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Interview Brian Fargo on crowd-sourcing

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Brian Fargo, InXile Entertainment; InXile Entertainment

GameIndustry.biz caught up with InXile's Brian Fargo, asking him about his possible future crow-sourcing endeavors. His reply? Succeed or fail, I'll return to Kickstarter.

The lure of crowd-funding for any developer is surely the lack of caveats against the money: with a publisher, investment is often a matter of handing over valuable IP rights and submitting to their demands; with the crowd, the developer is obliged only to deliver the product for which people have already paid, and the tiered rewards offered as an incentive for larger pledges. For the latter, particularly, the developer can make a substantial sum of money for relatively light work, like creating an NPC modelled on the backer.

In Fargo's view, this is the entire appeal of crowd-funding from the perspective of the crowd. It affords them an active role in fostering creativity, while presenting options to make their relationship to the product more personal. Rewards of this kind directly serve an audience need - something Fargo understands from personal experience.

"I've invested in a bunch of projects," Fargo says. "Frankly, I've invested in games that I probably would never have bought anyway: for their own cleverness, I was excited, I was helping a guy with a vision, whatever.

"Some of them I really do want to play, but it's a mix. If 25 to 30 per cent of those went sideways it wouldn't sour me - honestly. If every single one went sideways that would be a problem, but that's not going to happen."
 

felipepepe

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"Yeah, I still would [return to crowd-funding]," Fargo said. "It allows us to give things to people that they can't get from just buying a product. Some people want to be an NPC, or they want a shrine in their honour in the game, or they want a boxed copy, or a novella. These things aren't just gimmicks; they add real value."
"Yeah, because it goes beyond just getting money to do it," says Fargo. "Even if [Wasteland 2] sells a bunch and it could finance [another game], I'd like to keep that same relationship."

I'm VERY worried about the way this is going... this sounds so abusive, as in "I got free money to make games & profit, why should I ever use my own money again?" and "Besides, I can milk people for in-game stuff way better than any AAA company with DLCs"... :(
 

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CEOs gonna CEO.

He's right that it's a great way to build up hype and a loyal community. I'm not sure how repeatable that is, though.
 

felipepepe

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I'm not sure how repeatable that is, though.
Yeah, I don't think that he'll get similar results after that... "Wasteland 2 sold 3 million copies of pure profit, now please give us 2 million dollars for a sequel, because".

Obviously people will buy in-game NPCs & itens, but...
 

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I'm not sure how repeatable that is, though.
Yeah, I don't think that he'll get similar results after that... "Wasteland 2 sold 3 million copies of pure profit, now please give us 2 million dollars for a sequel, because".

Obviously people will buy in-game NPCs & itens, but...

We'll probably see more Star Citizen-like hybrid models in the future, crowd-sourcing + independent funding.
 

DragoFireheart

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Even the people we love and care about can be corrupted by money. Maybe not now, but perhaps in the future.

Best to just watch how things unfold and be objective.
 

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You guys forget that you are basically just preordering a game. If W2 is successfull people will preorder W3 or whatever rpg they want to put out. If you spent more money you get the collectors edition and more stuff but you don't have to.
 

felipepepe

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You guys forget that you are basically just preordering a game.
The whole ideia was to pre-order a game that woudn't exist without that pre-order money... as soon as the developer has tons of money to make it anyway, kickstarting its games makes as much sense as kickstarting EA...
 

DragoFireheart

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You guys forget that you are basically just preordering a game. If W2 is successfull .

IF

It isn't successful yet. Should W2 turn out to be... good... but falling sort of expectations or worse, poorly made, this will be very bad.

1- The developers will have no excuses. They've had fan feedback AND no interference from any publishers.
2- This may put a dent in the faith the fans might have in any future crowd-sourced games from that company. As terrible as Bethesda or EA is, you KNOW what you are getting (or not getting).
3- Too many companies flopping in this manner may put Kickstarter in a bad light, which can indirectly affect other game companies trying to crowd source games. (speculation)


It's like someone said in another topic on a different note: it's all on the Net. Screw up, and there's no way you can hide it.
 

