Campaigns on Kickstarter have become a common option for developer studios, including Obsidian Entertainment. Director Joshua Sawyer reports in an interview about the hurdles he had to overcome with his idea and his fears that his game could fail even before it was developed. Today, his game has 87% positive ratings on Steam.
Which game is it about? We’re talking about Pillars of Eternity. The CRPG was released on March 26, 2015, for the PC. It was later released for PS4 and Xbox in August 2017, and for the Nintendo Switch in August 2019.
It was previously funded through a campaign on Kickstarter, which reached its funding goal after just 27 hours. After its release, the game received a lot of praise and numerous positive reviews, making it one of the most popular representatives of its genre today with around 87% positive ratings on Steam.
However, the game’s success was not initially guaranteed, as director Joshua Sawyer reported in an interview with Edge Magazine (Issue #404), there were several concerns about the Kickstarter campaign.
Here’s the trailer for Pillars of Eternity:
“I thought the chance of us being funded in a month was 50/50.”
What was the problem with his idea? At that time, the financial situation of Obsidian Entertainment was not particularly stable, leading to the consideration of funding new projects through crowdfunding. The idea was to create a game that would combine the best elements from games like Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, and Baldur’s Gate. But old-school RPGs with isometric camera angles were not in demand back then.
And even though other studios were very successful with their campaigns at that time, Sawyer faced opposition from the studio owner with his idea. It would be too big of a risk. However, Sawyer insisted on his plan, and other members of his team supported him in that.
The studio had already established itself in the RPG genre with titles like Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, and the concept of the planned game was well received by the team. So ultimately, the risk was taken, and the campaign launched on September 14, 2012.
Still, Sawyer feared the game might not succeed: “I thought the chance of us getting funded within a month was 50/50, and the fact that funding was completed in 27 hours blew us away.”
How did the campaign go? With over 73,000 supporters, nearly 4 million USD was raised during the campaign period until October 16, 2012 (via kickstarter.com). This was almost four times the budget that had originally been set as a funding goal.
Joshua Sawyer had already been involved in many well-known titles and is also a big fan of the RPG genre. However, during a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, he realized that one feature was too overused by players and thus affected the gaming experience: He has created great role-playing games and says today: A feature that many of you love was a mistake.
