Fallout and Beyond: Brian Fargo's Journey in Gaming

Explore the fascinating journey of Brian Fargo, a visionary figure in the gaming industry who founded Interplay Entertainment and has left an indelible mark on RPGs. From his early inspirations rooted in science fiction and fantasy to pioneering iconic games like Fallout, Fargo's career spans decades of innovation and adaptation in the ever-evolving landscape of video games. Discover his insights into game development challenges, his pioneering use of crowdfunding for Wasteland 2, and his upcoming project, Clockwork Revolution. Join us as we delve into the life and achievements of Brian Fargo, a true trailblazer in gaming.

Can you share some of the early influences or experiences that sparked your interest in the gaming industry, and ultimately led to the founding of Interplay Entertainment?

All of my hobbies as a kid were like made for me to come into this business. You know, reading is not as popular now, but I just had boxes of books. I read so much science fiction, so much fantasy, like Heavy Metal magazine— every issue, I'd go through it. You know, like I said, comic books, post-apocalyptic stuff, even in movies. I mean, whether it was Planet of the Apes, or Omega Man, The Road Warrior – that was my favorite film. I watched it over and over and over again.

You know, Dungeons and Dragons—here were all my interests, and then computer games came along. It was like, wow, everything rolled into one. The question was whether I could make a living at it, which wasn't clear. But I would have been happy just surviving, just being able to do that. And I'm very lucky that my parents supported me. They got me an Apple II computer. That wasn't cheap back then, it was like sixteen hundred dollars or something. You know what I mean? So, thank God for that. And then, when I said, "I'm not going to go to school, I want to do this," they supported me. It wasn't like, "No, go back." No, they were like, "We support you." So, very lucky that I had parents that supported what I wanted to do in that regard.

When I was young, I did my first game. It wasn't that good, but I did it, and I finished it. Here's one of the important things: I learned how to finish something. It's not easy to finish things, and it's always more fun to start than it is to finish. I also learned that, although there are people who are a lot better programmers than me, I need to tap into these people. I was decent, but I wasn't like the guys that I was meeting at some of the shows. That was an important part of it.

I met some Stanford graduates who had a company. They met me at a ComputerLand store where I was stocking inventory on the shelf with my game. We started talking, and they said, "We're starting a company, we're going to do this." They asked, "Why don't you be our Vice President of Product Development?" I was only 18 years old. Oh my god, sounds good, you know?

But I was the only one doing the work. They were doing nothing, I was doing VIC-20 games, and I got some games done. I was only 20 years old, it was crazy there, and I was doing all the work. I decided, "You know what, I'm going to start a company and just do this myself." So, I started Interplay when I was 20 years old. I was just doing contract work. World Book Encyclopedia—you know, when you start a company, what you want to do and what you have to do are very different things. I had to do what I had to do, so I did conversion work for K-Tel, work for the military, random programming stuff that I could pay the bills with.

Finally, we got a deal with Activision for adventure games, and then The Bard's Tale, and then off we went. I really started the company because I've always wanted to make games. I think a lot of people say, "What makes you start a company?" You look at what people are doing and think, "I could do this," and so that motivated me to think I could do it, and maybe I could do it a little bit better than the next guy.

What were some of the key challenges and highlights during the development of iconic games like Fallout?

With all of the games at that time, we didn't have game engines, so everything had to be done from scratch. That was certainly a big part of it. There were also a lot of different disciplines involved. We had a whole department that did nothing but make clay heads for animation. Nobody else had a clay head animation department, but we did. We thought, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's do this thing."

Bringing together a lot more disciplines, like clay and getting music rights, doing things like securing the rights to the Ink Spots' music was part of it. These were things we weren't used to do. I think one of the things that made Fallout work was the DNA infused by so many people. It's a team sport, you know. I'll get my due credit, and sometimes undue credit, but at the end of the day, it's a group effort. There were so many people involved who brought their perspectives to it, people you've never heard of—the unsung heroes that made that game what it was. That was a great learning lesson for me, and something I always take with me.

