Interplay Ex-CEO Brian Fargo Kickstarts Wasteland II 122
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."
Matt Barton (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Linux... (Score:4, Informative)
Going by the total payments chart, they should primarily develop for Windows first since it's nearly 3/4 of the payments. After Windows, they should develop for Mac since it's slightly more than half of the non-Windows payments. Linux, even though it's more than 1% of the total payments, should still be dead last in their list of priorities since the evidence given suggests that it will give the lowest return on an investment.
And that's pretty much what they announced, isn't it? Windows first, Mac of funding reaches X amount, "other platforms" if funding allows.
Re:No Linux support? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wasn't there already a sequel? (Score:4, Informative)
From the Wiki page: "It was originally intended as a follow-up to Wasteland, but neither Interplay nor any of the creative team that created Wasteland worked on it".
In other words, no, it wasn't.
I don't think your judgement is accurate (Score:4, Informative)
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.