I'd easily throw a 100$ to Obsidian if they were to develop a Firefly-esque RPG. I've waited for far too long for a "proper" RPG where your ship is just as important as your player character.
I loved the SNES one and enjoyed the Genesis one. I dunno if I'd call those strictly RPGs though. Those were more action/adventure. The SNES one was practically a point and click adventure game. Outside of Shadowrun and Deux Ex, there aren't a ton of cyberpunk games, really.
No new news regarding the Obsidian Kickstarter unfortunatly but there's multiple convention (PAX and Wondercon) panels coming up with Chris.
No new Kickstarter news yet, unfortunately, more as I have it.
I'm expecting exciting things on other fronts from Baldur's Gate (Kickstarter or no) and Wasteland 2 pretty soon, so looking forward to that.
Speaking at Wonder-Con about the Fallout DLC process:
Saturday March 17, 2012 3:30pm - 4:30pm @ Room 208
After Bethesda and Obsidian released Fallout: New Vegas, there came an opportunity to continue the story in the Mojave Wasteland through four narrative downloadable content packs (DLCs). What were the challenges and the rewards? Obsidian's creative director Chris Avellone discusses the design methodology and narrative constraints for the DLCs that followed the hit video game.
Speaking at PAX East in April...
Fri, April 6, discussing sex and Fallout and how to get into games in the first place:
So You Want to Get into the Game Industry?
Wyvern Theatre
Friday 4:30pm - 5:30pm
And for the East Coast who couldn't make it to Wonder-Con:
DLCs: Continuing the Story
Manticore Theatre
Friday 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Downloadable content is an opportunity to continue the experience of the core game and equally important, continue the narrative. What are the challenges and the rewards? Join Obsidian's Creative Director, Chris Avellone, as he discusses the design methodology and narrative constraints for DLC creation, citing examples from Fallout: New Vegas, and other titles in the industry.
Sat, April 7, with the Nuka Break guys and Fallout:
Fallout: Nuka Break the series screening and Q&A
Cat Theatre
Saturday 9:00pm - 11:00pm
Watch the first season of the popular videogame themed web series Fallout: Nuka Break! We'll screen the original fan film, as well as all 6 episodes of the webseries! Afterwards, there will be a Q&A with the creators of the show!
Panelists include: Zack Finfrock [Co-Owner, Wayside Creations], Vincent Talenti [Co-Owner, Wayside Creations], Aaron Giles [Actor - Ben], Tybee Diskin [Actor - Scar], Kevin Brooks [Actor - Mayor Conners], Doug Jones [Executive Producer], Melanie Wagor [Producer], Evan Zissimopulos [Producer], Cameron Diskin [Assistant Director], Aaron Moorhead [Director of Photography], Chris Avellone [Fallout Game Designer]
If you come, bring questions. And beer.
If you're in the area, feel free to swing by, I'm non-toxic and occasionally friendly to others.
Current Responsibility:
Unannounced Title
•Art Pipeline Prototyping and Troubleshooting
•Art Technology Improvements and DX11 Research
•Retopo High Density Asset to be more efficient.
•Asset Validator
So lots of things happened. For one the above mentioned unnanounced title:
Anyway, from the rps interview
RPS: Speaking of that, will you still go forward with your own Kickstarter if the Wasteland Kickstarter passes $2.1 million? Do you have a planned start date for it yet? Or is it just an idea right now?
Chris Avellone: Yep, always in the cards. Our hope with Wasteland 2 is three-fold: First up, we want to support this publishing model. After being in the industry for over 16 years, the Double Fine foray into Kickstarter feels like a change for the better. Suddenly there was absolute proof that people do want adventure games just like I do, and they’re willing to support them. Same thing with Wasteland – there is a market for old-school turn based RPGs I love, and people will support that as well. There’s no way to get a publisher to bite on a pitch like that. You’ll lucky if they’re even listening after the first sentence.
We also plan to learn from Brian’s efforts. Brian positioned himself strongly in the Kickstarter model, made a lot of smart decisions, and he’s going further, by advocating it not just as a model for his game, but working to make it more industry standard. I want to support this, be involved with this, and learn from it. Wasteland 1 is in my top 10 games of all time. If I could travel back in time and tell younger Chris he’d have a shot at it, I probably wouldn’t be here today because he would be dead of a heart attack.
