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It’s happening. An astounding $2.1 million later, Obsidian Entertainment is getting the Black Isle band back together with Brian Fargo to make Wasteland 2. It’s like some kind of Cinderella fairytale comeback story, only everyone dies in a radioactive pain puddle at the end. Or the beginning, really. But anyway, happier things! Shortly before the big news broke, I had a chat with Obsidian chief creative officer Chris Avellone about what sort of hand he and his team of burly brained wordsmiths will have in the game. Also, Kickstarter, nostalgia, and bugs and glitches – because those are sort of a thing for the Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, and Dungeon Siege III developer.

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Last week’s wonderful shock news was that Brian Fargo and his team at inXile hope to recruit Chris Avellone and his team at Obsidian to work with them on the successfully startkicked sandbox RPG Wasteland 2. If funding for Wasteland 2 can reach $2.1 million (it’s currently at $1.8m, with 14 days left to go), it means a sort of dream team of ex-Black Isle staff would be working on a game that consciously harkens back to that golden age of cRPGs. I had a quick chat with Brian Fargo about what the potential partnership actually means, his thoughts on the wildly successful crowdsourcing of the game to date, whether the hiring of Planescape brain Avellone means a more fixed rather than freeform RPG, how his Kicking It Forwards crowdsourcing reinvestment initiative is going, and how he’d love to out-Kickstart Doublefine.(more…)

This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. The Kickstarter success of Wasteland 2 may be one of the most important developments in Western role-playing games in years. It could re-open the doors to bringing back party-based, less cinematic role-playing games of the sort that have been largely gone since the mid-1990s. The trick, however, will be in using a style of combat that assures both quality and popularity for Wasteland 2. Because if it simply follows in the footsteps of the original Wasteland, it may have problems on both of those fronts.

The original Wasteland was released in 1988, towards the start of a transitional era for role-playing games, both technologically and creatively. The core mechanic of role-playing games of the era -- combat -- started to shift, and lose some of its importance.

Brian Fargo's Wasteland 2 Kickstarter, having already surpassed two funding goals, has laid out a third one that will ensnare Obsidian Chief Creative Officer Chris Avellone if passed. With 17 days of funding left to go and $1.7 million already pledged, Fargo's company inXile wants to hit $2.1 million on Kickstarter, after which Avellone will agree to work directly with the design team on the project.

Fargo and Avellone's relationship goes back to the better days of publisher Interplay, where the pair worked on titles like Fallout 1 and 2, and Planescape: Torment.

"Wasteland is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and when Brian asked if I wanted to work on the sequel, I jumped at the chance," said Avellone. "While I've worked on Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, getting the chance to work on the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout franchise is a honor."

Developer Obsidian will also lend a hand in the game's creation, providing "experience they have in the development of RPG games and tools to inXile."

Fargo stated, "Obsidian has an incredible library of story, dialog and design tools that they have used to create hits like Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and of course, Fallout: New Vegas. Regardless of the tech we use to develop the game, experience with these tools will help us efficiently design the game without wasting time and resources on the tools needed for development."

If you're looking to support the dream, you know where to go.

Obsidian Entertainment has worked on some of the biggest RPGs in the last decade. From Knights of the Old Republic 2 to Fallout: New Vegas, the studio has developed a reputation for producing sequels to beloved franchises...

If Brian Fargo's Kickstarter-funded project reaches $2.1 million, it will be co-developed by Chris Avellone and the team behind games like Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol. [Rock Paper Shotgun] More »

Here’s a big, bouncy ball of unexpected good news for you. Brian Fargo and his studio inXile Entertainment are, as you well know, working on a sequel to the seminal RPG Wasteland, and have successfully Kickstarted it to the tune of $1.6 million. Since exceeding their initial target of $900,000, they’ve been able to add Mac and Linux versions to their masterplan for the post-nuclear roleplaying game. But that’s not all. They’ve just been in touch to say that, if they can reach $2.1 million during the 17 days remaining on the funding schedule, they’ll be bringing in Obsidian Entertainment, including Planescape: Torment mastermind Chris Avellone, to help them make the game.

Oh my word. The minds behind Fallout and Planescape, together. A veritable RPG supergroup. This has to happen.(more…)

Double Fine raised almost $3.4 million in its Kickstarter campaign, shattering records and publisher's hearts worldwide, but with all that attention on a single project it seemed impossible for any others to get a penny of funding. Not true, Kickstarter says, and it has the stats to back it up (Back that stat up).

Double Fine Adventure catalyzed the entire video games category on Kickstarter: The month before Double Fine's project, video games averaged 629 pledges per week; after its launch, video games received an average of 9,755 pledges per week, excluding those to Double Fine, Kickstarter says.

