In February, Interplay founder Brian Fargo announced he'd be following in Double Fine's footsteps and setting up a Kickstarter campaign to fund a sequel to his 1988 end-of-days RPG Wasteland. Now, less than one month later, Fargo's crowdfunding experiment is proving to be a massive success, generating over $1 million in donations in its first few days.
Learn what motivated Fargo to take the fan-funding plunge in the campaign video:
At time of print, the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter campaign has the backing of over 18,000 contributors, with funds exceeding the initial $900,000 goal by nearly $120,000 and rising. Other industry veterans have also thrown in their support, including Blizzard VP Rob Pardo, who wrote: "Brian was one of the pioneers for the computer RPG with games like Bard's Tale and Wasteland. I would be very excited to see what Brian could achieve with a sequel to such a classic like the first Wasteland."
Fargo detailed his plans for the Wasteland follow-up in a lengthy message on the Kickstarter page. In it, he said the project will reunite the Interplay team, including Wasteland's original primary designers, Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole, as well as the co-creator of Fallout, Jason Anderson. Fargo also promised the game will retain much of the old-school goodness that made Wasteland a cult classic, and that fans will have a chance to contribute to its development through forums and future interactions.
“This is probably the last chance for a Wasteland sequel,” he insisted. “We have tried to pitch this game multiple times to game publishers, but they’ve balked. They don’t think there’s any interest in a solid, old school type of game. This is our shot at proving them wrong. And more importantly this could help bring back an entire genre of RPGs. The power of the Indie scene continues and we see this as all part of a bigger trend of bringing control back to the developers.”
With 32 days left in the Kickstarter campaign, it's clear Fargo and his team are going to have a lot of money to play with. This in mind, Fargo explained the extra money will be used to add more missions, increase the map size, bulk up the story, and generally “make the rich world alive even more”.
Double Fine's own Kickstarter fundraiser ended yesterday at over $3 million. Will you be help Fargo break Schafer's record?
