At the end of the day, any type of business is run by consumer demand. Gaming is no different, so it probably won’t surprise anyone that the success of Kickstarter has lead to the possibility of more old-school RPGs being funded by publishers.
Take developer Obsidian Entertainment, for example. Project Eternity, their highly successful Kickstarter, would have never been pitched to publishers.
“These Kickstarters for RPGs have been really successful, they have garnered more backer support and more funding than many had thought, and we have noticed that publishers have paid attention to that and they are aware of the success these projects have had,” Chris Avellone, Obsidian Entertainment Creative Director said at the Rezzed event this past Saturday.
“We have ac tually had companies reach out to us and go ‘you know what, for that price point, which is a much smaller risk than a lot of our AAA titles where there’s a lot more at stake, that’s much less risk for us and we wouldn’t mind exploring the idea of doing old-school RPGs that are set up like this’. That totally floors me, I did not realise there would be that sort of sea change from publishers, but apparently there are a number of publishers that realise that doing anEternity-style game is a good fit for them, and I am thankful for that.”
Source: StrategyInformer.com