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Wasteland 2

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Stryc9Fuego:
InXile Entertainment have a Kickstart set up to get fan funding to make a sequel to Wasteland. Their goal was to get $900,000 in a little over a month. They reached that goal in day fucking TWO. It's getting made.

Their next milestone is $1.5 mil. If they get that, it'll be cross-platform for PC, Mac and Linux.

The Kickstarter donation drive:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

The Wasteland 2 web page:
http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/

I'm excited. It might show my age, but the 1st Wasteland was one of my favorite games as a kid.

IrrationalPie:
At first, I thought you were talking about a sequel to Waste Land.

:(

TheFuriousWombat:
So they've raised $1.3 million in three days. I'm pretty blown away by that, to be honest. This new trend in fan funding is one of the best things to happen to the gaming industry in...well ever to be honest. We're still going to get inundated with repetitive, redundant remakes and an endless barrage of tired, lackluster, and wholly uninteresting "new" games that essentially are designed as cash cows first, entertainment second, and art third (if at all) but FINALLY developers with original, non-hypercommercialized ideas that mainstream publishers are too afraid to shell out money for have a way to make their work a reality. Really hoping this becomes the norm!

JD:
I don't think crowdfunding could work for say, Alpha Protocol 2 though. Games of that big and complex get expensive.

TheFuriousWombat:
True, blockbuster games probably aren't really doable with this model. But they don't need to be, publishers are often willing to back them (obviously not in the particular case you cited, but that's probably because Alpha Protocol wasn't very good). What kickstarter and the whole fan-funding thing provides is the opportunity for companies with ideas that don't have a chance in hell of being made the way they think best, as was clearly the case with Wasteland 2, to petition the fans for support. In turn, it democratizes the process of determining what gets made and what (sorry for the phrase but it's unavoidable) more serious gamers have the opportunity to play in really profound ways. At this rate, this ks project for W2 is on track to make over $2 million, and that's assuming the pace of donations slows down enormously. If it keeps up, we're looking at even more. Sure, that may not be enough to make the next ultra-slick Call of Duty or something, but what it means is that developers with cool ideas now have another avenue through which to make their projects a reality. To me, this can only be a good thing. Wresting absolute power from the grasp of a small handful of publishers will only serve the industry well. Those guys will still be around and still be doling out the big bucks for the mega-hit games but more and more (at least on the PC, which is easily the best platform in any case) gamers and developers alike will have more options and more freedom. Those who want it can buy the 92nd lazy Madden remake or even something really awesome like Skyrim - both very different games that arguably need more corporate-style backing to get made considering the costs involved - but given the success this new funding model has shown so far, gamers won't be limited to what some suit arbitrarily decides will be offered to them on store shelves.

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