Neogamr Wasteland 2 interview

[WorstUsernameEver]

While the Kickstarter drive keeps going at a fast and steady pace during its last 48 hours, Neogamr has published a new interview with Brian Fargo on Wasteland 2. Here's a snip:<blockquote>How far along is Wasteland 2 in development at the moment? Has work started on the design and has any preliminary code or artwork been made?

Jason Anderson worked on the story elements for nearly a year and we did some audio experimentation for ways to enhance the depth of the world. We have an overall story arc and some specific locales called out but now is the time we put the meat on the bones. The game itself has been knocking around my head for two decades so there is no lack of vision for where we are going. I had waited to nail down the look of the game until recently and now you can see the first two pieces that Andree Wallin did. We are clearly on a path that is unique from the Fallout universe yet is still distinctly post apocalyptic.

Will Wasteland 2 be inXile's major project for the next year or does the company have any other projects coming up?

This is THE project we will be focusing on. There is lots of pressure to deliver here and we don't want to deliver anything but the best so we need to stay focused. Success means we get to make RPGs for another decade plus. Fan funding is great in that we can just worry about the game and not chasing money down.</blockquote>

 

[FearMonkey]

HEI$T was a game that looked like it was going to take the crime action game to interesting new directions but Codemasters canceled its development. Can you talk about the circumstances surrounding its cancellation?

I always thought that was a good concept but we were sunk trying to create an open world sandbox game using the Unreal engine. We had to commit to creating a PS3 version before the specs of the machine existed. Once we did get the specs we informed them it couldn't be done. They would not relent on this issue and we were hamstrung by the lack of memory and performance of the PS3 (keep in mind this was Unreal open world specific). We begged to drop this version but were turned down and thus unable to ever get the frame rate up. Surprisingly the game was 98 percent done.

Impossible? Arkham City is an open-world Unreal Engine game and it works perfectly fine on PS3. *shrug*

 

[WorstUsernameEver]

Impossible? Arkham City is an open-world Unreal Engine game and it works perfectly fine on PS3. *shrug*

Yeah, that was p. weird.. granted, they probably worked with an earlier version UE3 compared to Rocksteady, and Arkham City has a p. small world which doesn't have cars, procedurally generated stuff, etc.

 

[Brother None]

inXile started work and customized the engine and game before the PS3 specs were even announced. Arkham City was made years later when the engine was much better optimized and studios had years of experience getting things to run on Xbox 360 and PS3.

Seriously, comparing it to Arkham City makes no sense.

 

[Lexx]

So they totally dropped the game because it couldn't run good on console....

... What a waste of money. Releasing it for how it was, at least would have brought back some of the money.

 

[Makagulfazel]

Maybe Codemasters was afraid of fan blowback. Maybe the game was pretty crappy without adding in the optimization problems. Maybe it wasn't their cup of tea(har har).

 

[Geech]

So they totally dropped the game because it couldn't run good on console....

... What a waste of money. Releasing it for how it was, at least would have brought back some of the money.

I don't know that inXile necessarily felt all the pain of the publisher decision, if that's what you're thinking. Developers are usually paid by the publisher as they produce the game, so if it's cancelled at the last minute it's really the publisher who loses out.

 

[Lexx]

I was thinking that it was a moneywaste for the publisher. A 98% finished game got canned, just because it didn't run well on console? They could have released it on PC anyway and see how much money they will get back from it. Probably not as much as with additional console coverage, but at least it would be more than $0.

 

[Brother None]

98% might be an exaggeration, and remember the publisher still has to swallow a lot of costs in Q&A, going gold, printing copies and paying for PR. It's not a riskless gamble if they don't believe in it, for whatever reason.

And back then the PC was still considered a no-go for publishers

 

[.Pixote.]

When you hear of games costing 10+ millions, and the publisher spending an equal or larger amount just on marketing (think Bethesda and Rock Star), you can see why they absorb the loss and move on. Grand Theft Auto bought TV time for commercials in many of the countries where their game was released. That doesn't come cheap.

Apparently Halo 3 - cost over $30 million to make, with another $60M for promotional costs.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games