Game funding… has changed. Yet some nay-sayers are lamenting that it’s only a matter of time before a high-profile failure discredits the entire Kickstarter system. Fargo, the über fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, is far more optimistic. “I think that this whole Kickstarter business is bigger than me, and bigger than Wasteland. I’m ecstatic that there’s this model that can exist. There’s a purity to the system now. A lot of people said: ‘What if they don’t give you the money to do it?’ Then I said: ‘Well, the game probably shouldn’t have got made!’

“The second part of it is that now with digital distribution, we have access to sell it directly to them. So with digital, we removed the retailer, and with Kickstarter, we removed the publisher. So: Boom! Both guys are out! Direct! That’s a wonderful thing. On top of it, we have the forums, with which we communicate with [our customers], so now they’re even involved in the design process.

“This, to me, is the future.”​

We've been playing around with character customization already as we're building the core system for model creation. We started with a bunch of customizable slots on the character and found that in an isometric/top down view, most of the details get lost very easily. One element that helps us quite a bit is the character portraits. You'll be able to select from many portraits and also import your own. We will have enough slots to give enough choice in gameplay, but not as many as you'd find in a fantasy based game, like WoW. Does a leather strip around your wrist really help you survive the wastelands better? Probably not.

I've been following the armor discussion as well. I tend to agree that having everyone look like space rangers at the end of games can be a bit distracting. We are looking into designing into the world some additional paths beyond simply "bulky is always better". There are some interesting groups in the world working on different technologies. It is possible to get strong but thin materials.

Chris Keenan​