Feargus talks about Project Eternity and Kickstarter (and not South Park) at Rock Paper Shotgun
Feargus talks about Project Eternity and Kickstarter (and not South Park) at Rock Paper Shotgun
Interview - posted by Infinitron on Sat 16 February 2013, 19:46:15
Tags: Feargus Urquhart; Kickstarter; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity; South Park: The Stick of TruthThe second and final part of Rock Paper Shotgun's DICE interview with Feargus Urquhart is up. In this segment of the interview, Feargus talks mainly about Project Eternity and Kickstarter in general, and also a bit about Obsidian's glitchy reputation. He doesn't really have anything particularly interesting to say about Eternity, although the information that the size of the game's development team is currently at "12 or 13 people" should be noteworthy for all of you industry stalkers. More interesting are Feargus' opinions on the Kickstarter phenomenon as a whole. Here's an excerpt:
The interview concludes with a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt by the interviewer to get Feargus to say something about the state of South Park: The Stick of Truth since THQ's demise. Apparently, it's going to be "the most horrible game" that Feargus ships in his career (but of course he means that in a good way).
RPS: At that point, what does Kickstarter become for companies in your position, then? Is it just some kind of nostalgia farm? The biggest successes have definitely hinged on nostalgia, but I think for a while a lot of people looked at it and said, “Maybe this is a truly viable alternative form of funding that could get more innovation into the industry.” Now it’s shifted back towards, “Well, it’s difficult to get real innovation going now unless your budget is $20,000 dollars.”
Feargus Urquhart: Yeah, definitely. It goes back to what we were talking about before. First of all, there’s this haze of just the gold rush. There’s a lot of chaff. It has to resolve itself. Once it resolves itself, Kickstarter will be there to fund things that people want to back. It’s stupid, right? You can look today at what people look to back.
[...] Things like what we did with Eternity, those might go away. Or maybe they don’t go away, but only so many can be done. A few a year. Four or five a year can get funded that way. But for the other things, we could see a ton of them. At that point, when your goal is down to a certain point, it’s more about people. One, they feel the goal is achievable. Think about it this way: When you have a goal of $2 million dollars, my $10 dollars moves it this much. When I have a goal of $20,000 dollars, my $10 dollars moves it this much. It’s not just that I’m getting something. It’s my feeling that I’m helping out. I’m giving to the industry. I’m letting someone do it. When it feels like my impact on that is meaningful, rather than $10 dollars moving it .00001 percent towards the goal, that’s what helps.
RPS: So where does that leave crowdfunding for Obsidian as a company? Is it ultimately more of a sidestep – after which you’ll go back to publishing more traditionally for your projects? Or has it been a transformative experience for all of you?
Feargus Urquhart: These are enjoyable games to make. I think it would be great to keep on making them. It helps us build a brand. So that’s where it’s transformative. It’s going to change our business, absolutely. Is it going to change the entirety of our business? No. I would still love to make Fallout: New Vegas 2, or whatever. Or even take Eternity at some point and have Eternity the [Infinity Engine] games and then Eternity the big open-world CRPG. I think that would be really cool.
Nothing stops us from being able to do those two different things. It’s going to make us look at Eternity as a brand. What else can we do with it? I want to hook up with the Pathfinder guys and see about doing a Pathfinder Eternity world book thing. It sounds a little weird, but… A card game. A board game. I’ve already been chatting with Cryptozoic Entertainment. We have nothing going on specifically, but they have a lot of experience in board games and card games. That’s what’s going to be transformative.
But overall, we still love making those big games. I don’t think we have to say we have to do one or the other.
The interview concludes with a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt by the interviewer to get Feargus to say something about the state of South Park: The Stick of Truth since THQ's demise. Apparently, it's going to be "the most horrible game" that Feargus ships in his career (but of course he means that in a good way).
