In a talk given at the Rezzed event on Saturday Obsidian Entertainment Creative Director Chris Avellone, who’s acting as a writer/designer on several Kickstarted RPGs including Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera and Obsidian’s own Project Eternity, revealed that the wild success of these Kickstarters have got the attention of publishers.
Obsidian didn’t even want to pitch Project Eternity to publishers because the idea of an old-school PC-only RPG would get them turned down flat, but now those publishers have actually approached Obsidian with the idea of funding this type of RPG again.
”These Kickstarters for RPGs have been really successful, they have garnered more backer support and more funding than many had thought, and we have noticed that publishers have paid attention to that and they are aware of the success these projects have had,” Chris Avellone explained.
”We have actually had companies reach out to us and go ‘you know what, for that price point, which is a much smaller risk than a lot of our AAA titles where there’s a lot more at stake, that’s much less risk for us and we wouldn’t mind exploring the idea of doing old-school RPGs that are set up like this’. That totally floors me, I did not realise there would be that sort of sea change from publishers, but apparently there are a number of publishers that realise that doing an Eternity-style game is a good fit for them, and I am thankful for that.”
Obsidian seems hopeful that publishers might start funding old-school PC-only RPGs again, and after the devastating crash of 38 Studios following the big-budget high-profile failure of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the skyrocketing price of developing AAA RPGs, these low-price, low-risk titles must seem quite appealing.
We’ll have an interview with Chris Avellone on Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, Torment and Kickstarter success later in the week.