It really started with Wasteland. Back in the day, it was unheard of, but we probably had a six-person writing team on Wasteland. A lot of people came out from Arizona from Flying Buffalo. Whether it was Liz (Danforth) or Mike (Stackpole), they all brought different, wholly unique perspectives that no one person would have done. But when you put it all together and made it cohesive, it was like magic. That was the big lesson from Wasteland. We did the same thing with Fallout, the same thing with Torment, and the same with us today. We always make sure we have the DNA of a lot of different people weighing in to make it. They were all unique in those challenges of bringing together all those unique voices and making it cohesive.

The gaming industry has undergone significant changes. What challenges have you encountered throughout your career, and how have you adapted to the evolving landscape?

Well, I guess I just think about the sheer complexity of it all and the number of disciplines now that we never needed before. We didn't have people who were just focused on combat AI, or people who were focused on putting sound effects in the game—not just dropping them in, but making them part of the landscape. The testing process for these huge products, the licensing costs, the need for going into the studio with orchestras, motion capture actors, directors, and planning where the camera work is going to be—all of that to me has been the biggest change.

We didn't have that many moving parts at the beginning. We had a 140k floppy disk, and when we ran out of disk space, we'd put text in a paragraph book for Wasteland because we didn't have enough disk space for text. Now, the icon on your desktop is probably bigger than Wasteland 1. 140k disk space per side—maybe you get three icons on your desktop. So imagine now how much space these mega projects take up.

To me, it's the sheer number of disciplines that we've had to understand at varying levels and how we integrate them into an overall experience. User expectations have also changed. Clockwork Revolution has a nice-sized budget, but Red Dead Redemption 2 had 400 people working on it for seven years. We're not at that level. I love Red Dead 2, but we're not spending that kind of money. However, user expectations are influenced by such high-budget projects, so managing that is also quite different. When we were on floppy disks, there wasn't this unbelievable variance in quality that you see today. One thing is not like another now.

How have you seen the RPG genre evolve over the years, and what role do you think your contributions have played in shaping this evolution?

It's almost better to ask others what they think my contribution was, than me. Well, if you think about the evolution, to me, let's talk about some of the more ambitious ones, like Cyberpunk. Some people might debate me, but I'm going to put Red Dead 2 into the role-playing genre. It's not a traditional RPG, but in terms of me playing a character in a reactive world, it fits.

If you look at those products, the biggest thing is the camera. We've moved the camera down to first-person or third-person by and large for these role-playing games. Baldur's Gate 3 is an exception, but you see the industry trend. Moving the camera down and creating models for that perspective is a big deal from a cost and complexity standpoint because it makes the game more immersive.

Good role-playing design is about reactivity, paying things off, and including subtle details to dial up the immersion. When you move the camera down, it enhances the immersion. Compare this to the early days with games like Wizardry, which had grid graphics. At the time, it felt immersive, but by today's standards, it's nothing. The bar for immersion keeps moving higher. Will we be wearing VR glasses, living in these universes? It's fascinating to think about.

As for my impact, I don't know. I hope it would be the craftsmanship I've tried to apply to the genre, elevating it beyond just dice rolling and statistics. Our D&D campaigns were a lot of dice rolling, puzzle solving, and inventory management. With Wasteland, I aimed to bring in more humanistic elements. For example, in Wasteland, a kid asks if you've seen his dog. Later, you get attacked by a rabid dog, kill it, and realize it was the kid's dog. The kid then gets mad, and you can shoot him, leading to a fight with other kids. That kind of emotional beat was groundbreaking.

How do you approach storytelling?

I focus on the emotional beats of the story and the experience. The plot tends to work itself out, but the experience along the way matters most. For example, I watch "Goodfellas" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" repeatedly, not for the plot, but for the magic of certain scenes. When Joe Pesci says, "You Think I'm Funny?"—those are the moments I love.

