Interview Brian Fargo Interview and Career Retrospective at Polygon

[FeelTheRads]

Spoiler

Something to give people a smile. Or more misery. Dunno.

lol fallout was next-gen

 

[Decado]

Excuse me if I sound like an asshole, but all this talk of the history of Black Isle / Trokia / Interplay / etc. is fucking annoying and depressing because it reminds me of how Fallout 3 was made.

I agree. Mods, please add a trigger warning to this thread.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Excuse me if I sound like an asshole, but all this talk of the history of Black Isle / Trokia / Interplay / etc. is fucking annoying and depressing because it reminds me of how Fallout 3 was made.

Haters gonna hate.

"It's only a very good company who would have looked at it and said, "This is really great as a license: this world is so rich, the mythos is so deep and the people who played it are so loyal" before picking it up and making it a console title. I bet you that Bethesda are the only company in the industry that would have done that. Great credit to them for dialling it up to what it is today."

 

[FeelTheRads]

VD, you're never gonna work for Pete Hines. What do you think about that?

 

[Vault Dweller]

The thought fills me with much sadness.

 

[Kz3r0]

Let's stop and look at the facts here for a second. You have two game developers. One of them is a 30-man outfit currently producing two turn-based RPGs, including a turn-based Torment. The other is an 100+ employees mid-tier console developer producing a "real time with elves" fantasy RPG.

Vault Dweller appears to sincerely believe that the former are vaguely sinister super salesmen taking money they probably don't deserve, while the latter are inept nice guy awkward geeks (just like us!) who deserve to catch a break. He doesn't seem to realize that the fact that he feels that way means that Obsidian's "marketing campaign" is working its magic...on him.

You are confusing business management with marketing, they are not the same.
Obsidian has always took advantage of someone else hype machine, Star Wars, South Park, etc, and most of their career was based on being Bioware' s best friends.
In fact when they tried to go solo failed miserably, Alpha Protocol.

 

[Davaris]

"It's only a very good company who would have looked at it and said, "This is really great as a license: this world is so rich, the mythos is so deep and the people who played it are so loyal" before picking it up and making it a console title. I bet you that Bethesda are the only company in the industry that would have done that. Great credit to them for dialling it up to what it is today."

The best part was when they won the bid and said they were the equal of its creators.

Its good we can laugh about it now.

 

[DragoFireheart]

To be fair Pete Hines looks like he could be fun to hang out with in a "he's a dork but funny" kind of way.

Todd just looks like a man-child douchbag in every picture I see him in.

 

[throwaway]

You really don't see a difference between the way Obsidian and InXile give interviews to the press? For instance, this latest interview by Fargo practically screams 'give this guy a lifetime achievement award'.

And what would you call this? http://kotaku.com/5968952/the-knigh...e-some-of-the-coolest-role-playing-games-ever

Same type of thing.

God reading this thing knowing that they went on to announce a fucking tank game

 

[Azrael the cat]

Like all of these Kickstarter games, I'm not getting excited until I actually play the game (aside from Tex Murphy because I just can't help myself). Like all creative industries, even the best game developers have a lowish hit-to-miss ratio. Ordinarily, many ideas are killed off in the planning process, or the tech and some design elements get converted into a different kind of game altogether, or the idea gets shelved until a later time when they've got the money and technology to make it practical. Saying 'we are making THIS SPECIFIC GAME' all the way from the funding stage is a really tall order, and it would be crazy not to expect many of these games (and that's only including the ones by established industry vets who know what they're doing) to fail, because in the ordinary course of events they wouldn't have reached full production anyway.

