Wasteland 2 - Update #8, More Areas, Mod Possibilities

I like a good adventure game, but for the life of me I can't figure out how Double Fine was able to get over twice as many contributors than Wasteland 2 has so far. Was it just because it was the first project? Or did the documentary side really excite people that much? I'd love to see Wasteland 2 top $3 million, but that doesn't look very likely. I would say $2.5 could be a reasonable goal right now. So far, I have contributed a bit on Paypal and on Kickstarter, but can't really afford any of the really good options, like becoming an in-game NPC.

I was thinking of this myself. I think it's related with the tablet version. Brian says they do not consider to port it to tablets at the moment. But Tim Schafer's game will also be developed for tablets. I think this creates the difference. Also there's the factor that Tim Schafer was the first to put his project to Kickstarter. Initial excitement seems to diminished somewhat. Al Lowe's Larry remake also supports this theory, it raises money but not the same rate as the Double Fine adventure. And finally there's the last moment factor, which will accelerate the increase rate of the money. But I don't think Brian reach the 3 million $ level.
 
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Can someone enlighten me as to what similar projects in scope have for budgets? For example, what were the budgets for Fallout and Fallout 2? How about Baldur's Gate and Planescape? What kind of budgets do more modern RPG's have: dragon age: origins, Risen, or maybe Divinity 2?

Brian said in one of his interviews Fallout 1's total cost was nearly 3 million.
 
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I think I understand what some guy above meant by "DLC vibe". Fargo is starting to sound like a pushy salesman getting us to part with yet another buck for an upgrade that we kinda expected to come with the basic product we just purchased...
Maybe this is the way to maximize fundraising, but it's certainly not the way that ensures gamers like me will continue to embrace the Kickstarter model, but rather a shot in the foot for it. In the future, I'm going to expect a clear statement on what exactly (or thereabouts) the basic kickstarter funding is goint to pay for and what is likely to be added at further stages before I part with my money. Yes, that means I'll be more sceptic and probably less large when the next project comes by. A sham, really.
 
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They just passed 2M (Kickstarter+Twitter). Should take about 3-4 days to get to 2.1M barring further updates. Easy-peasy.

3M is out of reach tho, yes.

What do you mean, Kickstarter & Twitter? Is Fargo pursuing several paths for his fundraising, how do you pledge money on twitter, and where can you see the current count? This is complete news to me…
 
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I think I understand what some guy above meant by "DLC vibe". Fargo is starting to sound like a pushy salesman getting us to part with yet another buck for an upgrade that we kinda expected to come with the basic product we just purchased…
What such an upgrade did he promise?
Maybe you are expecting a bit too much? I mean you can practically buy this game for $15, that might be a special price reserved for backers but I wouldn't expect that you'd be buying a lot more than what you paid for.
 
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Can someone enlighten me as to what similar projects in scope have for budgets? For example, what were the budgets for Fallout and Fallout 2? How about Baldur's Gate and Planescape? What kind of budgets do more modern RPG's have: dragon age: origins, Risen, or maybe Divinity 2?

You need to factor in inflation and wage increase, so it's not really comparable.

Also,
Dragon Age: over 20 millions easy. EA financial chief said in 2010 that they don't do AAA games under 30 millions (include marketing/translation).
Risen/Divinity 2: One of these two cost ~6 millions (or maybe both or was it Arcania?). Might not include marketing/VO/translation, because it was a dev who gave the number and not the publisher.

The biggest % of a game budget is the salary. Let say the average salary for somebody who work on video games is 50k (generous number), you need to double this in term of expense for the company (advantages, materials, locals, etc): so 100k per employee.

This mean that a 10 men team will cost about 1 million per year.
 
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The problem is that creating mod tools usually takes a really long time, that's why most devs doesnt support it, it's not within the budget usually.

Likely true. Still, if they thought of mod support as "something that will sell the game" instead of "bonus content fans might appreciate" more devs & publishers would probably find ways to include it the way they do more "gimmicky" features. Besides, in my limited understanding, mod tools are usually close to what they used to make th game anyway. Just simplified for the less educated users.

if 3M gets modding in, I wish they get it. I couldn't imagine playing any Beth game without it. Even if Wasteland 2 turns out to be an amazing game, there's always that little something you wish could be different.
 
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Mod tools also competes with the developers themselves, so it depends on what they have in mind for the game. But generally it's a good idea from a sales perspective i think, i mean i've bought some games just because it happens to have some interesting mods.
 
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You need to factor in inflation and wage increase, so it's not really comparable.

Also,
Dragon Age: over 20 millions easy. EA financial chief said in 2010 that they don't do AAA games under 30 millions (include marketing/translation).
Risen/Divinity 2: One of these two cost ~6 millions (or maybe both or was it Arcania?). Might not include marketing/VO/translation, because it was a dev who gave the number and not the publisher.

The biggest % of a game budget is the salary. Let say the average salary for somebody who work on video games is 50k (generous number), you need to double this in term of expense for the company (advantages, materials, locals, etc): so 100k per employee.

This mean that a 10 men team will cost about 1 million per year.

Wasteland 2 probably won't need as much marketing costs as FO2 (3million), or so I hope. I guess that compensates for the inflation.
Fargo said that they could still make a great game with 2m, but they'd have to work 12 hours (or more) a day, undergo a lot of pressure and...
 
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Well, I expected to take inflation into account, I was more curious as to how far $2-3 million would get a "labor of love" sort of project. I would imagine a studio like Fargo's would have much less overhead and could make that kind of money go a bit further. I am mostly just hopeful that we will see a great game come out of this.
 
