Brian Fargo Interview

In case you want to witness inXile CEO and Interplay founder Brian Fargo taking a walk the memory lane with the folks at Polygamia, look no further than this interview, which covers his career from the founding of Interplay in 1983 to the company’s biggest successes in the mid-to-late 90s, to inXile’s current Kickstarter-funded work. Here’s a snip:

In the mid-90 Interplay was home for biggest RPG franchises – Stonekeep, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, Fallout. Do you think it was a golden age for the computer RPGs?

I think you are about to see the golden age of RPGs come rushing back in the next few years, with what I’m seeing from Obsidian, CD Projekt and of course what we are working on. But most certainly there was a purity to the development of RPGs in the 90’s in which we were very attuned to our players. You could not make nearly the money on a game back then as you can today, and the budgets were a fraction of today’s big spends. The risk factors changed greatly as we left the 90’s and the pressure ramped up and created a lot of craziness. But I honestly see that purity and being in sync with the RPG players coming back full circle — in fact it is even stronger than ever.

I wonder if games published by Interplay fought with each other, since they were targeted for the same audience.

We did our best to have the RPGs have their own special sensibility such that the players could feel the difference but certainly you can argue that all RPGs compete with each other. On the surface you might think a Torment competed with Baldur’s Gate, but once you engaged into the product you would realize how different they were. And beyond that there is an element to timing involved with publishing games, that you try to keep the release dates from falling on top of each other.

What are your memories from cooperation with BioWare?

My memories of our work with Bioware was that it was very symbiotic with the Black Isle division. I was always impressed with the intellect and passion at Bioware, and I think Black Isle had a great role in helping shape those games, from scoring the music to helping with design. When we first licensed the rights to D&D, I remember being criticized for not thinking mass market enough, and it was a great pleasure to have that first Baldur’s Gate take off the way it did. Most people have forgotten that we kept the game in development past Christmas to make sure we had a robust product. And thankfully we did.