Hi, my name's Brian Fargo. Some of you will recognize my name, but more of you will recognize the company I founded, Interplay. In fact, at Interplay, our mission statement was, "By Gamers, For Gamers", the gamers always came first. And we created some great titles during that time, but the one title I always got asked about the most was Wasteland. It was one of the first games to have a real sandbox world with cause and effect on both the micro and macro level. It also had moral dilemmas, ones where you were making choices, tough moral choices, that had consequences that rippled through the entire gameplay, and that made it very innovative at the time.
In fact, when I travel the world, I always get asked about a sequel, and I've been wanting to do a sequel. Wasteland was made during the golden era of computer games when creativity was king. Not everyone remembers that era, as I witnessed in certain pitch meetings.
— Thanks for meeting with me today.
— So you want us to pay for a Wasteland sequel?
— Yes.
— How old is that game?
— It came out in 1988.
— I'm pretty sure my Mom graduated high school that year.
— Ha-ha, fascinating.
— Have you been involved with any games I might have heard of?
— Have you heard of Bard's Tale?
— No.
— Fallout?
— Can't say I have.
— Stonekeep?
— Doesn't ring a bell.
— How about Dragon Wars?
— I got nothing.
— Castles?
— I like the TV show.
— Star Trek: 25th Anniversary!
— With Picard?
— No, Kirk.
— Then no.
— Baldur's Gate!
— Who-gate?
— You had to have heard of Battle Chess!
— Is it lunch yet?
— Icewind Dale! Neuromancer! Freespace! Kingpin!
— Did you do Angry Birds?
— Would I f*cking be here if I did Angry Birds?
— Will this be like it?
— No-oh! It's a completely different genre, it's a roleplaying game!
— Is it a billion-dollar franchise?
— Probably not.
— Then I can't help you.
— So you're turning down a game that the fans want?
— Hey, I'm a publisher.
— So, from what I understand, Wasteland is a derivative of Fallout.
— Actually, it was the other way around. We wanted to make a Wasteland 2, but we didn't have the rights, and that's why we made Fallout instead.
— Interplay made Fallout 3? I love that game.
— N-n-no, we made Fallout 1 and 2.
— There was a Fallout 1 and 2?
— Yes! So, could we make this happen?
— Yes, we can. I'm excited about this, Brian. I'll get my legal team on this today, and we'll give you a call first thing tomorrow morning.
Two weeks later…
— Hello! Hey, good to hear from you. So, are we finally going to go out on Wasteland? Yeah, I got your FarmVille request. Yeah, but… No… Sure, I'll feed your chickens! But what… But what about the… Uh… It sounds like you've plenty of fertilizer, what about Wasteland? Oh, another direction? All right. OK, thanks.
— Yes! I got your Bejeweled request!
— Yeah, hey, Brian, yes, Richard Cornwell from Big Ass Games.
— Ooops! Sorry.
— Hey, we've decided to move forward with Wasteland. It's just a few tweaks. Let's do a lunch. … Perfect. All right. Great.
— OK, let's talk about a few minor tweaks.
— I tell you what, I don't want to stray too far from the original.
— Oh, no, no. I mean, these are tiny modernizations, if you will. Take, for instance, um… We would like it to be a first-person shooter.
— Excuse me?
— And our numbers people, they tell me romantic vampires are really big right now, and we feel like they will seamlessly fit into the Wasteland storyline.
— Maybe we should use birds as weapons.
— Oooh! That's good, that's good. I'm glad we're on the same sheet of music. What do you think the boots look like? Are they red? Because red is really big. Are you seeing red?
— I'm definitely seeing red!
So, in all seriousness, I've been wanting to make a Wasteland sequel for years. In fact, I'm hoping this sort of fan funding brings back this sort of genre of product that I love to play and I love to make.
And, you know, to clarify what kind of game Wasteland 2 was intending to be, it's a turn-based, top-down roleplaying game, and it's also party-based. So that is, you control a group of people rather than just one individual character. You could also take them and split them up and put them in different places around the map, which allows a more tactical combat to go on. And anybody who's played that kind of game, they know how much fun that can be.
I've also got a great team put together. Michael Stackpole, one of the co-creators of Wasteland and also a bestselling author. We have the plot and storyline written by Jason Anderson, and Jason was one of the co-creators of Fallout. And then I have Mark Morgan who did the music for Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. He's helping me setting the tone and vibe for Wasteland 2. And in addition, there will be other people coming aboard on the team that we'll be talking about.
And… I know this is a lot of money that we're asking for to make this kind of game, but, you know, to make a big, deep, role playing game, you know, they're not inexpensive. But I'll say that all of the money is going into production of this, and I'm personally not gonna be taking any money from Kickstarter myself, so that a 100% of this goes into making it a better game.
So, this really might be the last chance for a Wasteland 2. I mean, this really didn't exist as an opportunity even a couple of years ago. But now with fan funding and digital distribution, that kinda changes everything, and it's frankly probably the best way of having this game made. So now, ultimately it's up to you, the fans, on how badly you wanna see this, and I'm hoping we get to do it, and we'll make you a great game, and, you know, thanks for listening.
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