How Wasteland 2 Went From Hopeless to Half a Million in 24 Hours
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Brian Fargo had given up. He'd spent the better part of the past decade pitching a game idea to publishers, only to be met by indifference and rejection. While he pitched and tried to sell his game, business executives would stare at their phones, texting. Barely paying attention. It was infuriating.
The idea was for a successor to Wasteland, the 1988 post-apocalyptic roleplaying game that went on to inspire the popular Fallout series. Fargo had notebooks full of design concepts and mechanics for the game, which he says would be an "old school, classic roleplaying experience." But he couldn't get it off the ground without finances, and investors just didn't think it would work.
"It was just shocking to me," Fargo told me in a phone interview yesterday. "It felt like such an obvious thing to do. There was this audience, this pent-up demand... I just couldn't get it done."
Even after the success of Bethesda's post-apocalyptic Fallout 3 in 2008, Fargo couldn't convince publishers to roll the dice on his Wasteland sequel. So two years ago, he gave up. It was time to move on.
"Publishers looked at me like I was a dinosaur," Fargo said.
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In order to appeal to everybody, striking a careful balance between old-school nostalgic appeal and modern mechanical sensibility, Fargo says he's looking to the Wasteland forums for ideas and inspirations. He says fan input will be pivotal to the game's success.
"If fans are out there acting really negatively towards something, we're gonna change it," Fargo said, noting that while they "won't be writing the dialogue," they'll have a very large say in every aspect of the game's development.
"We're gonna have fans involved completely."
Yesterday, Fargo tweeted a hypothetical question. After his project's success, it might be on quite a few minds today.
"I wonder what the publishers who rejected a Wasteland 2 are thinking right now?"
