Polygon interviewed Brian Fargo where he talks about his long gaming career, and also answers a few questions about his current project Wasteland 2.
More information.Fargo is a known critic of game publishing mores. During his Kickstarter video pitch for InXile's new game Wasteland 2, he portrayed them as children. He mocked middle-level execs who sign off on new projects and who manage developers. He said many of them do not understand video games.
The worst, he recalls, was being forced to release a game he did not consider to be up to scratch. "What do I do when I'm told to just wrap it up and we're not going to have any time for iteration?" he asks. "Of course my scores are going to suffer. But I don't have control over that. Developers take the rap for having bugs in their products. It's not their QA department. The publisher runs QA. Yet the developer is taking a hit for shipping buggy products. Forever."
These days, the number of independent developers hired to work on AAA games is dwindling. Developers like InXile are seeking to take control over their own destinies and creativity via Kickstarter projects. Or they are being bought up by publishers who can wield more control over the companies they actually own.
"I know of some publishers that will purposely try to run developers into the ground so they can buy them on the cheap," he says. "That's also a strategy. Think about that."
Damaged by years of doing business with publishers, Fargo has found a way to make games the way he wants to make them, without the approval or money of large marketing-and-distribution entities.
Two years ago, Fargo raised $3 million on Kickstarter for Wasteland 2, a sequel to an RPG he made back in the 1980s. But a good fund-raising campaign is only part of his journey back from the margins.