Obisidian’s new project is an old-school RPG, and it’s been fully-funded in just 24 hours
By Tim Colwill on September 16, 2012 at 10:24 am
Obisidian’s obscure teasing that took over their site last week has now had its true purpose revealed: a Kickstarter! The new project, currently named ‘Project: Eternity’, is billed as “an isometric, party-based RPG set in a new fantasy world” that “pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment“.
“We have wanted to go back to our roots and create an epic PC role-playing game adventure for years,” writes the blurb. “But, it’s been almost impossible to get funding through traditional methods for a game like this. The great thing about Kickstarter is that we can go directly to the people who love to play RPGs as much as we love to make them. Plus, we don’t have to make compromises with a publisher. We make the development decisions, we market the game, and we don’t have to answer to anyone but you – our fans.”
Obsidian are asking for a budget of $1.1 million from their fans, and a mere 24 hours later, they’ve been given it. In fact at the time of writing, 27,684 people have donated a whopping $1,128,066 — and there’s still 31 days left on the clock.
If you’d like to be a part of the drive, there’s 5000 slots left of the $20 ‘pre-purchase on Steam’ support option remaining, so head on over and take a look.
Source: Kickstarter
Kickstarter suspends Gmod (Update: Gmod issues statement)
Suspension irreversible, apparently.
Gambling Games: Why early access is not (always) worthwhile
James explains how early access can lead to things going horribly wrong.
Hands-on with Divinity: Original Sin – an impressively free-form RPG
With only a few days left on Kickstarter, we check out this impressive indie RPG.
You can use the following bbCode
[i], [b], [img], [quote], [url href="http://www.google.com/"]Google[/url]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
facebook
twitter
google+
rss
Please don’t do a Dragon Age with this new fantasy world.
Originality would be nice.
That’s easily the worst pitch video I’ve seen for any of the major kickstarter games. They sure aren’t giving much away.
why is a big dev studio asking for kickstarter?
isn’t the point of kickstarter to fund studios that wouldn’t normally be able to get funding? it just seems like obsidian could get some funding if they asked.
skitzor,
Bigger studios are using to get funding for games big publishers wouldnt back. Such as an old school rpg. Or in double fines case, old school adventure game.
Threw down $20
Not to mention that if developers can cut out publishers, its better for pretty much everyone. The great thing about kickstarter is that it should help push for more creative projects that aren’t just clones of CoD/BF. Reason for this? Publishers don’t want to gamble on new innovative concepts, instead they would rather pump put a new CoD or BF game every year which is just the same crap rehashed.
So by avoiding going to a publisher, Obsidian have all the power. They don’t have some corporate knobhead telling them what they can and can’t do and they can also release the game in a suitable time frame. Thats the other issue with Publishers, if you have deadlines to meet (aka. holiday season) they would rather rush the game out and capitalise on holiday cash splurging than actually release the game in a decent state (ie. stable, minimal bugs). That last point is rather important for Obsidian. Seeing as they don’t exactly have the best track record of late in regards to bugs etc. So if this kickstarter can allow them to make a great old-school game and give them sufficient development time to release the game in a stable form, then why complain just because they are a big studio? They are here developing a PC oriented old-school RPG, its their roots and their passion. No publisher will fund a project like that because it won’t make several hundreds of millions like CoD or BF. So good on Obsidian for going to another avenue to create a project that they, and I think any RPG fan, want made.
Well the game doesn’t exist yet, that’s why they’re doing a kickstarter… Imo it’s better than doing a whole concept movie like Planetary Annihilation that may or may look anything like the actual game.
Some needs to kickstart Arcanum 2 I would be in for that.
Gotta be in it to win it. I’ve pledged, and I’m looking forward to it without a doubt.
This^
Obsidian using kickstarter is a bloody disgrace.
I don’t see the big deal, even if they could get funding for something like this from a publisher (which they probably couldn’t), if you choose to pledge towards something on Kickstarter its essentially just a very early (and highly discounted) preorder.
Really neko? Really?
We’re getting skilled, talented and professional people working on a title of their own, without publisher interference (besides what the kickstarter pledgers ask for I guess). If you can’t see the benefit in that, then you haven’t seen enough titles ruined by publishers. It’s not a disgrace, it’s a damn smart move cutting publishers out, and who the hell said kickstarter is for unskilled workers only?
minkelz,
You are shitting me. They’re doing a kickstarter to create their game? Thanks for the information.
Obsidian’s video isn’t so much “you shoud back this idea because it’s awesome”, it’s more “you should back us because we’re awesome”. It’s light on details and passion and heavy on why they’ll do a good job of it.
I saw it and thought the same as some others
“Obsidian, really? Greedy pricks, they don’t need a kickstarter.”
Then I realized that yea, it’ll be hard to get a publisher to support this game. Not only that but with the kickstarter, there is no publisher, it’s all Obsidian. Win win for the consumer.
The benefits outweigh the greediness in this case, I believe.
A disgrace to whom? They laid out a reasonable idea for which commercial funding would be difficult to obtain, and a lot of people responded to support the venture. I mean it was only a few weeks ago that we saw an EA exec bragging about how not a single game had been greenlit that didn’t feature a multiplayer component, and unfortunately that’s the narrowminded direction the industry is heading right now.
Personally I’ve got no problem with more quality titles being funded via kickstarter, cutting the publishers out of the equation means more creative risks taken by devs, and healthier wallets for both gamers and developers.
Yeah, no thanks.
There’s nothing wrong with it, they probably came up with this idea for the game and went to their publisher who said yeah right.
So then they went to the people who said yes please!
20 dollars is the preorder? is this the same value as a 60 dollar AAA title if they were to develop under the umbrella of a publisher?
Set down $35 to get the soundtrack as well, didn’t hesitate to pledge. THe last game I played that was as fun and interesting as BG2 or FO2 was Dragon Age and look what they did to number 2 because the publisher though too many people sucked at the first game.
Well according to the Geneva Standardized Value Act it should meet the criteria of Singleplayer Minimum Time[1] but might fail to have Sufficient Texture Fidelity[2] and fall into the $30USD bracket which would make the $20AUD pre order acceptable.
Some people will complain about anything.
For instance I will complain that they put this on a weekend I was away and therefore missed the $20 versions….