InXile and budget problems

[rusty_shackleford]

scam citizen is vaporware

 

[Gord]

Imo no. The game would have been better if it were cut in half. Cut in half means it would have required less money. So less money would have been more fruitful.

Streamlined maybe, not necessarily cut in half - that would have just made it look too short/low on content. When I say streamlined, I don't mean less complexity and more awesome buttons, but rather more polished level and encounter desing in those areas where it's too repetitive. Which would have needed more time (and money).

Nevertheless, from what I understand TToN's development was apparently managed badly and BT4 was at least partially (e.g. when it comes to QA and schedules), as well. So I think that's definitely an area where they need to improve, regardles of available funds.

 

[luj1]

Nothing to do with the budget. We've seen legit games made in fucking cellars by one or two people.

 

[cruelio]

Brian Fargo had been involved in making video games since the 80s all. He has a long track record of failure. If you think the fix is “more money” and not “remove Brian Fargo” I have several bridges to sell you AND an Eiffel Tower.

 

[felipepepe]

The issue was never budget, was management. Every single InXile game has glaring issues that came all the way from pre-production, chief of them all being their inability to properly scope their games.

Depends if you see the glass as half full or half empty.

Lots of video games had management problems that still ended up becoming successful releases or even classics, because they had enough budget to overcome and/or learn from production mistakes, perhaps even discovering an alternative measure they wouldn't have imagined otherwise that winded up improving the final project immensely..

Brian Fargo is one of the oldest & most experienced game producers in history. Do you honestly think his games reflect that? Even going from Wasteland 2 to Bard's Tale IV he hasn't learned shit and still made a game twice as long as it should be, just to satisfy his ego saying he's working on "epic RPGs".

And then, out of nowhere, a bunch of nobodies from Hungary seem to be making a blobber that looks 10x better than Bard's Tale IV, undoubtedly with a much smaller budget:



They didn't even need a kickstarter. Sadly, I doubt they will ever get 1% of the free promotion Fargo gets on the press.

 

[StaticSpine]

Also despite what we all say about caring for gameplay instead of graphics, a vast block of critics (including many on the Codex) bitched about W2's visuals. These players are dumb assholes but this really leaves inXile no choice but to put more budget into art.

This is a double-edged sword. Target audience won't bitch about AoD's graphics - VD knew this and aimed at selling 100k copies. Fargo talks about old-school experience, but he needs much more mouths to feed and he just has to make flashy graphics to appeal to a much bigger crowd.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Didn’t Fargo also say that because inXile was always strapped for cash he had to spend most of his time coming up with financing? That might explain (some of) the lack of focus from management.

 

[Junmarko]

He has a long track record of failure.

 

[luj1]

I think we have to understand that people have efficiency curves. It's just like in sports. Somebody younger and stronger comes up and replaces the veteran. Except in this case it's someone more passionate and more innocent. Look at Avellone. Has he made anything good since PST and TSL? Most of those guys were great at some point, but no one is great all the time. If you can find someone who has been consistently delivering great RPGs for 30 years do tell (Jeff Vogel doesn't count because he is re-releasing the same game every time).

 

[laclongquan]

The issue was never budget, was management. Every single InXile game has glaring issues that came all the way from pre-production, chief of them all being their inability to properly scope their games.

Depends if you see the glass as half full or half empty.

Lots of video games had management problems that still ended up becoming successful releases or even classics, because they had enough budget to overcome and/or learn from production mistakes, perhaps even discovering an alternative measure they wouldn't have imagined otherwise that winded up improving the final project immensely..

Brian Fargo is one of the oldest & most experienced game producers in history. Do you honestly think his games reflect that? Even going from Wasteland 2 to Bard's Tale IV he hasn't learned shit and still made a game twice as long as it should be, just to satisfy his ego saying he's working on "epic RPGs".

And then, out of nowhere, a bunch of nobodies from Hungary seem to be making a blobber that looks 10x better than Bard's Tale IV, undoubtedly with a much smaller budget:



They didn't even need a kickstarter. Sadly, I doubt they will ever get 1% of the free promotion Fargo gets on the press.

I like this art style~

 

[Funposter]

Target audience won't bitch about AoD's graphics

hey Vault Dweller i really thought that AoD looked like shit

 

[Junmarko]

out of nowhere, a bunch of nobodies from Hungary seem to be making a blobber that looks 10x better than Bard's Tale IV, undoubtedly with a much smaller budget:

InXile's problem was the Kickstarter rush, they became over-ambitious far too early due to that initial wave of fan-hype. Each game was a sequel/spriritual successor to a beloved franchise as well, they also just had completely different expectations placed on them from fandom & predecessors.

