Baldur's Gate III may get Kickstarter boost
Overhaul Games wants to make a new Baldur's Gate and is considering Kickstarter
Kickstarter has become a solid option for some developers, as Brian Fargo and Tim Schafer would tell you, and now Overhaul Games has expressed interest in finally doing another sequel to the popular Baldur's Gate franchise via Kickstart, following the HD re-releases of Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II.
"Baldur's Gate III has been our long-term goal," said Overhaul Games COO Cameron Tofer to GameSpy. "We have a lot of things to put in place before such a project can be launched. So currently there is no such project but that's the one we want to do. Our thoughts have been that Enhanced Edition for [Baldur's Gate] and [Baldur's Gate II] just make sense before there's any Baldur's Gate III."
Overhaul noted that seeing Brian Fargo's success with Kickstarter for Wasteland 2 has been inspiring, so it's a route the developer is likely to take.
"We're totally thinking Kickstarter," he said. "It just makes so much sense and solves so many problems. I think what Brian [Fargo] is doing with Wasteland is very interesting."
Wasteland 2 has hit over $1.37 million, while Double Fine's initial push into the site broke records, resulting in over $3.3 million earned.
So I'm wondering about IP control here. wasteland was published by Electronic Arts with Interplay as the developer, back in 1988. Presumably EA still owns this license as they rarely if ever let licenses go just because. And apparently part of the impetus for Interplay creating Fallout 1 was that it was a spiritual sequel to Wasteland, but that they couldn't publish Wasteland themselves since EA owned it.
So with that in mind, what are folks thinking with Baldur's Gate and Kickstarter? Baldur's Gate is part of the Dungeons and Dragon's license that is owned by Wizards of the Coast (since TSR's merger with WoTC). Atari controls the interactive rights to that.
So BG3 would have to go through Atari just as Wasteland 2 would have to go through EA. They could be Kickstarter funded, but will these publishers let someone make their dream game with community funding and without publisher input? Seems like an odd situation. Maybe they're going to change the names pre-launch? Still advertising a game for funding with one name and then changing its name last minute could still run into legal/IP troubles. Maybe I'm missing something...?
Posted:A year ago