Morkar Left

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I completely agree. If the game turns out to be successfull I see no reason why they should stop using this model. If the game turns out to be bad crowdfunding another one will be very difficult to say the least.
 
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"Yeah, I still would [return to crowd-funding]," Fargo said. "It allows us to give things to people that they can't get from just buying a product. Some people want to be an NPC, or they want a shrine in their honour in the game, or they want a boxed copy, or a novella. These things aren't just gimmicks; they add real value."
"Yeah, because it goes beyond just getting money to do it," says Fargo. "Even if [Wasteland 2] sells a bunch and it could finance [another game], I'd like to keep that same relationship."

I'm VERY worried about the way this is going... this sounds so abusive, as in "I got free money to make games & profit, why should I ever use my own money again?" and "Besides, I can milk people for in-game stuff way better than any AAA company with DLCs"... :(

I don't think there's anything wrong with people going back again and again to crowdfund assuming they're producing the games they set out to produce. What I hate most is the ego-stroking player-service crap. Making people into NPCs and shrines (on the scale that we are seeing recently) is just such an unbelieveably low and customer-pandering tactic that there's no way it would be tolerated as much as it is if it wasn't for the fact that it started along with such a promising new platform.

I'm hoping one day it has such stigma that crowdfunding projects start listing as one of their checkpoints "And strictly NO player shrines, items or NPCs in our game!"
 

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Man, I read that thread title wrong. I thought this would be about Brian Fargo's deep thoughts on crowd surfing.

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If WL2 sells good and Fargo goes to Kickstarter again for the next game, fuck that shit, unless he pulls tiers down to more reasonable and more importantly, consumer-wise sustainable levels. I'm not crazy about shelling hundreds of dorrars at shit reward levels that would otherwise cost at most $100 for a CE box.
 

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If WL2 sells good and Fargo goes to Kickstarter again for the next game, fuck that shit, unless he pulls tiers down to more reasonable and more importantly, consumer-wise sustainable levels. I'm not crazy about shelling hundreds of dorrars at shit reward levels that would otherwise cost at most $100 for a CE box.
You could have got a copy of Wasteland 2 for $15, that hardly seems unreasonable or unsustainable.
 
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You guys forget that you are basically just preordering a game.
The whole ideia was to pre-order a game that woudn't exist without that pre-order money... as soon as the developer has tons of money to make it anyway, kickstarting its games makes as much sense as kickstarting EA...


You are making the assumption, they haven't already reached most their market, using crowd funding. Additional sales may not be that great, because the majority of people that want this game, may have already pledged. This is not an EA mainstream targeted game, with a massive advertising budget, it is niche, so crowd funding may be the only significant income they get, even if the game is good.
 

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You guys forget that you are basically just preordering a game.
The whole ideia was to pre-order a game that woudn't exist without that pre-order money... as soon as the developer has tons of money to make it anyway, kickstarting its games makes as much sense as kickstarting EA...


You are making the assumption, they haven't already reached most their market, using crowd funding. Additional sales may not be that great, because the majority of people that want this game, may have already pledged. This is not an EA mainstream targeted game, with a massive advertising budget, it is niche, so crowd funding may be the only significant income they get, even if the game is good.
Yeah, that's the worst case scenario for them. We get a good game and they get their wages for the next 2 years. After that, they come back to us to fund the development of their next game and the cycle repeats. I don't have a problem with this approach. Quite the contrary, I would prefer it this way.
 

hiver

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Nope, because they dont need to hit a big sale numbers when they publish the game.
They will do just fine if the game keeps selling over a longer time frame. And good word of mouth, (especially if the game turns out to be better than good), and some updates, expansions and so on - they could be coasting a long time.
While they develop other games.
 

skuphundaku

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Nope, because they dont need to hit a big sale numbers when they publish the game.
They will do just fine if the game keeps selling over a longer time frame. And good word of mouth, (especially if the game turns out to be better than good), and some updates, expansions and so on - they could be coasting a long time.
While they develop other games.
I said that that's the worst case scenario for them, but that worst case scenario is pretty damn good for everybody. The only way they could fuck up is if the game totally blows. I mean "worse than DS3/AP/NWN2:OC"-blows. Anything better than utter failure is going to be a pretty good outcome for everybody involved.
 

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