Mar 31, 2012 - 9:02 am

Wasteland 2: Publishers Treated Developers Abysmally

Wasteland was an awesome post-apocalyptic game that inspired the Fallout series. The creator of Wasteland and the founder of game developer/publisher Interplay, Brian Fargo, shared his thoughts on the relationship between publishers and developers in the video game industry. He said that there is a lot of tension on the part of developers since the publishers hold so much power.

He said that publishers treat developers in an abysmal way. He said developer tales of heavy handed publishers are few and far between because developers are afraid to talk. If they go on the record, developers risk never getting another development contract. He cited the example of Obsidian, the developer of Fallout – New Vegas. Fargo said that because the publisher is in charge of QA, Obsidian should not be faulted that the final product was buggy. Nor should it be their fault that the delivery date was pushed up and the game missed its target metacritic by one point.

Fargo has decided to circumvent the standard game industry route of having a publisher bankroll his project, a sequel to Wasteland called Wasteland 2. He initially asked publisher friends to help with the project but they refused. He raised, as of this writing, $1,627,209 in development funds through Kickstarter, a community funding platform for content creators looking for cash to pursue their projects.There are still a few days left for interested fans to donate.