Wasteland 2 Interview

Brian Fargo has been putting a lot of effort into the promotion of Wasteland 2’s Kickstarter drive, in the form of plenty of interviews and Q&A, the latest of which comes from Slacker Heroes, and touches upon the budget constraints posed by fan funding, the gaming industry and what Kickstarter means for it, whether he has considering adding some of the Obsidian staff to the project and more. Here’s a couple of snippets:

First off, congratulations on your Kickstarter launch. In the first day, you’re more than halfway to your goal. The original Wasteland was arguably a richer, more complex game than what we see today. Do you believe that you can deliver a worthy successor on your target budget of $1 million dollars? (Since the question was originally posed via email, inXile has surpassed their goal of $900,000 and has over $1.2 million pledged)

The key to getting the job done right is in very tight development plan. We believe in a very thorough pre-production. We will spend six months, just in the design and planning phase before any code gets written. A very small team of writers, designers, and concept artists will work out all of the details. At the end of that period we will be able to sit the entire team down and play the entire game from beginning to end on paper. Every NPC, every quest, every item, every enemy will be planned out before the full team is on the payroll. This allows us to make the game very efficiently. Plus we don’t are not putting in the very expensive and time consuming cut scenes which is a big plus and allows for greater gameplay options.

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You’ve worked in the industry for over 30 years in varied roles and undoubtedly have a unique perspective. We’ve seen a number of games and companies fail either due to poor creative decisions (often attributed to interference from the business side) or overly audacious creative endeavors that become financial sinkholes. Ideally, how should a business in a creative industry balance fiduciary and artistic decisions?

It has to be a balance. In the beginning, when we are in the pre-production phase creativity is king. When it is just a handful of people sitting around a conference room table we don’t have to worry about the business side other than never losing sight of whom the game is being made for. Once we are in full development I think it is important for the business side to have a stronger role. We can’t afford to go off on a month long creative experiment while we are funding a full team of 25 guys. A product slipping by a single month can blow a budget by 10%.

In the case of our Wasteland 2 development we don’t have the luxury of just working on it an extra six months because we feel like it because there is no one who is paying for that. We have to start with a wildly creative vision and then have the discipline to execute the development plan in an efficient way. Of course the best part of fan funding is that we can take even more risk creatively during production so long as those things fall within the core vision.

Thanks No Mutants Allowed.