Developer Appreciation Week: inXile Entertainment

Last year i participated in this DAW "event" and so i figured i should this year :)

So when i sat down to start and think who i should write about, i pretty much came to the same conclusion as last year: BioWare.
The way they interact with their fans/players through media like twitter and of course their awesome games.
I am, as you probably know, or can tell a huge fan of BioWare.

However as i thought about it a little bit more, it came to me i really love this new kickstarter thing :)
The idea of fan funded games, making games the fans want instead of making them the way publishers want them.
I wrote about this in yesterdays post: Kickstart my heart.

For this DAW post i especially want to go with inXile Entertainment, who started the kickstarter to get Wasteland 2 going.

I am a huge Fallout fan and as such i love the idea of playing a sequal to the predecessor of the Fallout series or the Godfather of post-apocalyptic RPG's.

Eventhough i have to admit i never played the original Wasteland (yet), i played games back then on my C64 and Atari 2600 but for some reason i wasn't interrested in RPG's that much at that time, my interrest in RPG's only started when i started playing games like KOTOR.

So with Wasteland 2 this is my opportunity to redeem myself, as this game is being developed by a lot of the same people that brought us the original Wasteland.

I want to thank Brian Fargo and inXile Entertainment for reaching out to the fans for funding to get development of this game started and involve the fans in the making of this game to try and make the Wasteland sequel into a game the fans want.

Now of course this development has hardly started so maybe it is to early to praise them as there will be a development cycle of at least 18 months so there is still a long road to travel, but i guess this post isn't about that, it's about inXile reaching out to the fans to get a game made that apperantly publishers were not interrested in having made and reaching out to the fans to get the game development funded.

Now i know inXile is not the first nor the last who is using kickstarter to get their game funded, but they are making the game i am most interrested in.

So thank you Brian Fargo, inXile entertainment, Chris Avellone and Obsidian for making this happen!

DAW: Bioware

Looking back over the years, i realised that the games i enjoyed playing the most when it comes to singleplayer games came from Bioware, games like Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Dragon Age.
Simply beautifull adventures with lots of storytelling.

The companion system Bioware uses is often a lot of fun to play around with and they seem to have "perfected" it with the recent Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2.

The game that actually really got me into MMO's (and RPG's) was Knights of the Old Republic, after playing this i just had the craving to enjoy more games like this, adventuring in big worlds, questing and enjoying story (i ended up in Star Wars Galaxies).
So i actually have to thank (or blame) Bioware for my current "addiction" to gaming :)

I am really looking forward to what they are doing with Star Wars The Old Republic, i think if anyone can pull it off to make a story driven MMO it's Bioware and if they manage to combine the best from Mass Effect and Dragon age into SWTOR i think it will be an awesome game to play.

My second post for Developer Appreciation Week (DAW) is for Bioware, their story driven RPG's are always very addictive, in a positive way and so far i have enjoyed everything they have done and i am definatly looking forward to what they will be bringing us in the future.
Can't wait to see Mass Effect 3, but also what is coming after that.
So to all the people working on the games at Bioware, i thank you!

DAW: Steam

Now a developer is a developer, whether they develop games or a platform to distibute them.

Personally i love steam for it's easy use, both in buying as in installing games.
I recently upgraded my computer to Win7 and had to re-install all my games, except those i bought on Steam, i re-installed the Steam client and all my games worked without problems or losing settings/saves, no re-installing needed.

Removing and re-installing i also very easy, unlike some other DL services i don't have to look/search for installation files, it's all there in my client.

I also like pre-ordering on Steam, just buy and whenever the game comes out it's ready to play, as more and more games are ready for pre-loading before it comes out meaning only an unlock is needed in order to be able to play the game.

Even gaming on different machines is easy as you can install the Steam client on all machines and play any game you own on Steam.

Updates and patches to games are often automaticly downloaded and applied to your games, so never any worries about having to download the latest patch.

So yeah this is my first post for Developer Appreciation Week (DAW), i just figured to look a little bit further into gaming and instead of a game developer pick something else gaming related that i enjoy using.