Also, Brian’s been really supportive of other Kickstarter projects, and he’s been great with us on this. My hope is that when we toss our hat in the ring, Brian would be willing to help us out, and I don’t doubt he will based on his actions with the community already.
RPS: Recently, Obsidian had to lay off a large number of people, which was absolutely devastating to hear about. Can you discuss, at all, the circumstances behind that? How many projects is Obsidian working on at this point?
Chris Avellone: A project was suddenly canceled. It happens in the industry – in this case, it affected a large number of employees. We’re working hard at finding them jobs, and friends and developers in other companies also were great in coming forward and helping us out, so many thanks to them. We’re still working on two projects: South Park, and a team focused on pitching our second project that we put on hold for North Carolina.
While it is new information it's pretty much a non-answer though and doesn't tell us how far their plans are. It's also a little discouraging to hear that they survive at the moment just on South Park (whose publisher has its own problems. Thankfully its a project though that would have a high chance of getting picked up by another)
Anyway, what's really interesting is a tweet today by Feargus
just bought 10 games on http://GOG.com - 1000 hours of Might and Magic, here I come.
Who thinks Obsidian could do something nice with a Shadowrun RPG?
This has me feeling slightly prophet like. But more like one of those bad psychics that only get things slightly right but the daytime talk audience still thinks I've totally talked to their dead pets.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I'd easily throw a 100$ to Obsidian if they were to develop a Firefly-esque RPG. I've waited for far too long for a "proper" RPG where your ship is just as important as your player character.
I dont want companies to get the idea that they can hold things fans want hostage. Or for companies to think that they can just get free funding for items that they plan to make a profit off of anyways.
It's not "free funding." We provide the funding, but not for free. We get a game. It's a trade. This is like saying publishers give free funding to developers. No, they pay for a game that they sell. This is just cutting the publisher out partially or entirely and using the sales of the game to fund the game.
If they were making the whole thing open source at the end, or making the game free afterwards, then I would agree. but right now it works like this "fund our ability to make a product that we can infinitely copy at no cost, and weill throw you a copy and keep selling it for a profit afterwards. while creation and development doesnt cost us anything but manhours"
The big problem with the industry right now is noone will take a risk without a good ROI chance. Thats business in general, but this has alot of potential to make things even shittier. But the industry has less reason to do so, and in fact will take advantage. If this takes off I expect a "publishers wont make CoD/madden 50 unless fans pony up 2 million first. oh but you get a dlc skin!" in the next 2-3 years.
I like the idea that my uninvolvement can flat out stop the creation of Maddens and CoDs.
I dont want companies to get the idea that they can hold things fans want hostage. Or for companies to think that they can just get free funding for items that they plan to make a profit off of anyways.
It's not "free funding." We provide the funding, but not for free. We get a game. It's a trade. This is like saying publishers give free funding to developers. No, they pay for a game that they sell. This is just cutting the publisher out partially or entirely and using the sales of the game to fund the game.
If they were making the whole thing open source at the end, or making the game free afterwards, then I would agree. but right now it works like this "fund our ability to make a product that we can infinitely copy at no cost, and weill throw you a copy and keep selling it for a profit afterwards. while creation and development doesnt cost us anything but manhours"
The big problem with the industry right now is noone will take a risk without a good ROI chance. Thats business in general, but this has alot of potential to make things even shittier. But the industry has less reason to do so, and in fact will take advantage. If this takes off I expect a "publishers wont make CoD/madden 50 unless fans pony up 2 million first. oh but you get a dlc skin!" in the next 2-3 years.
I like the idea that my uninvolvement can flat out stop the creation of Maddens and CoDs.
What if rather than a receiving a copy of the finished product and other goodies you got a little return on your investment?
Luckily this might be possible in the near future. A bill passed the house and is now in the senate that will able companies to sell stock.
Wait wut? They can already do that...
Sadly under current SEC regulations companies have a hell of a lot of hoops to jump through, and traversing said hoops is incredibly expensive. If the Wastelander 2 group had wanted to raise 2,000,000 dollars through creating stock it would have cost them nearly a million dollars just to put their company on the stock market. At the moment the stock market is large companies, should this proposed bill pass the Senate it would create a new class of securities under which small firms can exist.
