Latest update 30/3: Fargo has announced that when/if they get to 2,1 million, Chris Avellone and Obsidian will join the project!!!
Update 15/3: Funding goal ($900,000) achieved and will continue to grow until the funding ends, April 17. So it's actually happening: we're getting Wasteland 2, a proper old-school isometric RPG, funded only by the fans, which means no meddling from publishers eager to please the lowest common denominator. The game is currently planned for release in October 2013.
Original post:
If you haven't heard yet, Brian Fargo and Inxile entertainment are planning on making a sequel to Wasteland, to be funded entirely through the Kickstarter website.
Fargo has been wanting to make a sequel for 20 years but had no luck in securing publisher funding. But Tim Schafer's recent success with fund-raising for an old-school adventure game has inspired Fargo to go for the same approach.
Here's what he told NMA about the lack of interest from publishers, shortly after the release of Fallout 3:
Jason [D. Anderson] was working with me to create a new Wasteland and pitch it to publishers and I was quite surprised at how little interest there was. Here we had the co-creator of Fallout working with the lead designer of Wasteland (Mike Stackpole) and the guy who helped produce them both all on the heels of a massive success with Fallout 3. Publishers just had no interest in a party based RPG and they felt like they would need to go up against the production costs of Bioware which are in the tens of millions of dollars. It was frustrating for both of us as we had fans on one side pinging us constantly for a new Wasteland but we just had no way to finance it. Jason did a fantastic job on the design and story material so you can bet we fully plan on using it in this game. I'm fortunate to have had Jason spend close to a year on design materials. We really had a great time envisioning what it could be and I'm excited that it might finally become a reality.. but of course that is about to be up to the public's support.
So they already have some design and story material in place from then, but right now the game's future depends on whether they can achieve the same success as Schafer with the Kickstarter funding.
UPDATE 13/3: Funding has begun on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstart...ile/wasteland-2
Be sure to check out this introduction video, which is both funny and informative (if you're unfamiliar with Wasteland and/or Fargo):
From the Kickstarter page:
For Wasteland 2, we’re getting the band back together again!. Brian Fargo who Executive Produced both Wasteland and Fallout will be heading the team. Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole—the original game’s primary designers—are coming back to put the project together, and we’re rounding up as many of the other designers, like Ken St. Andre, as we can. On top of that, we’ll have music by Mark Morgan of Fallout 1 and 2 fame. The storyline for Wasteland 2 was written by Jason Anderson who was the co-creator of Fallout. We have also enlisted the help of the amazing concept artist, Andree Wallin to help craft the Wasteland 2 world.
[...]
With your collective vision, the game that was the godfather to the popular Fallout series will become a reality. Not only will you fund the development, but you’ll have a voice in how the game goes together. We will have forums up for design discussion and soliciting your ideas for what will make Wasteland 2 rock.
This is your chance to influence the kind of game you want to see. With fan funding, you drive the direction of game design and development. If it is important to you, it is important to us.
[...]
We’re going back to the original and building from there. No first person shooter, we’re going top down so you get a tactical feel for the situation. And we’re not ditching the party play to turn it into some hack-and-slash bloodfest. It’s turn based, tactical, with a storyline that will be deeper and broader.
We’re determined to keep the gritty, grim and satirical writing. We’re going to pitch those moral dilemmas at you. You’re going to be faced with the consequences of your actions.
We’re planning on an initial 6 months of pre-production. We’ll nail down every important element that you, our creative partners, want. Once we have all that figured out, we buckle down for 12 month development cycle. During that time, players can get a sneak peek on a private closed beta through Steam. In addition, we will be giving you constant updates and showing you our progress along the way.
[...]
To do this game right, we need to raise $1 million, but you'll notice our funding request is $900,000 and that is because Brian Fargo has offered to fund the last $100,000 if need be. That’s a lot of money needed, but not when compared with the budgets of most full scale RPGs made today. The original game sold over 100,000 copies—on the Apple ][ and Commodore 64 platforms back in the day. If everyone who played it then backs the project at the most basic level, the game is on.
But we’re looking ahead to what we can do if you all back this project in force. At $1.25 million, the money will go primarily into making the world bigger, adding more maps, more divergent stories and even more music.
At $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline. We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more. We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X for Mac lovers. And after $1.5 million the sky is the limit.
Pledging $15 will get you a digital copy of the game, but If you pledge $50, you will get a full large boxed copy of the game, complete with worn cloth map and old school instruction book! However, you must add $15 to that for overseas shipping! (cheers Gerbik for this bit of info)
And I see someone coughed up with $5,000 to get a statue of himself built in the game
Official website.
UPDATE 15/3: Funding goal of $900,000 - the highest ever on Kickstarter - achieved in just 2 days! Planned release in October next year.
Sorry we are late. We honestly thought we had another week to write this update…
YOU DID IT! We are funded and Wasteland 2 is a reality. A dream that began more than 20 years ago has actually come true. After years of attempting to get Wasteland 2 kicked off and countless pitch meetings to every major publisher out there, we had almost given up. Even six months ago we didn’t see any way that Wasteland 2 was ever going to happen. Then the world suddenly changed.
This is a paradigm shift that is way bigger than Wasteland 2. This is the beginning of a new era in gaming where the developer gets to work directly with the fans to build the type of product that the fans want. No focus groups, no pitches to the marketing team, no trying to get an executive committee to group-think their way to a project green-light. Now we just have a developer with a creative idea that resonates and a group of dedicated fans who are willing to lay down their money to buy it.
We knew we were taking a risk by asking for the most money anyone had ever asked for on Kickstarter, but we did it because every time we have interacted with the gaming community for the last decade they have asked about getting this sequel done. Even while we have been on press tours for other products, doing press interviews and presentations all over the planet, it always comes up. When are we getting Wasteland? Well, I finally have an answer for everyone. You all get a Wasteland Sequel in October of next year! Not only did we meet the highest funding goal ever on Kickstarter, we did it in 2 days! I know… we can’t believe it either.
So thank you all for making this happen, and please don’t stop spreading the word. If the entire community continues to help spread this through social media, there is no telling how much money we can raise. Every time you get someone else to participate, you are working to make the game bigger and better. We will be making some announcements very soon about what we will be adding to the development if we hit even higher levels.
Right now we want to be clear on a few things people are asking about:
Through the support of our amazing fan community we will be localizing the game into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Polish. For anyone in those territories that want to help with this, please look for information on our Forums.
At the $1.5 Million level we will be adding a Linux version along with the Mac OS X version. We know that the Linux community is a very dedicated and internet-active group, so we hope their support will help us make that goal.
For those of you in Europe who want to support us but don't have a credit card, please check out our FAQ for some help.
Check out the Wasteland 2 Facebook page for Wasteland updates and links to a lot of the great press we have been getting in the last few days. There are some really neat articles to read. www.facebook.com/Ranger.HQ
OR
Check out our Forums and Blog at http://wasteland.inx...tertainment.com
Thanks again,
Your friends at inXile
