The 47-year-old game developer Josh Sawyer is the mind behind some of the most popular PC role-playing games of all time, such as Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas. Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 are favorites among RPG fans on Steam. But the developer says the two games could have been better; he made compromises and knowingly made poor design decisions because he felt committed to ‘ultra-nostalgic players.’
What kind of games has Sawyer made?
- In 1998, Sawyer started as a designer and lead designer on “Icewind Dale”, a game that aimed to accurately depict the tabletop role-playing game “Dungeons and Dragons” as a computer game, much like Baldur’s Gate.
- Later, he worked as lead designer on Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. That is the king class of role-playing games: Fallout: New Vegas has 96% positive reviews on Steam. Additionally, he worked on Neverwinter Nights 2.
- In 2015 and 2018, he served as chief developer on “Pillars of Eternity” . These are two “role-playing games like the old days” that were funded via Kickstarter.
At the beginning of his career, he only wanted to make Dungeons and Dragons as a computer game
This is what he says now: At a panel from PC Gamer during the developer conference GDC, he explained:
I have been playing D&D since 1985 and other tabletop RPGs since then too. When I made my first game in 1998, it was Icewind Dale and I was like YEAH! I was so excited.
Sawyer states that he incorporated every single idea he had while role-playing Dungeons and Dragons into Icewind Dale starting in 1998.
But in 2012, 14 years later, he wanted to develop “Pillars of Eternity,” which had raised nearly $4 million on Kickstarter. And now he faced a difficult situation.
Ultra-nostalgic fans wanted ‘games like before,’ even though he had better ideas
This was his problem: Sawyer says: Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 are probably the games where he made the most compromises.
Because he had evolved as a developer over 14 years and had new ideas in mind for how he would design the games. But these were two Kickstarter-funded games, and the customers expressed: ‘No, we want Dungeons and Dragons, we want exactly the same experience as with the Infinity Engine Games.’
Sawyer says: Because people had paid for a game ‘like before,’ he felt obliged to develop the games in that way – actually against better judgment:
I felt that obligation, but I also felt that I ultimately had to make bad design decisions. It was as if I were making a game worse to respond to the preferences of an audience that wanted something ultra-nostalgic.
Not only publishers demand compromises – fans do too
This is what it’s about: It’s paradoxical. Because in video games like Star Citizen, it is said that developers are only independent through “crowdfunding” and can implement their own vision without making compromises demanded by a publisher.
Only when one does not have to listen to “the people in suits,” can something great and original arise, say advocates of crowdfunding.
But fans also have their needs that do not always align with the developer’s vision.
Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 have 87% positive reviews on Steam each. A good question is whether the ‘original version’ from Sawyer might have even crossed the 90% mark. We will probably never know.
Role-playing games like Pillars of Eternity work well through Kickstarter. MMORPGs do not have such a great track record:
6 promising crowdfunding MMORPGs that have failed spectacularly