What if you could invest in Minecraft 2 and get a slice of that pie when it comes out? And a little extra for the life of said pie.
Kickstarter works, it lowers the barrier of entry by enabling small developers to raise capital they wouldn't otherwise have access to. This has the potential of being just as impactful, if not more so; its one thing to know you helped get a project off the ground, its another to have some sense of ownership in something.
The future of the video game industry is like the old British auto industry, a few large firm (EA, Ubisoft, Activision, ...) with a smattering of smaller companies competing in the same market (highly competitive).
Late to the party, here, but god dammit, a cyberpunk RPG. Is there such a thing? Deus Ex doesn't count, that's a shooter.
Shadow Run.
Shin Megami Tensei II.
and um....nothing?
I opted in for the Shadowrun kickstarter, but I would love to death an Obsidian cyberpunk game.
The new Syndicate game bombed. There's no market for cyber punk.
I'm not sure using a sequel to an old series that is an entirely different genre than the series it was based on, that was amazingly poorly advertised, is a good basis to claim that "there's no market for cyber punk".
Reincar(Nate) is a 102-page, full-color graphic novel that tells the story of Nate McCoy, a well-meaning, down on his luck P.I. who has a special ability--he can see and interact with past versions of himself. The people he reincarnated from. With the help of Jameson (a Wild West lawman) and Alan (a 1960s-era hitman), Nate works to solve his latest case, one that digs straight to the heart of the city's criminal underworld.
Imagine it as a RPG. You interact with past versions of yourself in order to gain abilities to help you on your adventure.
XBL - ArchSilversmith
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
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drunkenpandarenSlapping all the goblin hamIn the top laneRegistered Userregular
My dream is that Obsidian will make an urban fantasy RPG. There's so much potential for great storytelling in that genre, and it's relatively fresh compared to post-apocalyptic and fantasy at the moment.
Late to the party, here, but god dammit, a cyberpunk RPG. Is there such a thing? Deus Ex doesn't count, that's a shooter.
Shadow Run.
Shin Megami Tensei II.
and um....nothing?
I opted in for the Shadowrun kickstarter, but I would love to death an Obsidian cyberpunk game.
The new Syndicate game bombed. There's no market for cyber punk.
Syndicate bombed because it stunk. It had little to do with the original and was focused on mp to the detriment of the single-player (which was short, shallow and linear).
It's funny that Gaider talked about the importance of interactivity and maintaining the illusion of choice....but DA2 went out of it's way to disabuse the player that anything they did mattered. Especially the end boss(es)
Late to the party, here, but god dammit, a cyberpunk RPG. Is there such a thing? Deus Ex doesn't count, that's a shooter.
Shadow Run.
Shin Megami Tensei II.
and um....nothing?
I opted in for the Shadowrun kickstarter, but I would love to death an Obsidian cyberpunk game.
The new Syndicate game bombed. There's no market for cyber punk.
Syndicate bombed because it stunk. It had little to do with the original and was focused on mp to the detriment of the single-player (which was short, shallow and linear).
I disagree, the new Syndicate game was a competent shooter, it was just not the game the fans of the original wanted. We really need more deep cyberpunk though.
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ComradebotLord of DinosaursHouston, TXRegistered Userregular
Thank you for the kind words, guys. I will miss the people at Obsidian, and our fans as well.
Also, if you feel like chatting about Obsidian games, the industry, or whatever, feel free to swing by my (newly created) Formspring page: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets I’ve never really done the social media thing before, but what the heck.
What did you do on the NWN2 OC/Which charachters did you write?
I was one of the designers on Act 2, along with Eric Fenstermaker and Jeff Husges. So I wrote a lot of minor characters (e.g., all the ghosts in the ruined Illefarn city who told the story of the King of Shadows) and designed a bunch of quests and levels - especially the content in Blacklake (e.g., the Bryce Crypt quest, the imps, the Aldanon's Manse sequence, etc.) Blacklake was actually a complete redesign from an earlier, much rougher version.
Also did most of the design work on the tutorial.
