With Wasteland 2 well into development, the developer hopes to get a head start on their next project.
UPDATE: That was quick. In only 6 hours, inXile has hit their initial $900k goal. In an email to backers, Brian Fargo indicated that stretch goals are coming and will be posted soon. You can read the original story as it was reported below.
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As a backer of Wasteland 2, I’ve been privy to updates on the game on a rather regular basis. This relatively new method of game development – in which transparency is key – is still a little strange to me, but I like it. This morning I received another Wasteland 2 update, which normally wouldn’t be newsworthy, but the contents were baffling and, truth be told, rather exciting.
inXile has instigated a new Kickstarter campaign for a game called Torment: Tides of Numenera. If that title gives you warm fuzzies, you aren’t alone as Torment is aimed to be developed in the style of the often acclaimed Planescape: Torment.
Set in the world of Numenera – an entirely new world created by Planescape architect Monte Cook – Torment is promising a narrative driven game that will offer players real choices with real consequences. These are surely bold words for a game that is only just beginning pre-production, but pedigree bundled with the development crew and their intimate familiarity with the original Torment will likely ease any misgivings one may have of backing this type of project.
The biggest question for most though, will be why this is being Kickstarted now? After all, Wasteland 2 has not been released yet. We have no idea whether the original venture should be considered a success or an abject failure.
So why now and not later? The development cycle, of course.
With pre-production on Wasteland 2 now complete, inXile has artist, writers and designers sitting around the office, gathering dust. With only a single game in the pipeline, most developers would lay these people off since it can be rather costly to pay people to do nothing. Instead of bringing out the axe, inXile has elected to get another game into the pipeline, which will keep the team together and produce an even workflow.
Brian Fargo, lead man at inXile and former Interplay developer, has assured backers that dollars allotted to Wasteland 2 will not be used for Torment and vice versa; perhaps assuaging any fears that fans may have that development of one game will adversely affect the other. This doesn’t mean that developed mechanics couldn’t be shared between the two, which would actually drive costs down for both games.
What are your thoughts on this development? Have some of you already backed Torment? Going to play wait and see? Not interested at all? Let your voice be heard and add to the discussion by sounding off in the comments section below!
Press Release
Can Lightening Strike Twice? inXile entertainment Launches Their Second Kickstarter Campaign
inXile To Forgo Traditional Publishing Model In Favor of Crowdsourcing For Upcoming Future Projects Beginning with Torment: Tides of Numenera
(NEWPORT BEACH, CA) March 6, 2013 – inXile entertainment announced today that it has kicked off its Kickstarter campaign (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera) for Torment: Tides of Numenera™ (Torment), which continues the thematic legacy of Planescape: Torment. After the successful funding of Wasteland 2 in April 2012, inXile entertainment has chosen to abandon the traditional publisher-developer business model and focus on crowdsourcing for upcoming projects, beginning with Torment.
inXile entertainment's second Kickstarter marks a historical first with Kickstarter as they try to become the first video game company to attempt to successfully fund a second major project concurrently, thereby proving that crowdsourcing is a viable business model. inXile entertainment's first Kickstarter project, Wasteland 2, recently released a first look gameplay video to the game’s backers in February to an overwhelmingly positive response.
"As we continue our progression toward launch of Wasteland 2, it is important to secure funding now in order to cover the costs of preproduction and to properly scope Torment: Tides of Numenera. This method of development helps to both create a better a RPG game and to keep the winning team together from project to project. The crowd has become our financing partner and we embrace the stronger bond that it creates between us" said Brian Fargo, CEO of inXile Entertainment.
"As with Wasteland 2, 100% of the crowdfunding will be invested into creating Torment. Our biggest goal is to create a game people actually want to play rather than force a game onto people, which is what can happen with the current publisher model. We are designing Torment: Tides of Numenera to appeal to the RPG connoisseurs, focusing on the deeply personal and philosophical themes and the meaningful choices and consequences that made Planescape: Torment great. With support and feedback from the community, we believe Torment will return to the RPG genre a more cerebral experience that we've been hoping to revisit for over a decade," said Kevin Saunders, product director for Torment: Tides of Numenera.
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ABOUT THE GAME
Torment: Tides of Numenera will be a single-player role-playing game, distributed DRM-free for Windows (PC), Mac, and Linux. It will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. Torment will continue the thematic legacy of the critically acclaimed Planescape: Torment™ by having to face complex and nuanced morality decisions, carefully contemplating deep and reactive choices with consequences that echo throughout the game all the while immersed into a new and strange vision taken from by renowned designer and writer Monte Cook's new tabletop role-playing game, Numenera™.
In Torment: Tides of Numenera, players will have to decide for themselves the answer to the eternal question, what does one life matter? Numenera's Ninth World is a fantastic vision of a world in which massive civilizations continue to rise and fall with only cities, monuments, and artifacts left behind to serve as reminders of their past existence. These reminders have become part of the accumulated detritus of eons and now this assortment of ancient power, called the numenera, is there for the taking. One of these humans has discovered a way to harness the numenera to grow strong, to cheat death, to skip across the face of centuries in a succession of bodies. But he discovers an unexpected side effect: You.
For more information about the Kickstarter, please visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera
About inXile Entertainment Company Facts:
inXile entertainment is a mid-sized independent game developer located in Newport Beach, CA. Founded by Brian Fargo in 2002, inXile was first known for its action-RPG Bard’s Tale, the Android version of which (released in fall 2012) topped the charts and won several awards. inXile also brought the world the second large video game crowdfunding success, raising almost $3M for Wasteland 2, the direct sequel to the 1988 classic RPG, and the spiritual successor to Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 (which had in turn drawn upon the original Wasteland for their inspiration).
With inXile, Brian has embraced the crowdfunding approach and is a vocal advocate of circumventing the traditional publisher-developer business model, with developers instead communicating and working directly with the players. He launched the Kicking It Forward initiative – a pledge to donate 5% of a crowd funded project’s profits to fund other crowdfunding efforts. Roughly 200 other successfully funded Kickstarter projects have embraced Brian’s Kicking It Forward promise.
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