GameZone is up next with an interview with InXile CEO Brian Fargo.<blockquote>GZ: So in the Kickstarter, you were saying you were planning for six months of pre-development and 12 months of development, how far along would you say the game is now?
Brian Fargo: We were working on a lot of the storyline, and the character development and individual plot scenes, but to that extent, that work's been done. There's still a tremendous amount of work that still needs to get done. It's funny because when you talk about the $1 million you've got one group of people saying 'Wow, how can you do it for so cheap?' but then others saying 'I know an indie that made a game for 30 grand, why does it cost so much?' For making a full scale RPG, it really isn't that much, you have to become super proficient. One of the things that saves us money is not doing cut-scenes. Those are incredibly expensive and time consuming and frankly, the hardcore crowd doesn't care that much about them, so that saves us a tremendous amount of time. Really it comes down to having a template for having the perfect map, and then we send that out to six or seven designer, and they will all jump on creating their areas and then we collate it, bring it together, and then we'll be feeding this stuff out to the beta testers throughout to make sure the sensibilities that we promised, were hitting all those right notes. I feel more confident in building this product than I have pretty much any other, because of the fact that the fans were involved in the beginning on the front end to test our sensibilities and clearly they like what they've been hearing, and then we're going to deliver it to them. It's like if we say, 'We're going to have gritty writing', it's one thing to say it, but then have fans look at it and say 'This is horrible writing!' that we'll then have to tweak, so the process is really well organized.
GZ: Right when you talk about fan feedback, my mind goes to Notch and Mojang with Minecraft with how personal they are with their fanbase, are you hoping to replicate something similar to that?
Brian Fargo: We're going to obsess over it. We already have the fan boards set up. I'll give you an example, people are saying 'What if you make it past your goal, and make it to 1.75 million, 2 million?' and in the old days, I'd say we might do this, we might do that, but now we can go to the fans, and ask them what they would like. More special effects, more audio, bigger content, an iOS version, and I let the fans vote and that way we can figure out what we can provide.
GZ: So what we read is that it's going to be a top-down, turn-based RPG very much like Fallout 1 and 2. How will it differ from those games, and will there be some modern conventions, or more of a classic gameplay experience?
Brian Fargo: I think it's going to be a nice hybrid experience between Wasteland and Fallout 1 and 2, along with quite a few graphical updates, but with that said, we're going to experiment with a couple different things, throw it out to the forums, and say what do you guys think about this and that, and adjust accordingly. Overall, yes, it's more of a party based game, much more than Fallout was, focusing much more on the group, rather than the individual.</blockquote>
Brian Fargo: We were working on a lot of the storyline, and the character development and individual plot scenes, but to that extent, that work's been done. There's still a tremendous amount of work that still needs to get done. It's funny because when you talk about the $1 million you've got one group of people saying 'Wow, how can you do it for so cheap?' but then others saying 'I know an indie that made a game for 30 grand, why does it cost so much?' For making a full scale RPG, it really isn't that much, you have to become super proficient. One of the things that saves us money is not doing cut-scenes. Those are incredibly expensive and time consuming and frankly, the hardcore crowd doesn't care that much about them, so that saves us a tremendous amount of time. Really it comes down to having a template for having the perfect map, and then we send that out to six or seven designer, and they will all jump on creating their areas and then we collate it, bring it together, and then we'll be feeding this stuff out to the beta testers throughout to make sure the sensibilities that we promised, were hitting all those right notes. I feel more confident in building this product than I have pretty much any other, because of the fact that the fans were involved in the beginning on the front end to test our sensibilities and clearly they like what they've been hearing, and then we're going to deliver it to them. It's like if we say, 'We're going to have gritty writing', it's one thing to say it, but then have fans look at it and say 'This is horrible writing!' that we'll then have to tweak, so the process is really well organized.
GZ: Right when you talk about fan feedback, my mind goes to Notch and Mojang with Minecraft with how personal they are with their fanbase, are you hoping to replicate something similar to that?
Brian Fargo: We're going to obsess over it. We already have the fan boards set up. I'll give you an example, people are saying 'What if you make it past your goal, and make it to 1.75 million, 2 million?' and in the old days, I'd say we might do this, we might do that, but now we can go to the fans, and ask them what they would like. More special effects, more audio, bigger content, an iOS version, and I let the fans vote and that way we can figure out what we can provide.
GZ: So what we read is that it's going to be a top-down, turn-based RPG very much like Fallout 1 and 2. How will it differ from those games, and will there be some modern conventions, or more of a classic gameplay experience?
Brian Fargo: I think it's going to be a nice hybrid experience between Wasteland and Fallout 1 and 2, along with quite a few graphical updates, but with that said, we're going to experiment with a couple different things, throw it out to the forums, and say what do you guys think about this and that, and adjust accordingly. Overall, yes, it's more of a party based game, much more than Fallout was, focusing much more on the group, rather than the individual.</blockquote>
