Brian Fargo - Interview @ Digital Trends

Couchpotato · October 13, 2014

Brian Fargo is interviewed on Digital Trends to talk about how Kickstarter is turning game development into a spectator sport. Have to say he is probably right.

“Development has become a spectator sport.”

That’s InXile Entertainment founder Brian Fargo, referring to the Kickstarter-fueled process that brought the studio’s just-released Wasteland 2 to life. “You have a lot of people [looking over] your shoulder questioning everything. You have this open dialogue of what you’re doing all the time and you have to be very careful and front facing with your communication.

“You also need to be careful with what words you use. I used the word ‘social’ one time and it was like a four-letter word with extra letters. That’s different than what you have in the typical publisher relationship.”

Fargo founded InXile in 2002, not long after another studio he founded – Interplay Entertainment – was acquired. Interplay developed a reputation during the ’90s as one of gaming’s premiere creators of RPGs. It’s the studio that birthed the first Wasteland, as well as Planescape: Torment, another classic that’s found new life on Kickstarter as Torment: Tides of Numenera. For that one, Fargo was able to bring in former Interplay colleague and Planescape creative director Chris Avellone as the writer.

Avellone explains that keeping lines of communication open between developer and player from the start actually transforms the ever-important quality assurance process. It’s much more helpful to spot unpopular ideas early on than it is to catch them once the project is in beta testing.

“Knowing about a feature the community doesn’t want two years before the final product is done sets countless man hours free,” he says. “My first experience with this was working on the vision document for Wasteland 2, and I was pretty scared. But the public received it well, received it great, in fact, and being able to share a vision doc with the public is something almost unheard of in the traditional game development models I’ve been part of in the past.”

More information.

rjshae · October 13, 2014

I think you can probably expect that in just about any entertainment business. Just look at all the drooling spectators following the latest Hollywood gossip or the music business. Plus you have a lot of game players with well-developed personal tastes, many of whom probably grew up designing their own PnP rules variants and scenarios.

ChaosTheory · October 13, 2014

I think it's more a technology issue. Everyone's always had their opinions— but now we can diarrhea those opinions from the palm of our hand, 24-7 on forums, Facebook, Twitter, etc because we have this notion that others care deeply about what we say.

Humanity has risen! · October 13, 2014

I don't think it's such a positive when you have thousands of people watching over your every move and making constant demands over the content, and having great expectations. I actually think it's better for there to be much more separation. I remember that M.A.X was a great turn-based RTS, but for M.A.X 2 they decided to implement every viable forum suggestion and the game became an utter mess. I think one of the reasons games were better in the pre-Internet era was because there wasn't such constant pressure and mounting, multifaceted interaction from the fanbase. If anything I think the best was when they were able to create what they wanted, without any interaction from the outside world, focus groups, public betas, or anything of the sort at all.

forgottenlor · October 13, 2014

Humanity has risen! said:
I don't think it's such a positive when you have thousands of people watching over your every move and making constant demands over the content, and having great expectations. I actually think it's better for there to be much more separation. I remember that M.A.X was a great turn-based RTS, but for M.A.X 2 they decided to implement every viable forum suggestion and the game became an utter mess. I think one of the reasons games were better in the pre-Internet era was because there wasn't such constant pressure and mounting, multifaceted interaction from the fanbase. If anything I think the best was when they were able to create what they wanted, without any interaction from the outside world, focus groups, public betas, or anything of the sort at all.

I can't help but believe that RPGs would almost never get made in this day and age if there wasn't crowdfunding, and crowdfunding entails "people watching your every move." I'm certainly happy that Expedition:Conquistidors, Paper Sorcerer, and Shadowrun Returns got made. I haven't played Wasteland 2 or D:OS yet, but I'm betting I'll also be happy that those got made as well.

rjshae · October 13, 2014

Humanity has risen! said:
I don't think it's such a positive when you have thousands of people watching over your every move and making constant demands over the content, and having great expectations. I actually think it's better for there to be much more separation. I remember that M.A.X was a great turn-based RTS, but for M.A.X 2 they decided to implement every viable forum suggestion and the game became an utter mess. I think one of the reasons games were better in the pre-Internet era was because there wasn't such constant pressure and mounting, multifaceted interaction from the fanbase. If anything I think the best was when they were able to create what they wanted, without any interaction from the outside world, focus groups, public betas, or anything of the sort at all.

I suspect there is a happy middle ground; the developers have to be thick-skinned enough to accept and integrate the feedback and criticism, while sticking fairly closely to their core design principles.

DArtagnan · October 13, 2014

A smart and talented developer will listen to input, but stay true to the vision of the design.

Crowdfunding doesn't mean the mob controls the outcome. Even if you listened to all feedback and tried to implement all suggestions, you'd go mad before having a working game. That's because people want different things for different reasons, so only an extremely insecure and incompetent developer would let the crowd decide anything that conflicts with the vision.

Carnifex · October 13, 2014

Nothing matters to me until a finished product exists. Anything before that occurs simply doesn't merit my attention. It's similar to buying a ticket at a sporting event....you can yell all you want at the players, but does anyone really think they take your caterwails into account? The end product will stand on its own, or not, with no input from the masses.

ilm · October 13, 2014

I judge the end product yes, and I don't give any critique before that. But I have to admit I like reading about aspects of development and the choices they need to make

Brian Fargo - Interview @ Digital Trends

Couchpotato

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