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Wasteland 2 devs open Kickstarter
- Thread starter LeninGHOLA
- Start date
Haha! Sorry that will never happen. Kickstarter might be goo for projects like this or Doublefine's game where they can count on fan nostalgia to help but it will NEVER be able to raise the tens of MILLIONS required for AAA budget games. The traditional publisher/developer relationship is in no danger and anyone saying otherwise is a fool. Most Kickstarter projects quite frankly will never reach their goal and never be funded because there is no hook for the amount of people needed and the amount of money they need to put forward.
lol @ AAA budget. The only reason they need that much is to advertise to the console kiddies and football bro's during the superbowl. "YO DAWG, that new madden look tight as fuck". Fuck that shit.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Yet, there is still a retail product after the money is raised. They will not hit CoD revenue, but there is no expectation of that. They raise $1-4million from the kickstarter, sell ~100k copies after that at whatever msrp they set, and call it good. The devs make their money and the fans get their game. It will not work for every studio, but look at the response to a game like Wasteland, which more than half of the people here have never even heard of.
This is exactly Brian Fargo telling publishers to fuck off.
With fairly shit advertising Psychonauts a previous generation game cost nearly $20 million according to Shaufer so please stop talking when you don't know what you're talking about.
That the thing though. It's Wasteland and Fargo. It's hitting notes with people like us, those that grew up with these games and know that name. How many people would be willing to toss down thousands of dollars on random developers with zero names attached to them?
piscian18
[H]F Junkie
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lol you didn't watch the video? They address that.
I wish I could donate 10k. Go the private party with all the developers and be like "..no, I never played wasteland."
Parmenides
Supreme [H]ardness
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Yeah, just read the whole blog. When I saw Wasteland 2 and Fargo, I immedtiately just donated money to this. Based on what I read, my initial instinct regarding this game is on the ball.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Not many people, which for this type of thing is OK. I'd much prefer to buy into this, which is set to be a return to core gaming. Who wants to support an unproven dev? Maybe Fargo will make enough money to take over Interplay and get back to making good games (wishful thinking)
defiant007
2[H]4U
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Psychonauts' development cost was actually $13 million, and its marketing was fairly non-existent.
And what TheToE! says isn't that far from the truth regarding publishers' priority of marketing over development. EA executives have said in the past that marketing of AAA games generally amounts to 60 - 70% of the budget allocated to a given game.
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So what if it's Wasteland and Fargo? Honest question.
Fargo doesn't and can't guarantee a good game. I'm sure he'll do his best (hell... i hope he does, and I hope the game succeeds), but that's about it. Sure, he worked on amazing games... some 20 years ago, but what's inXile's recent track record like? Hunted and Choplifter? That's not really what I want to see.
In a way, it sort of reminds me of Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London to be honest. While the game itself was something completely separate, the names behind the project were impressive enough to milk EA and other publishers for as much money as possible. Again, great history with Diablo, Warcraft and all the stuff, but nothing new to show for.
Same thing here, and the Wasteland 2 project looks all too similar too me. Good names behind the project, but the recent history isn't really there. Hope I'm wrong, though.
Riddleofsteel
[H]ard|Gawd
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Mark Morgan doing the music, Jason Anderson is involved, and everything else I'm reading just makes me want this game in my belly right NOW. I like this kickstarter concept and I'm excited to see what other "dream" games come along as a result.
Shalafi
Fully [H]
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This is where I believe you are wrong. Let's say that Fargo does well with this game, it goes on to sell say, let's be conservative, 500k copies, @ 30 dollars per copy, that's $15 million. After paying themselves a decent salary, they can reinvest that money, let's say they pay themselves $5 million and have $10 million to invest in their next project. Wasteland 2 being successful, they can turn to Kickstarter again for additional funding or offer funding on their website or whatever, and get additional funds, let's again be conservative, and say they generate 2 million (W2 will get 1.5 million for sure). So that's a $12 million budget there.
I'm sure with $12 million they could do a Wasteland 3 game on the scale of an Elder Scrolls game, and do it BETTER with the improved technology we have now.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Luckily, Fargo and a couple friends have been writing ideas and working concept on this for a very long time. Hell, he tried to get funding for Wasteland 2 well before the first fallout was released. Yes, most of it needs to be made from scratch, but the building blocks have been mulled over for a long time.