It was silly to attempt an undertaking of these 3 CRPGs, simultaneously.

Wasteland 2 turned out decent because it didn't have such a high bar, Wasteland 1 left easy shoes to fill and likely gave them enough confidence to focus & stick to their plan - it was an easy sell outside Kickstarter.

Bard's Tale 4 was tricky because Blobbers are probably the most niche of the CRPG genre, they should have just kept it simple rather than try and bridge the gap to a new audience. Unlike Wasteland 2, which had plenty of mainstream TBS examples to go by, BT4 had practically nothing - even Grimrock, which is a modernised Blobber, is still very conservative in it's design.

Having "Torment 2" under the same roof while these two were underway would've been a nightmare - out of all 3, this one REALLY should have been approached on it's own. The expectations for it were just ridiculous, more so internally, as the creatives were clearly unable to agree on gameplay basics, not good.

Fargo puts a lot of trust in his teams, to a fault.

Brian Fargo is one of the oldest & most experienced game producers in history. Do you honestly think his games reflect that? Even going from Wasteland 2 to Bard's Tale IV he hasn't learned shit and still made a game twice as long as it should be, just to satisfy his ego saying he's working on "epic RPGs".

So is Garriott, and he's arguably responsible for some of the greatest in the genre ever....but I'm not sure Garriott even acknowledges why/how SotA was a mess - or if he even cares. And this is after 1 failed attempt through crowd-funding.

Yet I feel Brian has actually learned something from his most recent developments. Wasteland 3 will hopefully reflect that.

EDIT: What Inf said below - also probably a major factor in Brian taking such risks. Wanted to play catch-up with Obsidian, "prove himself" - when he never needed too. Quality>Quantity.

It's been observed on the Codex before that this is an advantage that Obsidian has had over inXile. As a larger company, they had access to more and better artists, more and better programmers, etc. Design is a different matter, but to a large extent, good game design requires that sort of support in order to shine.

 

[Sacred82]

InXile's development process is being sabotaged from the inside.


Some shitheads are responsible for licensing the retarded as shit Numanuma setting and hiring a fuckton of writers with disparate styles for a game that is supposed to let the player gauge the writer's intentions as well as for the development disaster, and they're responsible for WL2's skills being samey and redundant and almost no synergies existing between skills and attributes (I say almost because dialogue skills do use Charisma) even though that is what Wasteland was about and for completely fucking up the balance between AG Center and Highpool to the point where it's not funny. Fargo is a gamer with oldschool sense and he would have realized those things - he almost definitely did. But in the end, someone must always have persuaded him that this is how modern games should be and this is what people want.

Those same shitheads went full retard with what was probably a supposed SJW agenda to make all the characters in BTIV look generic and bland yet unrealistic at the same time, too. This is a minor offence compared to what happened in other InXile games, which actually makes BTIV the best InXile game yet, and it's a very good game in its own right. This may have to do with it being developed outside of Fargo's immediate sphere of influence so those same people had less of a reason to backstab Fargo, maybe aiming to take any praise the game got for themselves.

Let's also mention the absolutely pathetic CrowdOx scamshit they convinced Fargo to let take care of pledge fulfillment years after the kickstarter. That site is a hot mess and the ones responsible for it should be shot, not to mention that pledge fulfillment at the InXile level can easily be done by the company itself.

PS4 ports for both Numanuma and WL2 were also botched, with the Numanuma narrator being hardly audible and in WL2's case, you can't attack objects with weapons except AoE weapons like grenades, which makes AG Center even more of a no-no than it is in the PC version.

Fargo is a gud guy who may have ushered in a hell of an RPG renaissance if he hadn't been surrounded by toadying backstabbers.

 

[Luckmann]

more and better programmers

Unity games don't have programmers.

I realize this is partly in jest, but there's an unfortunate grain of truth to it, and it's bound to eventually cause problems. The absence of actual real programmers means that the expertise and functional knowledge-base of game development is eroded, and there won't be many able to do something "outside" of the "toolbox", let alone teach others how to do it.

Not seeing things from the inside, I can't be sure, but it feels like that has already happened.

It was silly to attempt an undertaking of these 3 CRPGs, simultaneously.

