Wasteland 2 dev: Crowdfunding means Walmart can't change content any more
Brian Fargo has been an outspoken proponent of crowdfunding since before his company successfully kickstarted Wasteland 2. However, the inXile CEO said that one of the biggest reasons he is thrilled with the process is no more outside interference with games the audience wants them to make.
Brian Fargo has been an outspoken proponent of crowdfunding since before his company successfully kickstarted Wasteland 2. However, the inXile Entertainment CEO said that one of the biggest reasons he is thrilled with the process is no more outside interference on games the audience wants made.
"We used to have to make changes to our content because of what the buyer at Walmart said," Fargo told GamesIndustry.biz. "Gatekeepers are out now. The gatekeeper and the audience are one and the same. Now that I have a symbiotic relationship through crowdfunding, my goals are exactly in sync with the customer giving me the money. We are on the same page; all we both want is a great game."
And part of that great game experience is the developer being able to create a game the audience is asking for, specifically games like Wasteland 2. There will also be no immediate push for a sequel if the game--and inXile's other crowdfunded title, Torment: Tides of Numenera--do well after launch. Fargo said it is important to give developer enough time to come up with the right ideas and not force the issue. He cited Valve, Rockstar and From Software as developers that do it right.
He added that he is relieved by the lack of publisher pressure.
"I read the other day that Tomb Raider sold [over three] million copies and they're disappointed," Fargo said. "If we sold 2 million copies, that means I build new roleplaying games for the next two decades, guaranteed."
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Wasteland 2 dev: Crowdfunding means Walmart can't change content any more.
Brian Fargo has been an outspoken proponent of crowdfunding since before his company successfully kickstarted Wasteland 2. However, the inXile CEO said that one of the biggest reasons he is thrilled with the process is no more outside interference with games the audience wants them to make.-
""I read the other day that Tomb Raider sold [over three] million copies and they're disappointed," Fargo said. "If we sold 2 million copies, that means I build new roleplaying games for the next two decades, guaranteed.""
This is disingenuous. Tomb Raider probably cost something on the order of 20 to 30 times what Wasteland 2 funded for on Kickstarter. Projecting more than 3 million unit sales for a budget that large isn't crazy or an example of those big greedy publishers and their unrealistic expectations. It is rather the minimum the title would need to break even, let alone be a smart way to have invested tens of millions of dollars over the several years of development.-
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Fucking +inf
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I agree that it's a great game, I'm just saying that maybe if they focused on gameplay more than massive (and expensive) cutscenes and set pieces, it probably would have cost less money and would have made more profit. (My favorite part of Tomb Raider games is the part that they focused on the least... exploration and puzzle solving).
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Completely agree. Try to compete with a over saturated market of regenerative health shooters and spending millions to make it like the other AAA titles instead of just sticking to what tomb raider was know for could have saved them.
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This has no bearing on whether the sales expectations are realistic.
It is rather the minimum the title would need to break even.
Needing 10 million sales to break even doesn't mean it's realistic to expect there are 10 million people who will buy your game. You could (in principle) spend $60,000,000 making Super North Korean Mud Farmer 2015 HD, but would you really expect ten million people to care enough to spend $60 each on it? I sure wouldn't. -
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Yes, Square Enix's management bitched about sales expectations for titles that actually sold quite well. They just didn't sell well enough to offset the colossal fuck-up that FFXIV has been, especially now that they're throwing a bunch of money at fixing the problem. Combine that with Versus still not having shipped, and the FFXIII stuff not doing as well as they'd like, and you've got a company banking on inappropriately high expectations for other titles.
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The last Final Fantasy I really enjoyed was XII. I'd like another set in Ivalice.
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I actually really liked XIII, but XII is my favorite and I'd happily play anything else set in Ivalice.
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My biggest wish BY FAR is that I have the option to turn off voice acting. Serah's voice was just so...so....nails on a chalk board. Plus I could read the words faster than they could say them.
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Yeah, Fargo likes to pontificate, but he's kind of a used car salesman.
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Youre not pretty good at understanding what you read. He is saying exactly what you say in your rant and a couple more of things about devs relations with publishers.
but you didn't bother yourself to see the source and the entire interview to have a better contextualized understanding about it.
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We'll have to see what comes out in the next SimCity patch
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uh no Walmart is the publisher for every game and has final say on what content goes in
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Oh kind of like how Blockbuster didn't "change" the content of movies? Except they did because they forced movie studios into the choice where they had to remove scenes in order to get their product into a huge chunk of the market.
I'd never considered this from a game perspective but it sounds like it has been the case. -
They do but indirectly with bit of coercion. It is the type of things you see all the time with retail store specific dlc and stores like gamestop threating companies if they price digital games cheaper than retail. They basically say things like do this or your game won't get decent shelf space if it gets sold at all.
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Similar to how bullets don't kill people?
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Ratings dude. Walmart won't stock adult games. Walmart is one of the largest customers. Not getting your game on the shelf might mean much lower sales. Publishers are looking to maximise sales, are they going to tell Walmart to get fucked? Not likely, they're going to bend over and take it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102300.html
I doubt he meant Walmart specifically in any case. I imagine no more outside interference right there in the story synopsis probably refers to anyone who might normally be able to influence the content that goes into the game (retailers, publishers, hardware vendors, whatever).
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Game development needs about 1/2 the "suits" it is currently employing. Without all those suits the game costs less to make and there is more profit. Sorry but I have worked game development and the only time we needed "suits" was in marketing and financials. Having "suit wearing types" anywhere else in the development process was always a detriment.
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