Wasteland 2 - Interview @ VG 24/7

VG 24/7 has posted a new interview talking to Brian Fargo about Wasteland 2.

VG247: What’s the stupidest question a publisher asked you?

Fargo: “Well I had one publisher say, ‘we don’t want to do games based on franchises, we want to do new stuff,’ which, for a publisher to say that just cracked me up because [laughs] their whole business model is re-doing stuff.”

VG247: [Laughs] That’s the antithesis of publishers.

Fargo: “I know, and which publisher would you point to as being a great example of that? This publisher did almost all licensed products so I kind of laughed at that one. There were some who had heard of Fallout, but that was about it. I had other meetings where I’d go in and they were younger. I have no ego about it but they should at least know my product heritage, but I stepped through some of the games I’d done and they weren’t familiar. I asked, have you heard of Interplay?’ and they’d say, ‘not really.’ I just thought, ‘oh boy am I screwed.’”

VG247: That’s absolutely crazy, but how times have changed. Who could have predicted just how aggressively Sony is targeting the indie space today?

Fargo: “That’s one of the other benefits of crowd funding and the indie movement too. For years we wanted people to be recognised for their work as an individual, and so that it had some value. But now you look at Kickstarter with Tim Schafer, Richard Garriott, Chris Avellone, all these people are finally able to utilise their body of work and their name to make things happen. There was no value when you went to talk to publishers. They could care less.”

VG247: But here you are doing it, and making something that feels attuned to the source. It’s clear you’re passionate about it and want to see it sit comfortably alongside what went before. The best part – I think – is that you’ve done it yourself.

Fargo: “We are incredibly passionate about the quality of the writing, the source material, the music and complete variation. There’s nothing worse than playing a game for four hours and then you’re just doing the same thing from there on out. LA is so radically different to Arizona with the cults and the broadcasts. I mean, were going to be serving up odd all the way to the end. [Laughs]”