It's also unfair on both us as players and them as developers - following every inch of hype about a game almost always kills my enjoyment of it: it's psychologically harder to enjoy any of the things it does right because I'm already exoecting them, and I'll be raging at omissions or errors that I'd never even have thought to notice if I hadn't been following the marketing hype. Every one of these games are going to be flooded with raging fans with inflated expectations (not to mention that no matter how many studios demonstrate that making a game with even FO-level mechanics and art design on an indie budget is hard enough so as to be a rare fluke, people always seem to jump on board the next studio that promises a Fallout game with way too little money to tackle anything of that scope - Shadowrun Returns, I'm looking at you, a lack of coding talent is a forseeable result of not having enough money to attract competitive talent away from jobs at Microsoft etc where they have actual long-term job security). Don't get me wrong - I'm excited by the possibility of Kickstarter as a means of correcting market failures (though long-term I think it's insignificant compared to digital distribution - having consumers fund products in advance is a terrible investment model for any kind of genuine innovation, and is massively exposed to market inefficiency by removing the developer's biggest financial motivator before full production even begins), but let's take these games as the small, exploratory projects they really are. That way we actually might even enjoy some of them.

As for Fargo, I'd still feel sorry for the guy even if W2 is terrible (taking into account that I don't really expect a grand open brilliant game on a Kickstarter budget - an insanely successful Kickstarter is still pretty damn small by normal development standards). By that stage of your career you shouldn't have to be producing creative successes - you've every right to expect a record like his at Interplay to keep you in the kind of hands-off production/oversight role that he had at Interplay. There are very few creative industries where you're expected to be able to keep on producing good creative material directly, i.e. at the coal-face as a writer/musician/etc. Even in most fields of academia, you produce most of your 'big ideas' in your 20s and 30s, and then spend the rest of your career developing and refining them (philosophy is a rare exception in that most greats produce their best work at the end of their career, often into their 60s/70s - mathematicians, by comparison, rarely do anything truly groundbreaking past 25-28, literally just doing their PhD and then a few years of incredible brilliance before they lose their edge and shift down a gear to focus on teaching and working out the kinks in their theories). It's crazy to hold it against game developers that they don't have the hunger and edge at 45-50 that they did in their 20s - and he's got every right to be pissed that he's ended up at a lower level in the industry then he was 20 years ago, having to actually make product instead of just talent-spotting and guiding the work of the guys young and hungry enough to be heading up this kind of project. Having an industry structured in a way where he basically gets zero credit for anything he did in the 80s/90s, by publisher execs with less experience in picking hits than he did (and while Interplay went down under his watch, a 10+year run in the black as an independent publiosher/developer almost certainly gives him a better track record than most of the execs he'd be pitching to) would be maddening as hell.

I'm not saying we should all worship the guy, and I wouldn't have a clue how much of Interplay's success or failure he was personally responsible for. Just that at the same time, we shouldn't hate the guy if he's not able to produce a great indie crpg at an age and a point in his career where by all rights he should have been able to take on the 'respected elder' role instead of duking it out with guys half his age (and the energy, lack of family commitments and willingness to work insane hours that goes along with it).

 

[tuluse]

I'm not really expecting Fargo to produce creatively. I'm expecting him to put a team together to produce a good game.

 

[agris]

just sayin..

 

[Morality Games]

I would argue that Obsidian has done a better job. More updates, more communication (weekly flamewars with Sawyer at the Obsidian forums, yay!), a fancy website, a partnership with a publisher that the target audience respects.

Obsidian did a better job at communicating their design ideas and explaining the game's concept. Fargo did a better job selling the idea of his game and hyping it as the next best thing since sliced bread.

Hm. The Codex should almost have a going bet on whether Wasteland 2 or Project Eternity will sell more.

Doesn't have to involve money or material goods, of course.

EDIT:

You made a good argument, but my money's on Obsidian for the simple reason that:

Hapless Casual Gamer: "Dragon Age: Inquisition is really great! I could play it all day. Is there another game like it??"

Random Internet Poster: "Pillars of Eternity, but it has Diablo-style camera angle."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw&feature=kp

 

[MurkyShadow]

I'll go for the underdog bet:
Both, also Larian's relationship simulator, will disappoint utterly and Dead State will sell more copies then all of them together.

