Well, there's already a perfect way to release a Wasteland-themed software title. It's called "build it yourself and release it on Steam/through your own webstore".
Crowdsourced funding is a really interesting way to get something like this jump started, granted. But it is not a pre-requisite for something like this. And keep this in mind: Vogel's latest releases are, content and complexity wise, way beyond what Wasteland is. And he gets them done in a year and for a lot less than a million bucks. Granted, if he had to do the Avadon engine from scratch he'd probably be looking at 20-24 months of dev time.
Still the point is, there's no barrier for doing this sort of thing. It's true you were never going to secure big publisher funding to do a game like Wasteland.
But you shouldn't ever have been trying to secure big publisher funding to do a game like Wasteland. Possibly excepting if your name is Firaxis (I don't think anyone else would have the combination of will and ability to pull something like this off).
Smoove_B wrote:ware gaming thing is definitely an experiment.
This is dead wrong I think. I believe we're past the point where this can be viewed as anything but viable, even though there are only a handful of ~1M projects on Kickstarter. There are a lot of complications with this as a funding model, and Kickstater has it's share of issues. But this isn't a flash in the pan. It isn't like there were a bunch of ambitious projects on Kickstarter that have failed (as near as I can tell).
As for Fargo, I'm not being clear enough. I don't think Fargo rates as one of the glory days guys. A lot of his credits are "producer" or "weird" (e.g. level designer on a BT port. Uh, ok?). I don't think he has anywhere close to Schafer's (or a lot of other guy's) cachet. I hope he succeeds in this, but he hasn't exactly given me a reason to believe he'll put out a good product even if they do raise a bunch of money, and even if he follows the Wasteland blueprint to a T (something he should not do precisely; the interface should be much improved).