Sounds promising. An isometric, old-school RPG with modern aesthetics and gameplay. They are looking to create something akin to Baldur’s Gate meets Planescape: Torment. And they’ve got some fo the best guys to do just that, as in literally the guys who worked on Planescape, Icewind Dale, NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout 1 & 2 and Fallout3: New Vegas.
Plus look at that MAP!
I almost cried tears of joy. It just came up, btw, and it’a already up to $200,000, so I have a feeling they’ll be funded.
There’s a nasty (but true) story about that. Obsidian intended to basically finish the game after the LucasArts-imposed deadline and release a patch basically finishing things and adding all that content that was cut. Not only that, but they offered to do this free of charge, with nothing expected for 3-6 months of work.
LucasArts flat refused outright.
I really have no idea why. LucasArts may overuse the Star Wars licensing to the exclusion of other, good properties, but they’ve been very consistent in encouraging very good quality product. For some reason, they almost seemed to want KotOR 2 to fail.
It’s over a half-million already and halfways to the goal.
I think you misunderstand who got all the money for the work Obsidian has done in the past. Obsidian got paid a flat amount for New Vegas, with a bonus contingent on a metacritic rating of 85. That bonus was supposed to fund their next project, instead they had to lay off a large portion of their employees. The (excellent) sales of the game had no effect on their pay.
I’m in. But that’s just because I’m smart enough to know that these people don’t have a million dollars lying around to fund a new project. I like that it will likely be self-published.
I wonder if the future will be nothing but a glut of casual social games from publishers and the only way core games get done is when people pre-purchase a la kickstarter and fund their own games?
Just to hit on this point, I used to work for Obsidian, but was hit by the layoffs about six months ago. These aren’t millionaires that are asking to get rich off of you, these are passionate people that want to make a game that couldn’t get made any other way.
Keep in mind that they could NEVER pitch this type of game to a publisher and expect to get enough money to fund a significantly sized team for that length of time. Publishers would run screaming from this type of proposal. That is what’s so great about doing this through Kickstarter - the people decide if they want to fund this thing.
I am just happy that it is getting enough support to show that this genre isn’t as dead as some people think.
I would say that has less to do with the popularity of casual games and more to do with the mismanagement of Zynga.
Social and casual are here to stay. The market has grown to the point where it can support casual\social and more traditional games. The casual games are taking over in terms of numbers, but that doesn’t mean that the traditional stuff is going away or anything - just means that casual is hitting a different type of gamer (older, female, with kids).
No, they’re not. And it’s unlikely they ever were. Just this week, the developers of Amnesia: Dark Descent revealed that their indie hardcore horror game has sold over 1 million copies. It’s a tremendous success.
Even if certain casual games are successful, they’re not taking over and they’ll never top the pure dollar amounts generated by major releases like next week’s Borderlands 2.
Honestly, it depends on whether you consider mobile part of the social/casual market. If you do, then it is very possible that it is already larger than traditional console and PC. In a few years it is actually projected to be about 2/3 of the total market.
I won’t take this any farther off-topic, as well, but looking at the largest guys and extrapolating isn’t going to give accurate numbers. We should probably just start up another thread to talk about this.
To bring it a little back on topic, Obsidian raised close to a million dollars in its first 24 hours. That is pretty amazing.
Can I say that I am loving this Kickstarter money raising method? I have already been able to back things like Shadowrun Returns and the Adventure game from Double Fine. I can’t imagine those would have come out with a traditional publisher model.
Great to hear about another isometric RPG being made. The unique setting is a breath of fresh air. I enjoy the resurrection of old titles, but we also need ones that feel free to spin their own path. Kudos to everyone funding this.