Almost reached his goal in 2 days, it should be a done deal in a few hours.
Almost reached his goal in 2 days, it should be a done deal in a few hours.
Conservative? No that's estimating on average at best and overestimating at worst. The big market for this game are the people that will give money. Also do you really think it will work a second time? Let's say you're being conservative and they do make $15 million in profit people are going to ask them why they need funding for a future title when they made all that money. Still even if it does you're completely ignoring my argument which has nothing to do with games like this or even Doublefine's. People will fund stuff like this because they don't need a lot of money and there are names behind it and a good story behind the development. It's not going to work for random unknown developers with no story and no names. Also 1 million and even 3 million are a VERY long way away from being able to fund games that require a bigger budget. Consider this: 3 million was the budget of Grim Fandango. 20 million was the budget of Psychonauts. Brutal Legend was probably a whole hell of a lot more than that. Now think about that for a while before responding.
fattypants
2[H]4U
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That's what this whole thing boils down to. Thousands of us have voiced our opinions to the game industry with our hard-earned money. Make a good game and we'll gladly fund it, sight unseen. It's refreshing to see some good devs making games because they care about games and just want to make a living doing it.
They don't have stockholders to please, they don't have executives to please. They only need to make themselves and their fans happy while making some money from their craft.
Thinking about putting some into this. Idea definitely sounds good enough to try since I think a game like this would be pretty fun if done right. Of course only game I really liked was Baulder's Gate II back in the day but that's cause I was born the year the first game came out, lol.
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I never heard of wasteland before this thread. I will be donating just because I really like the gameplay concept.
PrincessFrosty
Supreme [H]ardness
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It's true, but on the other hand they have a limited set of funds and high risk of completely flopping should they burn through their cash and run out, with a publisher controlling deadlines at least there's some external force keeping the game on track and while most of the time that's a bad thing it does help avoid complete failure of the game to get to market.
They'll need an experienced management team who can keep it all on track internally or soem kind of backup plan/funding should they run out of money.
defiant007
2[H]4U
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Errrr....why do you keep repeating this incorrect fact. Schafer has previously stated that the development cost was $13 million. He has however observed that it would cost $20 million to develop a sequel.
Perhaps you are getting confused?
I am, thank you for correcting me.
defiant007
2[H]4U
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No worries 
defiant007
2[H]4U
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$932K! Amazing stuff.
Youn
Supreme [H]ardness
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AWESOME. I had some doubts because last I checked it was like 100K... I'm definitely gonna keep an eye on this one. I love this kickstarter model, hope it gets used more and more AWESOME games come out of it.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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I wonder how high it will go. It would be nice to see it break 2 million and get all sorts of extra assets and gameplay. They now have the opportunity to shake up the RPG community by making a game that sets a new standard (again).
templar1138
n00b
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I would normally never spend money on something like this, at least until the game is actually out, but Wasteland was one of my favorite games ever. Lots of fond memories playing in on the commodore 64. So for this one I made an exception and donated $50.
The fact that they plan to have a real instruction book kicks up a lot of nostalgia for me. Miss those books for some reason. The pamphlets of modern games just don't seem to do CRPG's justice.
The fact that they plan to have a real instruction book kicks up a lot of nostalgia for me. Miss those books for some reason. The pamphlets of modern games just don't seem to do CRPG's justice.
Quote from Massively Interview:
Do you think funding campaigns like this will spell the end for big game publishers, or cause them to re-evaluate their business approach in the future?
Well it would certainly be overstating the cause to expect it to spell the end for them but it should be some sort of wake up call. There are fans that are going unnoticed and there is a treatment of developers that is abysmal. I hope all the talented developers find a niche audience that allows them to make games with the purity of a direct relationship with their fans.
This ^^^ Like TheToE said, publisher's can take their AAA titles and shove it! I hope movements like this are a wake up call to how poorly devs are treated and how their ideas are hijacked (and ultimateley consolized) to appeal to the masses. After all if AAA titles are just crowd pleasers, they can rot.
Even if it's not the end of publishers, movements like this will go strides in keeping the creativity in gaming and we'll have a genre of indie development that isn't influenced by money only.
Youn
Supreme [H]ardness
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I've had more fun with smaller indy games lately then with big budget AAA ones.
