Wasteland 2

[ichy]

I never played the original Wasteland but I LOVED Fallout 1 and 2. FO 3 was a good game but it did not come close to the originals. As soon as I heard of Brian Fargo I thought of Fargo Traders. I gave them $15.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Gotta say we are seeing great times. Wasteland 2 finally becoming a Reality. BG: Enhanced (1 and 2) coming out in the summer. X-Com actually getting a Turn based tactical sequel. Some of the top games of all times are getting a boost.

I always wondered why old classics weren't remade. Hollywood does it all the time with movies. So glad that seems to be changing.

Would love a Planescape: Torment update.

 

[astrosfan315]

I finally got around to backing this. Went in for the $50 option...with wife approval!

I'm also going to back zapocalpyse...this board game looks awesome.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-epic-zombie-survival-board-game?ref=category

 

[ichy]

Now I'm wondering, is the $1 million they're raising from fans the only source of money for this game or do they have any investors who'll pitch in if they show they can raise a certain amount of money on their own? A million bucks doesn't seem like that much to develop a new game, although hopefully this means development will only take about a year. If this does work I'm hoping it'll start a trend, I would love to see good remakes of other classics.

 

[DigDog]

oh come on pleease don't fall into the mentality which has helped kill good gaming; a million bux is a lot of money to develop a good game, what it's not enough to do is to develop a shit, zero-content, cutscene-heavy voice acting fest like gears of war or kane n lynch.

the church of the apocalyptic mushroom. need i say more?

 

[ichy]

I realize you don't have to have a huge budget to make a good game. I wouldn't have chipped in if I didn't think Wasteland 2 had a serious chance.

You've got to figure that the total cost to hire one programmer for a year is maybe $100,000 though (when you factor in taxes, healthcare, etc etc.) That means with the money they have they can employ ten people for one year. It just makes me curious about what kind of budget and how many man hours these sorts of things normally consume. I assume since it's a small, hand-picked team they'll work much more efficiently than a big group of developers.

 

[thespyder]

I always wondered why old classics weren't remade. Hollywood does it all the time with movies. So glad that seems to be changing.

Would love a Planescape: Torment update.

I think the video game industry is merely at a different point in the curve. Hollywood used to be all about franchises, the way Video games are now. So.

If these projects prove profitable, and hopefully they will, I would bet we would see more of this type of thing. The unfortunate down side of that is hollywood has reached a point where they are grinding up stuff that should never have been resurected. 21 Jump Street? Really?

 

[DaveSimmons]

You've got to figure that the total cost to hire one programmer for a year is maybe $100,000 though (when you factor in taxes, healthcare, etc etc.) That means with the money they have they can employ ten people for one year. .

Salaries in game development are lower than for other fields, but more importantly it's the art and levels that are the real work. Look at the credits for a modern game (even going back 5+ years when you still got a manual) and the "programmers" section is pretty small compared to the artists and level designers.

They might only have 1 full-time Windows developer, one lead art person, one lead script / levels person, and a bunch of contract workers getting paid much less than $100K.

Fargo was willing to put in $100K of his own, he is probably not taking a salary (unless the funding goes very well) and is planning to get paid by new sales after it ships.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's now $1.275 million so we are getting the expanded world and extra content. Mac and Linux versions will probably happen too.

 

[StinkyPinky]

$1m does seem a bit low to make a game.

Say they rush it though in 18 months with a skeleton staff of 12 people. That still must amount to well over half a million in wages.

then you've got marketing which you must surely designate a decent chunk of your budget too.

Then the physical costs like production, rent of the premises, website bandwidth, unforeseen costs etc.

Seems pretty tight!

 

[DigDog]

my god, twelve people full-time for a year and a half? for a top-down turn-based rpg?

how much code is that ?


see the mentality is there unfortunately. you think "god of war", expensive art, teams of people being paid in gold for drawings of Kratos, making sure he's more "badass" than your competition's protagonist.


here we're talking story, code, game mechanics, and very little art. the levels are going to be 2d, so there's not going to be much effort there.

unless you think it takes 1 (or more) people 18 months to design 20~ish 2d paintings.

in which case the art guy ought to be fired :/

something tells me you're too young to have played Wasteland.

 

[StinkyPinky]

my god, twelve people full-time for a year and a half? for a top-down turn-based rpg?

how much code is that ?


see the mentality is there unfortunately. you think "god of war", expensive art, teams of people being paid in gold for drawings of Kratos, making sure he's more "badass" than your competition's protagonist.


here we're talking story, code, game mechanics, and very little art. the levels are going to be 2d, so there's not going to be much effort there.

unless you think it takes 1 (or more) people 18 months to design 20~ish 2d paintings.

in which case the art guy ought to be fired :/

something tells me you're too young to have played Wasteland.

Not really. I'm in my 30's.

How many people were involved with Fallout?

 

[StinkyPinky]

There were 20 people involved in the "core development team" for Fallout.

