Brian Fargo's InXile Entertainment sought $900,000 in Kickstarter funding for a sequel to 1988 post-apocalyptic PC RPG Wasteland. It was a lot to ask – more than double the $400,000 Tim Schafer's Double Fine studio asked for – but in the end it made more than three times its goal, closing on over $2.9 million. He's since set up Kicking It Forward, an initiative asking successful Kickstarter projects to commit to reinvesting five per cent of their eventual profits in other projects.
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Diablo III benefits from great writing. Not necessarily in the narrative or dialogue, both of which offer the same old gleefully stagey stuff about warring angels and ancient prophecies. No, it has great writing where it matters: in the names of its class skills. Wrath Of The Berserker, Rain Of Vengeance, Mass Confusion – here’s where creative effort has been spent. Here’s where you can see the density of pulpy exuberance that ten years of development can provide.
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This article discusses revelations from later on in the game, and as such contains spoilers.
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With the high-profile success of projects like Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2 and Republique, Kickstarter is fast becoming one of the most viable routes to market for the sort of risky projects that publishers wouldn't dream of green-lighting.
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Wanderlands is a Melbourne-based indie studio that I’ve written about a couple of times before. The small team has a habit of making ludicrously smart Flash games with simple visuals and ingenious central mechanics. Remember Midas? That was Wanderlands, as was Impasse, which is one of the cleverest puzzle games I’ve seen in years.
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Brian Fargo, founder of InXile Entertainment, is clearly enjoying development of Kickstarter success Wasteland 2, but admits that working to player, rather than publisher, expectations brings with it a very different type of pressure.