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Interplay Ex-CEO Brian Fargo Kickstarts Wasteland II
New submitter 0111 1110 writes "Attempting to emulate Double Fine's success to fund another currently dead genre of computer game, Brian Fargo of Interplay fame has started a kickstarter project for a sequel to Wasteland, his1988 post-apocalyptic RPG which inspired Fallout. It will be turn-based and party-based, with a top-down perspective and 2D graphics. Fargo has managed to attract many of the original developers, such as Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole, as well as Jason Anderson, who was a designer for Fallout, and Mark Morgan, who did the music for Planescape: Torment and both of the original Fallout games. Fargo's goal has been set at $900,000. Anything above that will be used for additional game content. At $1.5 million he will offer an OS X version. An interview with Fargo by Rock, Paper, Shotgun provides some additional insight into what he and his group are planning, as does a video interview with Matt Barton."
Attempting to emulate Double Fine's success to fund another currently dead genre of computer game...
Considering Double Fine were only after $400,000 and they've already passed the $3,200,000 mark, I'd say point and click adventure games aren't dead in the eyes of their customers.
it seems that in american games anyways, the true RPG has gone the way of the dodo, and all we get now are FPS-RPG hybrids. while fallout 3 was fine, it was no fallout 1 or 2. i LIKE turn based top down gameplay. It's relaxing, and i can see everything thats going on easily.
i am VERY interested in seeing where this goes.
There is a reason that Starcraft 2 took about 12 years to show up.
Any given game (and this probably applies to movies and to TV to some extent) will have an initial title that proves the concept as being worth pursuing, followed by a title that effectively represents the pinnacle of the genre. For 3d Shooters you had Wolfenstien which led to Doom. For MMO's you initially had Ultima online, which gave way to Everquest, and in turn gave way to World of Warcraft. And for RTS games you had Dune which led to Warcraft 2 which led to Starcraft.
Once you have that definitive product, competitors start to back off, realizing that they have no chance to dethrone the reigning king of the genre. The expectations of the fans keep escalating, and since you can never please everyone, you have fans of the genre start to splinter off, or perhaps just get bored. Since sales fall off, the resources for sequels fall off, and that basically buries the genre.
The endgame is that the creators of the 'pinnacle' product eventually stop making new iterations, and that the competitors have usually abandoned that pursuit some time before that point. Eventually no one is making new games in that genre. Metaphorically, the challengers stopped playing the game when it was too difficult to win at it, and the champion stopped only because the rewards for victory were no longer enough to justify the effort.
But the market for that genre still exists, and after about 10 years, a new generation is available to exploit. If the original concept was strong enough, the fans are probably hungry enough that a new iteration should be successful.
END COMMUNICATION
Less than 1% of the desktop market can't justify development for an entire alternate platform?
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Hear hear!!
I miss good ol' fashioned turn-based role-playing games, like the old SSI ADnD-based games (Pools of Twilight, Pools of Radiance, etc).
"RPGs" nowadays are more hack'n slash, mouse-button mashfests than anything else (WoW, Diablo, Icewind Dale, etc).
I don't want to play a twitch-reaction game. I want to control a party of characters and take my time thinking about how to use their various skills together against large groups of enemies. I want turn-based action.
If I wanted a FPS (which I don't, can't stand them), I'd buy one. But I want an RPG. When was the last time you played a paper-n-pencil RPG where it was "whoever can roll the fastest gets to attach"? It's all turn-based.
Bring back the turn-based RPGs!!
I miss the writing from Fallout 2, the presentation was secondary for me, though I did like turn based combat over twitch/Diablo mashing. That said, when I hear "Interplay" I hear Python's "Run away! Run away!" line. They run projects like everyone at the top has the programming skill of Jobs, the design asthetic of Gates and the management style of a helicopter parent.
God knows you would not want to develop a cross platform game from the get go and save on the porting fees to almost double you revenue over Windows... That's just crazy talk...
Also, I (and I am really not that special in this) will no longer spend money on a promise. When it has Linux support, I will consider spending money. If they say it might if we reach some goal we will not tell you about, nope... Seen that lie a few too many times.
I think you miss the point. I (and three others so far in this thread) will not do this. There is only so much I will pay for a game. Part of that is cash, and part of that is bullshit. Installing a VM or a dual boot of Windows just to play a game that will probably only hold my interest for a month, if that, is way to high on the bullshit scale. Admittedly, fighting PulseAudio problems is on the bullshit scale as well, but much lower than dealing with Windows. I will just stick to Linux games... Believe it or not, there are companies that recognise the market here.