Similarly, in the first two years on Kickstarter, the video games category raised $1,776,372 in total. In the six weeks after Double Fine, it generated $2,890,704 without Double Fine's contribution, $6,227,075 with it. Before Double Fine, only one video games project had exceeded $100,000; now nine have.

Double Fine brought 61,692 first-time backers to Kickstarter, and they have gone on to pledge almost $400,000 to Wasteland 2, another successful, million-dollar project. Kickstarter offers a more detailed run-down of these surprising statistics right here.

#wasteland With the Kickstarter campaign for his old-school role-playing title already surpassing its goal, Brian Fargo has managed to find a path out of needing a publisher to continue making video games. More »

Crowd funding service Kickstarter has been good to games in recent months.

$3,336,371 went towards Double Fine's new adventure game, far above the $400,000 asking price. There's $1,600,465 and counting for inXile Entertainment to produce Wasteland 2, exceeding the original $900,000.

Philadelphia-based Cipher Prime wants $60,000 to help fund the creation of Auditorium 2: Duet, a multiplayer sequel to its well-liked music game. $60,000 is roughly half, maybe a little less, than the project’s total budget.

“We are mathematically not on track to make it,” said creative director Will Stallwood to me yesterday afternoon, only four days before Auditorium 2: Duet’s Kickstarter proposal comes to a close.

Stallwood is understandably anxious. Auditorium 2: Duet has not experienced the "Double Fine bump” that I've heard mentioned by other video game Kickstarter projects, and the studio is relying on a hail mary pass at the end.

“When we first started,” he said, “someone asked us and our analogy was ‘we basically have a month of waiting to find out if our girlfriend’s going to dump us or not.’ It’s totally how it feels.”

When we spoke yesterday, his Kickstarter was roughly $45,000--most of the way there. With Kickstarter, though, “most of the way there” isn’t enough. You need to reach the full amount, or all of that money disappears.

If Auditorium 2: Duet doesn’t reach $60,000, it wouldn’t be the first game to stumble on Kickstarter. Double Fine was not the first developer to utilize Kickstarter, but it’s definitely helped popularize the concept. Kickstarter was founded in 2008, and since, many have tried using it to get ideas off the ground. Not everyone's a success story.

Pixel Sand is one of several projects that attribute its funding success to Double Fine.

Tony Hawk: Ride developers Robomodo tried to help fund Bodoink, a Kinect game for Xbox Live Arcade, and only raised $5,547 of $35,000. Before Borut Pfeifer was a designer on upcoming XBLA strategy game Skulls of the Shogun, he pitched a puzzle/action game set during the post-election riots in Iran. He figured it would take $15,000 to make that game--he got only $2,925.

“The biggest lesson was just that it doesn't actually solve the problems people originally (and still do but to a lesser extent) thought it would,” said Pfeifer over email.

Pfeifer pointed to how developers still have to really, really worry about presenting and pitching their idea, especially if there's not much to show for it, and they still have to answer to a group of invested individuals, which means creative autonomy is somewhat limited. It's not a perfect solution.

Plus, it’s easy to forget designers like Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo have spent a career building a reputation.

“The audience isn't necessarily any more likely to fund an idea because it's risky or innovative, it's really just if they trust you as fans of your work,” said Pfeifer.

As the hours wind down on Auditorium 2: Duet, as Stallwood begins to confront the possibility that his sequel will not get funded, his team has started to examine about what went right...and what went wrong. Even if the Kickstarter idea blows up in their face, Stallwood doesn’t necessarily regret trying it out.

“Definitely our biggest problem over here that we know, and I think we’ve always known, is getting any kind of attention is really hard, and we still don’t know how to do it,” he said. “Regardless of whether the Kickstarter fails or not, I do feel like a lot more people know who Cipher Prime is, which is really cool and super exciting.”

It’s early days for the relationship between Kickstarter and video games, however. While Cipher Prime didn’t see much help from Double Fine’s various financing spikes, another Kickstarter did.

Pixel Sand, a ridiculous physics simulation that involves dumping sand everywhere, probably wouldn’t have made it to its complete $9,000 funding without help from Double Fine, according to programmer Trevor Sundberg.

“We pretty much owe our success to Double Fine for bringing in so many supporters to Kickstarter,” said Sundberg. “All of that traffic seemed to hit right after the Double Fine project became popular.”

A week before Pixel Sand was due to cross the Kickstarter finish line, the project’s funding trajectory suggested it would only make around $2,000. 24 hours before funding closed, the game neared $12,000. 68% of its contributors came from individuals just browsing the Kickstarter website, a mix of people who’d meandered from the Double Fine Kickstarter and others poking around the games section, which Sundberg also attributed to Double Fine.

Pixel Sand's final total? $13, 616.