Being on the Act 2 team actually turned out very well because all of us were moved over to Mask of the Betrayer. Since we had already worked together (and got along well), Mask went that much more smoothly - no learning curve as we got to know one another's work.
Posts
Don't be cruel.
My biggest hope is that somehow Crucible gets revieved someday.
If anyone's interested in finding out more about Obsidian's and Troika's early days. The interviews in this ebook seem to get pretty in-depth
http://www.amazon.com/Gamers-Work-Stories-Behind-ebook/dp/B0075QT5Q2
Preview here
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/-/9781430233510/gamers-at-work-stories-behind-the-games-people-play/chapter_6_tim_cain_cofounder_t#X2ludGVybmFsX0ZsYXNoUmVhZGVyP3htbGlkPTk3ODE0MzAyMzM1MTAvODA=
The Urquhart interview starts at page 80.
Environment/Technical Artist Roger Chang has updated his LinkedIn profile
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/roger-chang/3/6b9/332
Anyway, from the rps interview
While it is new information it's pretty much a non-answer though and doesn't tell us how far their plans are. It's also a little discouraging to hear that they survive at the moment just on South Park (whose publisher has its own problems. Thankfully its a project though that would have a high chance of getting picked up by another)
Anyway, what's really interesting is a tweet today by Feargus
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
This has me feeling slightly prophet like. But more like one of those bad psychics that only get things slightly right but the daytime talk audience still thinks I've totally talked to their dead pets.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Shadow Run.
Shin Megami Tensei II.
and um....nothing?
Uh, Starflight?
I like the idea that my uninvolvement can flat out stop the creation of Maddens and CoDs.
What if rather than a receiving a copy of the finished product and other goodies you got a little return on your investment?
Luckily this might be possible in the near future. A bill passed the house and is now in the senate that will able companies to sell stock.
Wait wut? They can already do that...
Sadly under current SEC regulations companies have a hell of a lot of hoops to jump through, and traversing said hoops is incredibly expensive. If the Wastelander 2 group had wanted to raise 2,000,000 dollars through creating stock it would have cost them nearly a million dollars just to put their company on the stock market. At the moment the stock market is large companies, should this proposed bill pass the Senate it would create a new class of securities under which small firms can exist.
What if you could invest in Minecraft 2 and get a slice of that pie when it comes out? And a little extra for the life of said pie.
Kickstarter works, it lowers the barrier of entry by enabling small developers to raise capital they wouldn't otherwise have access to. This has the potential of being just as impactful, if not more so; its one thing to know you helped get a project off the ground, its another to have some sense of ownership in something.
The future of the video game industry is like the old British auto industry, a few large firm (EA, Ubisoft, Activision, ...) with a smattering of smaller companies competing in the same market (highly competitive).
You like pie don't you?
I opted in for the Shadowrun kickstarter, but I would love to death an Obsidian cyberpunk game.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
The new Syndicate game bombed. There's no market for cyber punk.
I'm not sure using a sequel to an old series that is an entirely different genre than the series it was based on, that was amazingly poorly advertised, is a good basis to claim that "there's no market for cyber punk".
I'm fairly sure Deus EX: HR did extremely well.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Imagine it as a RPG. You interact with past versions of yourself in order to gain abilities to help you on your adventure.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
It'll be glorious.
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
My dream is that Obsidian will make an urban fantasy RPG. There's so much potential for great storytelling in that genre, and it's relatively fresh compared to post-apocalyptic and fantasy at the moment.
All you younglings. BloodNet.
http://kotaku.com/5900248/david-gaider-ken-levine-and-chris-avellone-discuss-what-matters-most-in-games-the-words-or-the-world
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/722577/what-narrative-means-in-games-plot-vs-play/
Syndicate bombed because it stunk. It had little to do with the original and was focused on mp to the detriment of the single-player (which was short, shallow and linear).
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
I disagree, the new Syndicate game was a competent shooter, it was just not the game the fans of the original wanted. We really need more deep cyberpunk though.
I'm now unresonably mad at Microsoft for cancelling an unnanounced game.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/justin-cherry/28/a73/758
And with him all the Mask of the Betrayer Leads are not at Obsidian anymore except for the Lead Programmer.
;(