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This kind of reminds me of that Simpsons episode where mr Burns demands to know Homer's name after catching him red-handed spray painting a huge graffiti reading "My name is Homer Simpson" on the wall of his office in a final desperate attempt to force his boss finally learn his name.
The amount of DFA backers should hint that there simply are more people that like adventure games than old school RPGs. This does not surprise me at all. Adventure game fans are a lot less vocal than any other and almost universally ignored. I assume one reason that made many, if not most, of the DFA backers to support that project was that they wanted to make their presence known. In any case I find it hard to believe that a genre that produces on average one commercial game every week is anything but popular.

I am not sure your "the writing is on the wall" comparison does my inquiry much justice. You say there are more old-school adventure gamers than old-school RPG gamers…that's possible. Double Fine might be much more popular than inXile too. But Wasteland is also a well-known and beloved intellectual property. The average contributor seems to have given more to the project than the average contributor to the Double Fine adventure, but still has less than half as many backers. I think it's more likely that it just isn't getting as much media attention — Double Fine was doing something new, maybe people perceive inXile as riding a popular trend while it lasts. I hope word gets out more before the kickstarter ends.
 
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Can someone enlighten me as to what similar projects in scope have for budgets? For example, what were the budgets for Fallout and Fallout 2? How about Baldur's Gate and Planescape? What kind of budgets do more modern RPG's have: dragon age: origins, Risen, or maybe Divinity 2?

Fallout 1 had a budget of $3-5 million, depending on what you include exactly. Fargo mentioned it being $3 million recently but 3-5 is the number he gave me. Between its reboots and huge cost-sink in talking heads and voice-overs, it's a pretty high budget for the time.

BioWare RPGs generally have a budget of $30-40 million. That's including publishing and PR and VO cost, three of the most expensive factors. I dunno about Origins coz it had such a long development time. Risen and Divinity 2 have smaller budgets (Piranha Bytes is like a 25-30 man studio).

If they reach $2.5 million, that's a fine budget without VO and publishing overhead and PR and the like. As long as you don't expect graphics much better than Fallout's, and not a lot of voice-work or any cinematics.

Kickstarter & Paypal?

Yeah.

vurt said:
The problem is that creating mod tools usually takes a really long time, that's why most devs doesnt support it, it's not within the budget usually.

It also takes away a ton from the development time, which is why Fargo has been very wary about promising it as an at-or-near release feature. With no engine selected yet, it's very up-in-the-air what they'll be able to do. inXile doesn't really want to promise anything they can't do.
 
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What such an upgrade did he promise?
Maybe you are expecting a bit too much? I mean you can practically buy this game for $15, that might be a special price reserved for backers but I wouldn't expect that you'd be buying a lot more than what you paid for.
Not saying he did, saying it feels like he did. I'd really prefer he had stated more of what we can expect in the beginning.
That said, simple mod tools (not entire SDKs) for low budget games have been known to exist.
 
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3M is out of reach tho, yes.
24bq4nb.jpg

Wouldn't bet on it, but it's definitively not completely out of reach. It's certainly the level to try and shoot for at this point.

Eh, that was suppised to be 2.5M in my post above yours, sorry.
I'd be very surprised if it didn't pass 2.5M.
 
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This is also interesting data:
ny7leh.png


In the very unlikely scenario that the funding difference goes back to the high of 25%, Wasteland 2 would still end up at 2.5M.
 
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Can someone enlighten me as to what similar projects in scope have for budgets? For example, what were the budgets for Fallout and Fallout 2? How about Baldur's Gate and Planescape? What kind of budgets do more modern RPG's have: dragon age: origins, Risen, or maybe Divinity 2?

Production budgets for modern AAA games range from around 40-60 million to as high as 100-200 million for some of the most high profile projects like GTA IV, Skyrim, TOR, etc. Then the marketing cost can be many millions more on top of that, but I assume InExile intends to partner with a publisher that would cover the marketing cost.

No idea about DA:O, Risen or Divinity 2. The budget for the original Fallout was $3 million, but that was so long ago that you would need to take inflation into account
 
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Production budgets for modern AAA games range from around 40-60 million to as high as 100-200 million for some of the most high profile projects like GTA IV, Skyrim, TOR, etc.
It would be more interesting to compare the budget of an old game with a similar new game to see how much cheaper it is to produce roughly the same content using modern development tools and engines.

How much did Legend of Grimrock cost in comparison to Dungeon Master for instance? Or Hard Reset compared to Quake II, Gemini Rue compared to Monkey Island, Amnesia compared to System Shock etc.

If you cut the talking heads and cinematics from Fallout 1, I'd be willing to bet that you can do the entire game for less than $500K. On second thought, you can probably use some face capture software to do something similar to the talking heads for virtually nothing.
 
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If you cut the talking heads and cinematics from Fallout 1, I'd be willing to bet that you can do the entire game for less than $500K. On second thought, you can probably use some face capture software to do something similar to the talking heads for virtually nothing.

If you have one or two people who work from home and don't quit their day job, you can certainly accomplish a lot very cheaply but it would take a long time to finish the game.

When you hire a team of 40-50 people to work on a project for 18-24 months, earning $40k - 120k per year, those salaries and benefits add up. Not to mention VO talent, motion capture, soundtrack recording, servers, facilities, etc.
 
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If you have one or two people who work from home and don't quit their day job, you can certainly accomplish a lot very cheaply but it would take a long time to finish the game.

When you hire a team of 40-50 people to work on a project for 18-24 months, earning $40k - 120k per year, those salaries and benefits add up. Not to mention VO talent, motion capture, soundtrack recording, servers, facilities, etc.

$500K is at least 5 people working fulltime for 12 months. I think that's enough to produce a game like Fallout 1 if you use an existing engine and skip cinematics/VO.
 
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