Project Eternity - Interview @ Strategyinformer

Strategyinformer has a new interview with Chris Avellone talking about Project Eternity. Read the link for more questions dealing with Fallout, Wastelands 2, and other topics.

Strategy Informer: Why do you feel like the isometric RPG kind of fell out of popularity?

Chris Avellone: I’m not sure that it did. I think that at some point people realised that the controller schemes for consoles don’t lend themselves to controlling a party of multiple people. They have to either be two people flanking you or an AI set, but you can’t have a party of six people all going on an adventure with the controller setups that they had. I think that was enough of an obstacle to knock the idea of “well, if we can’t do isometric RPGs on these particular systems then we shouldn’t do those types of RPGs”. I think things became more consolized after that.

Strategy Informer: It’s a bit sad really.

Chris Avellone: Yeah, and I think it was also much harder to sell PC-only products when it seemed like there was much more money to be made doing console ports and SKUs.

Strategy Informer: On a more positive note, consequently why do you think there has been a resurge in their popularity recently?

Chris Avellone: The interesting thing is that there has been a lot of discussion about isometric RPGs. New ones are being developed but I still think the percentage of gamers that support those titles isn’t actually a huge part of the gaming community, they’re just really passionate and they’re going to show how passionate they are about those games. For example between Wasteland 2, Project Eternity and Torment [Tides of Numenera] the backers consisted of around eighty thousand people, which to a much larger publisher those numbers are insignificant, they wouldn’t even get out of bed for numbers like that. But because the fanbase is so passionate, they’ll pay much more beyond the core price of a product, they’re willing to talk about it much more, they’re a stronger and much more vocal community, and there’s much more information being given about these games too, so I think all that creates a much higher level of attention.

Strategy Informer: And there’s always going to be an audience who will simply wait for the game to go on sale rather than back it.

Chris Avellone: Which is fine too! And I think we’ll probably see the acid test of how well this model’s doing when Wasteland 2 goes into distribution, then Eternity then Torment. We’ll get a sense of how many numbers are out there beyond just the backers, which is important to figure out but we’re just planning on the backers right now, they’re our target audience.

Strategy Informer: Have you thought up a title yet for Project Eternity?

Chris Avellone: No! I believe that is in Adam [Brennecke] and Josh [Sawyer]’s court, but currently it is just Project Eternity.