I'm expecting Wasteland 2 to be at least the same quality as that game production wise. This isn't 1988 anymore where two guys in a garage can make a game in half a year.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's not 20 x 100K though. An artist or writer in the Midwest working as a contractor ( = no benefits) might get $50K and be happy with it since the cost of living is so much lower than the coasts. If some of the contractors are outside the US their wages could be even lower.

I doubt they'll be paying the composer for 12 straight months of work.

Contractors have their own office, possibly just their home office.

> then you've got marketing which you must surely designate a decent chunk of your budget too.

I'm not expecting TV ads for this game. Marketing might just be banner ads, free press, and word of mouth.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Based off the people I know getting contracting jobs very experienced coder in a hard to find language might be making 100k in poor areas (Montgomery AL in this case). Someone with a bit of experience going into an entry-mid level type job is looking at more like 40-50k. Maybe 60k.

 

[DaveSimmons]

^ and that's programmers, who get paid much more than a typical artist.

A game like this might only need 2-3 full-time developers for the Windows code, plus 1-2 more for Mac & OS X. The rest of the staff will be artists, writers, level designers.

 

[ichy]

DigDog:

There's no need to get all defensive, some of us have no idea what the economics of game development are like. I'm thrilled to hear that developing an RPG like Wasteland is cheaper than I thought. I never played the original but I was a huge fan of the original Fallout, and if the talent that created that game is at work on Wasteland 2 then I'm very optimistic.

 

[thespyder]

So I think everyone is arguing with far to few facts. We don't know how long development will take. Nor how much the contractors will be employeed for (might be for full time, might be for individual projects). we also don't know how many of those people are getting paid with 'A percentage of the profits'.

We don't know what office space is being used or paid for. We don't know what marketing is going on. And we don't know what other money is backing this endeavour.

Just because gamers were able to come up with 1.5 mil, doesn't mean that investors aren't still paying some part.

it's cool. We don't know anything other than the project is moving forward. and i am personally happy of that fact. let the people running the show figure out the finances and let's just plan on playing the game on release.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Agreed with one minor nit: we already know that Fargo has mapped out the project to be completed by October 2013.

This being software development that's an estimated completion date which could change, but he does have decades of experience at game development so I expect to at least be playing the beta by then.

 

[DigDog]

ok i'm sorry, i never meant 2 be rude. but as someone who loved that game to bits, i hope that the development moneys will be spent wisely and not thrown out on things that matter very little (to me), like graphics.

yeah i think graphics are a waste of money.


i LIKE graphics as much as the next guy. i do not think they are an important part of a game. gameplay, story and engine matter the most to me.

Archon had horrid graphics, and a pretty bad engine, but the gameplay was awesome (for the time)
Monkey Island, Lemmings, Pirates!, you name it. horrid graphics, great story/gameplay.

Maybe i'm dreaming but i really DO hope for a game with the same quality and depth that we had in the 80s.

 

[ichy]

Last I heard they're up to 1.4 million dollars, which is 50% more than they said they needed to make the game.

Re: graphics, I agree that eye candy isn't the best way to spend limited development dollars but I do think that decent graphics can do a lot to add to a game's atmosphere. Fortunately I'd imagine that top-down, isometric eye candy is a lot easier to do than 3D, FPS graphics.

Edit: They sent out an e-mail saying they hope to hit 1.5 million soon. At this point they're talking about possible Mac and Linux versions but no console support (hurrah!)

 

[Worthington]

Project update #4 was pretty moving. I hope the funding success of Wasteland 2 inspires more indy devs to pursue the game they've been dreaming of making. Hopefully the time of Mega-Franchise games is coming to an end and we can get back to gamers making games for gamers. Bastion, SPAZ, Magicka.. all the little games that are just so damn fun to play. Not that Wasteland 2 is going to small in scope but it's inspired from someone's dream, not because Wasteland 5, The More WastedLand sold a bazallion copies in the first 24 hours.

 

[thespyder]

Last I heard they're up to 1.4 million dollars, which is 50% more than they said they needed to make the game.

Re: graphics, I agree that eye candy isn't the best way to spend limited development dollars but I do think that decent graphics can do a lot to add to a game's atmosphere. Fortunately I'd imagine that top-down, isometric eye candy is a lot easier to do than 3D, FPS graphics.

Edit: They sent out an e-mail saying they hope to hit 1.5 million soon. At this point they're talking about possible Mac and Linux versions but no console support (hurrah!)

Agreed that Graphics should be WAY low on the list of priorities. Although I do hope that the graphics do come up somewhat in comparison to the original. However, even just to the point of say Fallout 1, I would be just as happy.

As far as 2D being cheaper than 3D, I am not so sure. If you go over to the Xenonauts project, their developers have mentioned several times that, after working with the 2D engine for a while, they realized that a 3D engine would have been a LOT easier. Apparently (and I might get this wrong), in a 2D engine, you have to model each icon (Monster, character, NPC, etc...) individually and in each action and angle. Doing it in 3D is more on the order of model it once in 3D and then animate the model.

Still, hoping that we get a great game on the order of the greatness of the original.

 

[stevty2889]

Now over 1.5 million and still a lot of time left!

 

[georgec84]

I bet they make $1.75 million by the end.