Torment & Numenera interview

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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NowGamer offers a new interview about inXile's upcoming Torment game, revealing that the Kickstarter will likely take place before Wasteland 2's release.<blockquote>You talked about perhaps using turn-based combat instead of real-time with pause: is that wise? Surely the fans would wage war against you?

Let me turn this over to project director Kevin Saunders: “We see the key elements of the combat system for this game as agnostic of whether the implementation is real-time with pause, turn-based, or some hybrid, like a phase-based system.

We’ll discuss further in the future, but, briefly, by key elements, we mean aspects like: ensuring that character customization choices influence combat, meaningful tactical decisions, synergy with the narrative and creative elements, accentuating and further developing the companions, etc.

Because we can craft the game we are promising regardless of this specific decision, it is exactly the type of question for which we’d involve our backers.

We would outline what we will attempt to achieve through combat, and how it is interwoven with the narrative and overall gameplay, present the primary options, and let our backers weigh in – confident that we can satisfy our design goals for this game while taking their preferences into account.

We’ve been taking this approach with Wasteland 2 and have found backer input to be invaluable in such design decisions.” </blockquote><center>
 
Not sure how I feel about them doing the kickstarter before Wasteland 2 is out. On the one hand I understand that when you have employees to pay that you don't want down time between projects. However, I'd feel much more comfortable about donating to that project once I was able to play and evaluate W2 to see if my money was well spent on this project.
 
Call me a negative nancy, but this whole thing is sounding kind of fishy.
Isn't the point of a Kickstarter so that indie developers can put out their game so they get funding that way and not having to depend on Publishers the entire time? Then with the new game out, they get money from the sales of that one to fund their own product? Then, why again make a Kickstarter for this? and fishier, why make it BEFORE Wasteland 2 is released? I think people would want to see how the game they already helped fund turns out before giving more money to the same guys to make another thing without even being sure the first one is any good.

Maybe I am just being Overly cynical about this.
 
I would prefer they start this, and begin the kickstarter, now rather than after wasteland 2.

Assume 2 year development time. Id rather have the game 2 years from now, than 2 years after W2.

I would also rather they are able to keep funding projects and keep team members staffed.

People are free to donate, or not, as they see fit. But i see nothing wrong in them trying to get another project funded.
 
Wasteland 2 was a no-brainer. I'll have to see more details about their plans for this before I put down any cash. I'm still not sure how I feel about it not being a Planescape game. That's where all the lore for Torment was drawn from.
 
I share Walpknut's concern here.

The same company asking politely for more money _before_ the output following the WL2 kickstarter is given - sounds strange (to say the least).

We even don't know anything about the quality of WL2 yet, of its current budget, of how things are really proceeding. Fanboism aside, we cannot even entirely exclude the probabilty of WL2 being crap, which is a natural thing in game development.

And asking for more money at this stage?.. I will think twice before donating again to the same company without seeing the result, and "Torment" (despite loving the game) is no magic word for me.

Were it not for Mr. Fargo and InXile, I would suspect fraud.
 
It does sound strange. But it's not like inXile has the running funds to finance the pre-production of this game out of its own pockets. They've got just three people working on it now and even that they can't fund indefinitely. If they don't Kickstart at some point, they'll have to let Kevin, Colin and Adam go, let alone being able to expand it to a proper preproduction team of writers and concept artists.

It's a simple economic reality that they need money now and Kickstarter, which they want to return to anyway, is their first if not only option. It's not ideal, and plenty of people will want to wait to preorder later when Wasteland 2 is out. That just is what it is, they still don't have much of an option to not do this, just because of the economic reality.

That doesn't mean it's not right to be concerned, of course it is, or to say "they're not getting a cent until Wasteland 2 is out". Fair enough. They still have to try, to be able to keep the team together and get a proper production process rolling. Not ideal, but better than the alternative of firing everyone.

Mr Fish said:

That Numenera, yes.
 
Hmm, what would preclude them from starting the preproduction of an entirely new game after they've done with WL2? I mean what's the hurry?

And one more thing about "trying" a kickstarter: trying to raise funds could achieve very negative results, at least from the PR point of view, which could hamper any future work on the project in the long run. A perfect example is BI's recent campaign.

But maybe I'm missing something out entirely.
 
egalor said:
Hmm, what would preclude them from starting the preproduction of an entirely new game after they've done with WL2? I mean what's the hurry?

They'd have to fire their current pre-production workers (writers, concept artists, Kevin Saunders). You then have to hope they're still around and willing to work for you when you start up again. And with some iteration and R&D done, a lot of technical staff would have nothing to do during the next game's pre-production and might have to be laid off. Plus it creates an unnecessary delay when the process of pre-production being fully done and them rolling into it after a month's pause is much more natural.

Here's Tim Schafer on how this usually works in the industry, routine layoffs and high turnover create a very bad work environment, workflow, and keep breaking up winning teams. Sure, inXile can work like that too, nothing precludes the option. But do you want them to? I don't. Ideally they'd be able to self-fund pre-production, yes, but they're a small company with only enough running funds to keep a small core team hired for now to design the core and prep a good pitch, and even that they can't do inevitably. "Ideally" just isn't there.

egalor said:
And one more thing about "trying" a kickstarter: trying to raise funds could achieve very negative results, at least from the PR point of view, which could hamper any future work on the project in the long run. A perfect example is BI's recent campaign.

Black Isle? That's kind of something else entirely. If the Kickstarter fails because Wasteland 2 isn't out yet, then they'll have to wait until it is. There's not enough of a drawback there to not at least try it.
 
I guess that target audience of Wasteland project might be different for new Torment game. No one whined about Obsidian starting their own Kickstarter, while Wasteland 2 is still in development. I guess that they have a good chance to get funded for new Torment even now.
 
I'll kick in to this, as will enough people to get them a few million, but I have the feeling many publishers would take this on after the success of Wasteland 2's funding.

Don't they owe it to the Kickstarter community to shop it around first?

If the answer is they dont want to work with a publisher then Kickstarter probably isn't the ethical tool for them to use.
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Don't they owe it to the Kickstarter community to shop it around first?

No

Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
If the answer is they dont want to work with a publisher then Kickstarter probably isn't the ethical tool for them to use.

Disagree. It's been made pretty clear by many developers that they don't want to work with a publisher and that they believe working with a publisher will hurt the quality of the game they could make.
 
Considering kickstarter is not a merely financing tool, but also a thing through which a lot of faith is conveyed as well, ethics is not the last thing to consider here.
 
You talked about perhaps using turn-based combat instead of real-time with pause: is that wise? Surely the fans would wage war against you?

Talk about silly interviewer questions :lol: :roll:
 
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