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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.
Linux support is the typical response: "We are initially going to develop and release through Steam for PC. However, depending on how funding goes (*hint* *hint*) for the Kickstarter project, we are more than open to releasing it on other platforms too!" Sadly, when this is stated, it rarely comes to fruition.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Anyone who's not familiar with Matt should definitely check out his podcast. He has a lot of great interviews with real elders of gaming. The names range from Scott Adams to John Romero. And he just lets them reminisce. If you're interested in the development of your favorite classic games, or the personal histories of game design greats, or way the game industry has changed over the past 30 years, you'll get some great perspectives from watching Matt Chat.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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
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.
Better than isometric is the upcoming XCOM from Firaxis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uHHmTSDCvA
You might also be interested in my short post on Temple of Elemental Evil the other day:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2719507&cid=39323731
It was called Fountain of Dreams. I remember playing it and found that the quality was much lower than Wasteland, but I was glad to have any sequel to begin with. My memory is not as clear as back then, but was that the one where you played a bunch of rangers and could mutate as you wandered the wasteland?
(Wasteland was followed in 1990 by a less-successful intended sequel, Fountain of Dreams, set in post-war Florida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_(video_game)#Legacy )
Not saying that I wouldn't appreciate another sequel if it was done well... *cough*
Look at Civ or Galactic Civilizations. Those non-FPS/RTS games were turn-based and required thought and planning. Old RPGs are the same way. People like me who grew up with Wasteland and its contemporaries miss the engagement and cleverness. I'm not interested in a fast twitch game and am willing to pay for a game that makes me think and spend time to beat. It's merely a bonus that it's a sequel to one of the all time greats that we're talking about. I'm contributing tonight and then I'm going to fire up my old copy of Wasteland and go see how little firepower I can beat Guardian Citadel with this time. Exploded blood sausage ftw!
I went in for $50 on this because I bet I'd enjoy the hell out of it.
For those wondering how the funding works it is all through Amazon.com. You authorize a payment in a given amount and Amazon will tell you the valid dates. If the funding goal is reached, Kickstarter tells Amazon to collect the payments, and they charge you account. If not, no charge is made. So no worries about CC fraud or any of that, Amazon is handling the payment auth.
Only real risk would be that the developers would never deliver the final product. However given that the people on the project are people with many games to their name (Fargo has like 30 games he's delivered on), real good chance they deliver as promised.
For one, I'd say that this concept of the second game being the "pinnacle" is very flawed. The best example is MMOs. Ultima wasn't the first MMO, nor was EQ the pinnacle. If anything is to be called the pinnacle it would be WoW. Also it isn't like all genres die out either. Turn based strategy games are still going strong. Heard of Civilization 5? AAA title, released last year. How about Total War: Shogun 2. It is not nearly as large a genre as shooters, but it isn't dead by a long shot, and isn't even a "just indie" market.
For that matter sometimes things will have a pinnacle, and then another later. Many TBS fans said Civ 2 was the pinnacle. They didn't care for Civ 3 as much, nor many other games that came after Civ 2. Then Civ 4 hit and man. Best. Civ. EVAR. Another pinnacle, better than the last. It isn't as though things peak and then are on a death spiral after that.
Some genres die out, but often that is just due to the companies that are involved in them sucking. Many companies will have run off to some new things ignoring it. The companies that stay and try for the niche do a shit job, release games nobody likes, and that leads to a feedback cycle where nobody wants to back the projects because they perceive them as making no money.
In terms of this game, I think it has quite a good chance at success. People have shown a love for old school type RPGs, and for TBT games (Frozen Synapse did quite well, indy TBT title all combat). The people behind it are people who know what they are doing, they are people with real successful games to their credit.
Also Starcraft 2 took so long because:
1) Blizzard is really slow at development, for a number of reasons.
2) They got even slower because of WoW, which was all consuming with them for awhile.
There have been a bunch of RTS games since Starcraft 2, many of which have done real well.
Would much rather have seen a sequel to Starflight!
And with none of this 2D grassroots bs, either. But I would settle for Oolite grade 3D space travel as long as it has decent storyline and atmospheric reentry sequences with super-fine planetary exploration missions.
I lost way more than 40hrs to both Starflight and the sequel each.
She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
Not arguing with your point but you have a pretty liberal definition of 'nowadays'.
Icewind Dale was released twelve years ago, as was the last iteration of Diablo (not that I'm claiming the new one would be much different).
The pseudo-real-time auto-pause mode in Icewind Dale is crap, especially with large groups of enemies. It's not turn-based in the least. A real turn-based combat system lets you select the movements/attacks of all your characters. Then everyone (yourself and the enemies) plays out there attacks (thus completing one turn). Then you select all the movements/attacks for your characters. And then they all play out.
Icewind Dale's auto-pause setup was no better than twitch-fest button mashing since it kept pausing things every 2 seconds, freezing all the graphics with effects everywhere. It's like trying to watch a movie with a 2-year-old chewing on the remote constantly hitting play/pause with every bite. There was no flow to the combat like in a real turn-based system.