Between Double Fine and inXile, Kickstarter appears to be fertile ground for reviving long forgotten concepts, genres and franchises. It’s unclear how many more fans will continue to financially rally behind old games, but Big Finish Games will try to revive fumbling detective Tex Murphy starting in May.

Tex Murphy is the latest dead franchise seeking life on Kickstarter, but how long will this last?

Big Finish co-founder Chris Jones, who also happens to play the usually tipsy Tex Murphy, told me this presented itself as the best way to finally, possibly bring the character back. There were chances for Tex Murphy to return in the past, but it never happened, and eventually Jones felt like fans deserved closure. The last game ended on a mean cliffhanger, and fans have been waiting since.

Kickstarter seemed like a way to gauge fan interest, and possibly elevate what Jones described as a “modest” design for another Tex Murphy game into something much bigger.

“When we saw the success of Double Fine [on Kickstarter],” he said, “what that really showed more than anything was there really is an interest in this genre, whether publishers believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who really have liked this style of game, and enjoy playing the adventure style, and there may be a big enough group out there that would continue to support it.”

If there isn’t, it’s also the best way to find out if it’s time to move on, and possibly let Tex Murphy go.

A full day had passed between writing this and my conversation with Stallwood about Auditorium 2: Duet's fate. Since then, the Kickstarter has earned another $6,000, bringing the total to $52,801. There’s $9,000 to go.

“With the bump last night, we could possibly reach our goal,” he said. “We feel like throwing up in anticipation, but we're incredibly hopeful. Regardless of the outcome, I think we have some of the worlds best fans and an amazing support community in Philly. Getting close to our goal after all this time is giving us a ton of feelings both scary and happy.”

With three days left, here's where Auditorium 2: Duet stands. The countdown begins.

When Brian Fargo revealed his Kickstarter project to fund Wasteland 2, he laid out some goals. One of those tiers was $1.5 million, which at the time seemed kind of ridiculous. It has since been pledged by backers, meaning Wasteland 2 will also be available on Mac OS X and Linux at launch.

Wasteland 2 has well exceeded its original goal of raising $900,000 on Kickstarter, and there are still 24 days to go. We don't expect it'll beat Double Fine's current record-level of pledges, but we're certainly ready to be surprised again.

The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page, which has a goal of $900,000, currently shows over $1.5 million pledged with 25 days left to go. This means the game will release on Mac and Linux as well as Windows but there’s more to the story. In an update, Fargo shares some of the “nice human moments” that appear to have been as pleasing as the vast amounts of money people have hurled at their screens. All the goodwill has inspired the creator of post-apocalyptic hell-zones to share an idea that has the potential to change how we all think about Kickstarter projects, even though I for one am still trying to work out what I think about the current state of Kickstarter projects. Brian Fargo wants to “Kick it Forward”.

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Fans of classic PC games (with a post-apocalyptic setting) can help fund a sequel to Wasteland starting today. Just as inXile head Brian Fargo promised, a Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 is now live. The goal is $900,000 -- as of writing this post, $380,897 had been raised.

Wasteland 2 will be a DRM-free PC title. "It'll finally be the game worthy to be a Wasteland sequel, as challenging and rewarding as the original, with all added capacity and dazzle of games today," the Kickstarter page says. Many of the original designers are returning for the sequel, and Fallout composer Mark Morgan will create the tunes. Jason Anderson, co-creator of Fallout, will handle Wasteland 2's story.

Fans will be able to offer input during the development of Wasteland 2 through the forums. And of course there are the usual Kickstarter benefits, ranging from the soundtrack to various special boxed copies of Wasteland 2 and a collectible coin and cloth map. Wasteland 2 is slated to launch in October of 2013.

That Wasteland sequel you've been waiting for is about to go into production, as the game's Kickstarter crested its goal of $900K while we slept last night. The Kickstarter has started to pick up some momentum, it seems, as the total currently sits at just over $967K, with another 32 days to go.

As stated on the project's site, the goal is actually to raise $1 million, but inXile head Brian Fargo had agreed to put $100K of his own scratch on the line -- it's looking like that won't be necessary any more. Which isn't to say there aren't plans should the team raise even more money. If they reach $1.25 million, the extra dough will go to "making the world bigger, adding more maps, more divergent stories and even more music."

If the fundraiser reaches $1.5 million, that depth goes further, with, "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." Oh, also, it'll come to OS X. So, hey, how about we get things to $1.5 million so your buds at Joystiq can play the game on their writing machines? That'd be just capital.

In a matter of days the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter has been funded. Already close to $1,000,000 at the time of this post, the project still has over 30 days to continue raising money. Wasteland 2 is the sequel to the original turn-based, post-apocalyptic game Wasteland. Fans of the spiritual succes...