faran-brygo
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Kickstarting the future of game publishing: An interview with Brian Fargo
When I was 12 years old, my days mainly consisted of one thing: playing games on my Commodore 64. I would set my alarm early to get some gaming in before school, think about the games all day during school, then come home and play as much as I could before my parents made me stop and do homework or chores. Aside from TSR's Gold Box series, the two games that molded my childhood and my love for gaming were Wasteland and The Bard's Tale. Both of these games were made by Interplay Productions, a company founded by Brian Fargo in 1983. Fargo has always been an iconic figure to me. I regularly name my MMO characters Faran Brygo (a name he used for an NPC in the original Wasteland). I'm certainly not alone in my love for Wasteland (which I have labeled for years as my all-time-favorite RPG), but I think it's safe to say that many gamers who enjoyed Wasteland always wondered why there was no sequel. Fallout 1 and 2 were "spiritual successors" to the game, but for copyright reasons, they were never actually labeled as true sequels. Fargo tried to make a true sequel for 20 years but was always met with brick walls from publishers who weren't interested in resurrecting such an old game. Enter Kickstarter. After the wild success of Tim Schafer's Double Fine crowdfunding campaign, Fargo got the idea to try it out for himself. The timing was right with the current nostalgic gaming scene, the popularity of the post-apocalyptic genre, and the fact that most of Interplay's original fans are now in a position of making a tad more income than allowance money from childhood chores. We sat down with Brian Fargo to discuss his views on the potential of Kickstarter, the future of Big Brother game publishers, and Wasteland 2.