Spoiler

 

[Abelian]

It would be interesting to see a Codex survey where the buy options are: PoE, WL2, both, neither.

 

[Monty]

It would be interesting to see a Codex survey where the buy options are: PoE, WL2, both, neither.

Need more options:
- PoE
- WL2
- AoD
- Underrail
- Kingcomrade (Grimoire)

 

[Abelian]

It would be interesting to see a Codex survey where the buy options are: PoE, WL2, both, neither.

Need more options:
- PoE
- WL2
- AoD
- Underrail
- Kingcomrade (Grimoire)

There's already a poll here, but I was more interested in PoE vs WL2 because that was the main topic of this thread.

 

[MicoSelva]

I thought I read somewhere that Fargo was interested in The Bard's Tale?

I'd be considerably more excited about a proper new Bard's Tale game than I am about W2 or Torment.

Unfortunately, a blobber would probably be too niche for InXile (unless they could get the Wizardry trademark somehow, which is impossible; that's the only "big" blobber trademark I can think of).

I can definitely see inXile kickstarting another Bard's Tale, but I doubt it would be a blobber. More likely another isometric RPG with turn-based combat, as RTwP Bard's Tale would not appeal to anyone KS-wise.

 

[Athelas]

It would be pretty amusing if a Bard's Tale kickstarter ended up being a success...thanks to pledges from fans of the Bard's Tale 2004 reboot.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I can definitely see inXile kickstarting another Bard's Tale, but I doubt it would be a blobber. More likely another isometric RPG with turn-based combat

 

[Azrael the cat]

I would argue that Obsidian has done a better job. More updates, more communication (weekly flamewars with Sawyer at the Obsidian forums, yay!), a fancy website, a partnership with a publisher that the target audience respects.

Obsidian did a better job at communicating their design ideas and explaining the game's concept. Fargo did a better job selling the idea of his game and hyping it as the next best thing since sliced bread.

Hm. The Codex should almost have a going bet on whether Wasteland 2 or Project Eternity will sell more.

Doesn't have to involve money or material goods, of course.

EDIT:

You made a good argument, but my money's on Obsidian for the simple reason that:

Hapless Casual Gamer: "Dragon Age: Inquisition is really great! I could play it all day. Is there another game like it??"

Random Internet Poster: "Pillars of Eternity, but it has Diablo-style camera angle."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw&feature=kp

Project Eternity easily.

The I.E games still have massive cachet, and a large audience that remembers how to play them. They also have inroads into the Bioware audience, as those games are held as all-time legendary greats, even if most of their current fanbase never played them - there's enough of a market there that if it is successful with the old I.E. fans, word will go through the Bioware fanbase.

If PE is decent, has an intuitive UI and manages to grab the status of 'Baldurs' Gate spiritual successor' then Obsidian really are going to be eating Bioware's lunch, and it's a major failure that Bioware didn't devote a relatively small amount of resources (by their standards) to exploit that market already.

Wasteland doesn't have anything like that to cash in on. There isn't the same 'cultural heritage' in the FO3/TES communities linking back to isometric turn-basedgames like FO and Wasteland. One advantage is that, being turn-based, it's a natural fit for an Ipad port, but I can't see them getting enough cultural penetration for it to really sprout.

 

[Morality Games]

I'm still favoring Pillars of Eternity in the long term, but Vault Dweller's forecast has one advantage: Wasteland 2's game play trailers have received more views than Project Eternity's (almost by a margin of 2 to 1) and that was a pretty good indication of how well the Banner Saga sold.

 

[Abelian]

The I.E games still have massive ca$het, and a large audience that remembers how to play them.

If PE is decent, has an intuitive UI and manages to grab the status of 'Baldurs' Gate $piritual $ucce$$or' then Obsidian really are going to be eating Bioware's lunch, and it's a major failure that Bioware didn't devote a relatively small amount of resources (by their standards) to exploit that market already.

Made a few minor fixe$, to reflect PoE's status as sixth highest-grossing kickstarter project.