Team up! Wasteland 2 Hits $2.1m, Obsidian On Board
Let there much be rejoicing. Go on, rejoice. Well, at least smile. No? Well, how about a smiley instead? You won't have to use your face at all. You only have to press two buttons. Come on, let's do it together. On three. One, two, three : And again. One, two, three )
There now, that wasn't so hard, was it? The reason for this rejoicing is that Wasteland 2 just hit its latest crowdsourcing bonus target, $2.1 million - and as well as meaning it's now accrued some 231% of its original target, it confirms that Obsidian's Chris Avellone is coming onboard to co-develop Brian Fargo's post-apocalyptic RPG.
Avellone has already changed his Twitter icon to a Desert Ranger badge and observed that he "can't wait to get started." And I can't wait to see what gets made. For more on the inXile/Obsidian tag-team, you'll be wanting to read my interview with project lead Brian Fargo from a few days back.
Further additions and improvements to Wasteland 2 are promised if the donations climb yet higher, so you know where to go if you want to throw some more money in that. Oh, and if you notice that the Kickstarter page isn't quite at $2.1m and thus feel I should be sternly accused of premature celejaculation, do bear in mind that the funding is augmented by another $42,000-odd in Paypal donations from those who can't use Kickstarter for one reason or another.
One thing I do note is that, on Kickstarter, the game has 'only' 42,636 donors making up the current $2.08m. That's a princely and incredible number of paying customers to have before the product's on sale by anyone's maths, but it does seem that Wasteland 2 has gotten to the enviable position it's in today because of a limited number of people paying higher sums rather than because there's been an absolutely absurd flood of contributors.
It's frustratingly hard to make useful observations as to whether that 42,636 says anything meaningful about the potential size of Wasteland 2's audience until the game's on sale conventionally. It's odd that we're still so far away from the resolution of Kickstarted projects such as this and Double Fine's - we still don't know how these mega-crowdsourced endeavours are going to play out. Interesting times. Exciting times, even. Mathematical times too.
