Wasteland 2 not for the console crowd
Brian Fargo updates the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page with news on what's coming next.
Now that the Wasteland 2 project is rapidly approaching the $1.5 million mark in Kickstarter funds (still with 25 days remaining), InXile's Brian Fargo updated the fans and supporters on what's next.
Fargo has maintained that that $1.5 million mark would allow additional development of the game for both Mac and Linux. He added that no matter how much they receive though, there is no plan to bring Wasteland 2 to any console or handheld platform.
"It is imperative that we deliver the core PC experience that the fans are expecting here and I want to avoid any elements that could distract us," he said. "The console interface is quite different when you consider the input device and proximity to the screen whereas the Mac and Linux are pretty much identical to that of the 'PC'. We will consider a tablet version due to the similarity of the screen and interface but even on that we need to do a bit more research."
Fargo also relayed the story of one backer who confessed to pirating the original Wasteland and was donating to help make up for it. The "pirate" donated $10,000.
Fargo also proposed a plan to keep funding going for game development projects. Once a project has shipped and created profit, 5 percent of that profit will funneled back to the development community. He is calling the project "Kick It Forward."
"Imagine the potential if another Minecraft comes along via Kickstarter and produces millions of dollars of investment into other developers," he said. "This economic payback will continue to grow the movement way beyond the current system."
A bold plan, and one that could easily take ghold given the wave of Kickstarter success recently. Both the Double Fine Adventure project and the Wasteland 2 project were funded in quick order.
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John Keefer posted a new article, Wasteland 2 not for the console crowd.
Brain Fargo updates the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page with news on what's coming next.-
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One of the original Bard's Tale programmers (Becky "Burger" Heineman) is keen to do a Bard's Tale 4, ignoring the spoof game that Brian's team did in 2004, and going back to the original concept of a serious, party-based RPG
See her MattChat* interview about The Bard's Tale IV and Wasteland 2 from Dec 2010:
http://youtu.be/JBg6L4H7WdE
* not me
Incidentally, Becky is working at UbiSoft, and previously worked on the development of Microsoft's Kinect sensor.
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Scratch that, I guess she's now with SCEA:
http://www.facebook.com/burgerbecky/info
I think that's interesting being that she was a developer on Microsoft's Kinect (which was years ahead of Sony's "Move").
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joke is on you, he used his phone. seriously guys if you have seen how "console ready gui and input" fucks with a real pc interface as seen in the otherwise glorious witcher2 you would consider it a good thing to not have the initial gamedesign fucked with.
also i doubt that there is a audience on the console for this game.
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2
If that really is how publishers behave no wonder we have dog turds like CoDogturd getting rehashed year after year after year.
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i really want them to succeed. i think in a way he is even more qualified to deliver a good gaming experience with the funds ,due to the genre, than doublefine which given how motherfucking ron gilbert and timoflegends are the headliners there is a heck of an assumption.
more money for an rpg on specific platforms seem like a better idea than "lets do a port for the ngage port of the adventure cause we have too much moneyhats."
as much as i loved the hilarious updates for doublefine i think fargos pitch was actually better in terms of vision for the game.
and i liked how he offered to pitch in 100k of his own money to round up to a million, didnt want to be paid or offered 5% of the winnings to fund other indy games on kickstarter.
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Not sure if anyone has mentioned this an a discussion before, but the only problem I see with Kickstarter funded games is trying make a decent profit (especially since this project has the Kickforward pledge).
Isn't it possible all of these Kickstarter games will not sell well enough to earn a decent profit? I say this because the people who have backed the games (and paid enough to secure a copy on release) , the fans, are the same ones who would buy it anyway? The customers have already paid.
Anyway, not a black and white argument as it IS possible enough will buy after release to make a profit, just a thought, not a bashing.-
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The moment they release they start making profit, thanks to Kickstarter the game can be published with no liabilities. If you mean profit enough to go onto other similar projects without needing external funding, they will be in a much better position than most releases of their kind to make that profit.
Kickstarter generates an excellent kind of word of mouth - the ambient social marketing is literally putting its money where its mouth is and putting a dollar value on the very concept of the game, sight unseen of any product. That, for lack of a better word, grants the game prestige which most indie releases don't enjoy even after a successful launch and many sales, let alone before their release.
The other thing is, yes the game has some 30,000 backers, but that doesn't mean every hardcore RPG guy just threw money at his screen and started salivating the moment he heard about this. Millions played and loved Fallout 1 and 2 as well as Wasteland, so for every one of those 30,000 there is probably ten guys at least who did love FO1 and FO2, Wasteland 1 and a bunch of other games, but aren't about to spend money to buy a game that doesn't even exist yet. They will wait patiently and watch to see what happens over the coming months and read reviews of the game and then make their buying decisions.
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And it will be torrented in the millions just like all hit PC games are.
I used to love PC gaming, and bought games, but the piracy is so stupidly widespread it murders developers - for example Looking Glass Software. They could not have garnered any more critical or fan praise - and they barely got any sales and had to close.
If nothing else games *sell* on consoles, meaning developers are able to survive. Deus Ex Human Revolution sold, in the space of a single year, at least twice as much as the original sold over the course of a decade.
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Ya know what though. I'm not to fussed about them not bringing this to consoles. Sure I have all the major consoles too but with the recent snubbing of the PC from most of the major companies out there its good to see a developer give back to the crowd of people who got them to where they are now.... pc gamers.
This fact is why I bought in at the $75 dollar mark on the kick starter.
I don't like shitty PC ports to console. Funny though how most PC games that are ported to console are not usually effected much by the porting.
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