could open source their own code, but it would be non-functional since it would be built against licensed DLLs, and it also could take a goo bit of work since some of the stuff you license is code you actually embed in your program, and all that would have to be stripped out. If they license an engine, then OSS is right out since the engine license would prohibit the release.

Now sure, they could find a way around that. They could write their own engine, or use an OSS engine, but that would likely lead to a lesser quality game. Their goal is to make a great game, not an OSS game.
 
I'm a software developer, I'm well aware of the trade offs. Just because they use a close sourced engine doesn't mean they can't release everything else under a free license at some point, yes it would be less useful, but it would be the "right thing to do" for pretty much anything funded by crowd sourcing. It would also make future crowd sourcing efforts easier to the extent that they could re-use assets from previous efforts.

They can do what they like with licensing, and I can do what I like with my "donations".
 
stewartjm said:
I'm a software developer, I'm well aware of the trade offs. Just because they use a close sourced engine doesn't mean they can't release everything else under a free license at some point, yes it would be less useful, but it would be the "right thing to do" for pretty much anything funded by crowd sourcing. It would also make future crowd sourcing efforts easier to the extent that they could re-use assets from previous efforts.

They can do what they like with licensing, and I can do what I like with my "donations".
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No, the right thing to do is use the money responsibly and make a good game. That is what you are paying for by giving them money.
 
Hornet said:
I'm honestly curious about who are those 11 people who pledged $10k :eek:

I don't think I've spend that amount of money on video games in my entire lifetime :p
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Notch, for one. Another 10k came from http://www.rpgcodex.net/ The admin of the site also donated 1k himself, so now the RPG community will not only get their own place, but their admin will be an NPC there, too. Kinda cool, actually.

I wouldn't be surprised if other 10k donations came from a group of friends, pitching in $2.5k each, or something like that.

New concept art:
http://nma-fallout.com/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=4994
 
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