Wizardry I'm going to have to ask you to stop being so melodramatic.
Neverwinter Nights 2 and Drakensang : River Of Time were definitely decent, recent RPGs (Unless you don't qualify the two grandaddies of paper RPG systems RPGs.)
Like them or not I don't think you can write them off that easily as not being "proper" RPGs.
Now let's not be silly. There's nothing in your definition of RPG that excludes pausable real-time games.
Irrelevant on further examination of the rest of the thread.
I'm just going to assume that Wizardry was correcting himself and stating that he meant turn based games in his original post about TOEE. This way I hope to avoid another argument on the topic.
But back to the original post : I don't think that we can directly compare the two Kickstarters directly. They're completely different games in completely different genres being punted by completely different personalities. I'd say that the only similarity is that they are on Kickstarter.
Full credit to Shaeffer for getting the ball rolling on the Kickstarter bandwagon.
For the record the only game I'm backing and plan to back is Wasteland 2. It was an irrational spur of the moment decision since I'm pretty leary of the whole Kickstarter concept. I'm curious to see how it works out.
I think you failed to express it fully.
Irrelevant on further examination of the rest of the thread.
I would buy that RPG:
real-time-bill-maher.jpg
The Medallion of the Imperial Psychopath, a Napoleon: Total War AAR
For the Emperor!, a Total War: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai AAR
STOP even using the acronym "RPG". It longer means anything in the context of computers. It's dilluted beyond all repair. It has been used to describe all kinds of games, hell - even racing games fit the common definition. After all, in many racing games you work your way towards better cars. That's character (stat) progression ! How many games don't have the "player gradually becomes more powerful" aspect ? Not that many.
Going back to the original post, Wasteland 2 has now raised over three million dollars, if you include all Paypal donations, with a bit more than an hour to go. Not quite on the same level as Double Fine, but then again they did have the first-mover advantage. Besides, I don't believe there's much to be gained from directly comparing the two projects, even more so since I assume a lot of people backed them both.
What they both proved is that there still exists a demand for these neglected genres, which hopefully encourages other small studios to invest into projects that might have been deemed too risky a few months ago. We've already seen examples of this. The Kickstarters for Shadowrun, Banner Saga and Jane Jensen probably wouldn't have happened if Tim Schaefer and Brian Fargo hadn't been so succesful. I think the game industry as a whole could benefit from more of these medium-budget games that are cheaper to produce than an AAA title but still a step above your common indie game and I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing what the next few years will have in store for us.
Also, mod tools. Yay!
wish this kickstarter craze happened when Troika were still around...