I think it became necessary since they seem to have funneled funding from various developments around a lot in order to stay ahead. But obviously, you can't keep that shit up, and you're spreading your capabilities thin as hell.

 

[Xeon]

I think a lot of people said the later half of Wasteland 2 was pretty good or something, they changed the tech for things to be similar to PoE's look in Torment and then they changed things again to be different with Unreal Engine I think instead of Unity for Bard's Tale.

Obsidian stuck with the same thing but added some enhancements to the later game, from PoE1, Tyranny and then PoE2. Larian was the same thing with DOS1 and DOS2 with some changes and all that. InXile went pretty different, wonder if they stuck to Wasteland 2's type of thing, if things would have turned better.

Also probably been better if they gave up making a new Torment when WotC refused giving them a chance with PST or something to make something else.

 

[cruelio]

He has a long track record of failure.

Have you heard of a company called Interplay? Where is it now? Oh ya. Brian Fargo mismanaged it into the ground, epically, through bad decisions like “you know what sim city needs? Videos that somehow cost millions of dollars to make” and “Stonekeep” (heres a fun fact about that one I just learned: “The intro sequence was the most expensive part of the production, costing nearly half a million dollars to produce, which was ten times more than the initial budget for the entire project.”)

But omg yuze guys. Brian Fargo was somehow involved in Wasteland. Lets ignore all his historic-level bad decisions.

 

[Jimmious]

A bigger budget doesn't necessarily mean "more stuff" but can also mean "more time to develop the game" or "more competent developers" or "more testing". All these would have been good for InXile games

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

I think a lot of people said the later half of Wasteland 2 was pretty good or something, they changed the tech for things to be similar to PoE's look in Torment and then they changed things again to be different with Unreal Engine I think instead of Unity for Bard's Tale.

Obsidian stuck with the same thing but added some enhancements to the later game, from PoE1, Tyranny and then PoE2. Larian was the same thing with DOS1 and DOS2 with some changes and all that. InXile went pretty different, wonder if they stuck to Wasteland 2's type of thing, if things would have turned better.

Also probably been better if they gave up making a new Torment when WotC refused giving them a chance with PST or something to make something else.

I’m glad they didn’t manage to touch PST in any way or form

 

[Junmarko]

Have you heard of a company called Interplay? Where is it now? Oh ya. Brian Fargo mismanaged it into the ground,

Hardly an example for one's "track record of failure" - who measures that, over standing duration/the critical acclaim of individual games?

....and like that isn't a common occurrence throughout the industry - nor that CRPG-focused studios are renowned for it, as they usually ignore publisher interests in favour of the fans (for as long as they can before they're shut-down)

 

[Beastro]

Give moar budget

And I remember when Wing Commander III was famous for its $5 million budget.

 

[felipepepe]

A bigger budget doesn't necessarily mean "more stuff" but can also mean "more time to develop the game" or "more competent developers" or "more testing". All these would have been good for InXile games

Their game with the biggest budget, Bard's Tale IV, was also the one they released in the worst state: buggy as fuck and rushed out without basic quality-of-life features.

Their problem is not budget, is management. More money would only bloat the projects even more.

 

[Jimmious]

A bigger budget doesn't necessarily mean "more stuff" but can also mean "more time to develop the game" or "more competent developers" or "more testing". All these would have been good for InXile games

Their game with the biggest budget, Bard's Tale IV, was also the one they released in the worst state: buggy as fuck and rushed out without basic quality-of-life features.

Their problem is not budget, is management. More money would only bloat the projects even more.

Yeah can't argue with that

 

[Junmarko]

Their problem is not budget, is management. More money would only bloat the projects even more.

Time is money.

Time management is

 

[Infinitron]

A bigger budget doesn't necessarily mean "more stuff" but can also mean "more time to develop the game" or "more competent developers" or "more testing". All these would have been good for InXile games

Their game with the biggest budget, Bard's Tale IV, was also the one they released in the worst state: buggy as fuck and rushed out without basic quality-of-life features.

Their problem is not budget, is management. More money would only bloat the projects even more.

My hunch is that what's happened with some of inXile's games is that they start with a certain not-big-enough budget, hire a not-efficient-enough team with that budget, and then have to pile on more cash as development drags on. That's not as good as starting out with a sufficiently large budget from the outset, which lets you plan ahead and hire everybody you need.

 

[Roguey]

They're just going to scale up the problems.