What I don't understand completely is why can't the big developers keep money they get from a previous game and use it to fund the next game, without having to get the publishers involved at all? I'm sure there is a reason and probably many on these forums could explain it to me so I'd understand... be nice please, I obviously haven't studied it
What I don't understand completely is why can't the big developers keep money they get from a previous game and use it to fund the next game, without having to get the publishers involved at all? I'm sure there is a reason and probably many on these forums could explain it to me so I'd understand... be nice please, I obviously haven't studied it
A lot of big development studios make and fund projects themselves, some company's did the same without a publisher like Taleworlds before paradox and other companies like Valve, Blizzard, Bethesda and so on which are pretty much independent companies.
Not every studio needs pulishers like Ubisoft, EA, THQ, ect to give them funds.
Financial risk. There are plenty of games that don't make money. So putting up that money, with the potential of losing it, is hard. You need someone with enough money that it isn't a big deal. So if you want to develop a game, you probably need a publisher backing it. You don't have $20 million sitting around that you can afford to lose. Remember even if you had that kind of money, you need MORE than that to realistically spend it on something like that. You'd need to have hundreds of millions that you can spend before risking something like that on a project.
Well the other side is that if the publisher takes the risks, they get to make the profits too. They put up the millions of dollars to make the game, they get to keep the profit. There can be profit sharing with the developers sometimes, but the publishers are still going to keep most of it. After all, you don't invest $20 million in something only to get $20 million back and then say "Ok, we're good." You need to make a profit to have any kind of sustainable business model.
Publishers do take risks too. A number have gone under, some of them have bled red ink for years (Atari was having serious financial troubles). It isn't like it is the land of milk and honey where they just reap huge rewards form the work of others. They are taking financial risk and it can mean ruin.
Also, even for studios that self fund, they still sometimes use publishers to, well, publish. Someone has to handle the marketing and distribution of the game. Marketing is important, don't say it isn't. Ever discover something and say "Man I wish I'd known about this"? That means marketing failed, you didn't hear about it, you didn't know it was there to want. Distribution is a big thing too. You have to talk to all the stores to get shelf space for your title, get all the copies made and sent out and so on.
So developers can self publish, some do. Stardock is one. They've self published all their stuff for quite awhile. They've always published games for a couple other firms (Sins of a Solar Empire for Ironclad and Demigod for Gas Powered Games). However most don't. It is a big financial risk and different kind of business.
That's also why there is something like this Wasteland project going on. Brian Fargo owns a development company, they've like 200 employees of various kinds. I'd venture to say he personally has a couple million dollars. He could probably fund this all on his own. However if it failed, he'd be very screwed, might mean the end of his company, personal financial ruin, etc. So he turned to the Internet for a group investment. Get all of us in on the project. Much less risk for most people.
I'm in for $50, so at the very worst, the game never happens and I'm out $50. Sucks but no big deal, $50 isn't a problematic amount of money to me. Realistically the worst that will happen is the game will suck. Oh well, I've spent more on shitty games before (looking at you ME3 and Brink).
Now if the game does great and inXile makes a ton of money, then sure, maybe they can self publish another. Let's say they pull in $200 million in profits. Even after everything is paid and all the people get their share, they'd still have plenty of cash left over that they could use to fund another title.
On the other hand maybe they don't do it that way. Maybe instead if they pull in a ton of money it goes to bonuses to people who worked there and helped with the game, and everyone is enriched, but there's no pile of money to risk on something new.
More realistically even if it is a great game, it is one of somewhat limited appeal and they'll make money, but not a massive amount and thus still not be in a position to self finance a game.
ElGuapo242
Supreme [H]ardness
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^^^They don't own the IP though.
RealityCrunch
[H]ard|Gawd
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kcthebrewer
[H]ard|Gawd
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If you mean a new Arcanum, I am in.
I've almost never spent more than $50 on a game that was already on the shelves. Now I'm thinking of spending that much (and maybe more) for a game that won't be released for another year.
Yeah, I'm more than a little excited. I played Wasteland when I was too young to fully appreciate it, but even then I had some realization about how special it was.
Yeah, I'm more than a little excited. I played Wasteland when I was too young to fully appreciate it, but even then I had some realization about how special it was.