In storytelling, we aim to make the player feel something. There are techniques to bring out emotion in a scene and make the player feel something. If we achieve that, we've succeeded.

How do you balance tradition and innovation in your games?

It's tricky because you have sentimental expectations for how things were, which can be impossible to match. There were play patterns people want to experience again, but the industry has moved on. Finding the balance between staying true to the past and introducing new elements is hard.

For example, when we started Wasteland 2, we used a keyword system like in Wasteland 1. It didn't work, so we changed it. In The Bard's Tale 4, we tried to innovate by letting players create their party gradually. It made logical sense, but players wanted to create their whole party upfront, even if they didn't know what was important.

So, it's always a balance of bringing classics forward while making them feel modern. We've had successes and made mistakes along the way. It's all part of the process.

Wasteland 2 was one of the early successful crowdfunded games. How did crowdfunding impact your approach to game development, and what lessons did you learn from that experience?

Oh, that's a good question. Well, certainly, every game I do, I focus on the tenets of what's important, either to us or to the consumers themselves. In a way, the consumers became like our publisher, but different. They provided the money upfront, trusting us without requiring us to hit milestones to get paid. This meant we had to clearly articulate our touchstones and plans.

This approach made us think things through thoroughly, but it also made it difficult to pivot later. If we realized it would be better to do something different or add 30 extra things, we faced resistance from backers who wanted what was initially promised. Managing these expectations was crucial and shaped our thinking.

Overall, I loved the community aspect of crowdfunding. We were in constant communication with backers, giving them builds, and getting feedback. For indie developers, this is critical. Developing a relationship with an audience during production helps you rise above the noise.

Crowdfunding made development a spectator sport. All the problems and issues that happen during development, which were always there, became visible to backers. They saw how the sausage was made, so to speak. When things didn't go as planned, there was a strong reaction from the community. But this transparency was also a positive experience.

I'm super grateful for the support we received. Crowdfunding Wasteland 2 was a highlight of my life. We delivered the game, and backers loved what we ultimately produced. It was a different experience with its own set of challenges, but also incredibly rewarding.

I guess that you cannot tell us details about your upcoming RPG, Clockwork Revolution. But could you at least discuss some of the inspirations for the setting, the world, or mechanics?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I really cannot, I'm not gonna be able to touch on mechanics too much, I know that. But okay, so obviously we know it's steampunk and we know it's Victorian in nature because that is part of steampunk. And I have Chad (Moore) and Jason (Anderson) who did Arcanum, and there's always been a lot of demand for another Arcanum. So when I said, "Hey, ideas for another steampunk game?" they were like, "Great!" So they were excited. It's a great team to put together, and I love the team and what they're doing.

I love the Victorian era because there's a lot of weird stuff they did back then. They wore dead animals on their heads, hired people to come cry at their funerals, and one of the careers was standing in lakes so that leeches would crawl up your legs and attach, and you’d sell your leeches. Like, weird shit. I love this universe, this is fun. So let's take that to another level. We started adding automatons and things like that.

I've always wanted to do time travel. Meantime was going to be a kind of a Wasteland-ish sequel with time travel. It doesn’t have any design similarities to Meantime, but I was fascinated by trying to get time travel into a role-playing game since the 80s. So I thought, "Well, let's try it out." Oh boy, it makes your head spin if you're trying to do true reactivity. But I think that's one of the more ambitious parts of it. I think people are going to love it when they dive in and see how deep and far we take it. They'll be like, "Holy hell, this happened, that happened."

In your career, you've also worked on many games based on well-known brands, such as Star Trek, RoboCop, Total Recall, or The Lord of the Rings. What challenges and opportunities does working on games based on such brands bring? What are differences when you work on your own IPs and on licensed IPs?

Well, working with a license, do I think it offers any new opportunities from a design perspective? No, I don't think it does. It brings a new audience over, so if you want to call that an opportunity, you can. But from a design perspective, when I'm not working with a license, I don't have to run anything by anybody. If we want it, it's in if we like it, period. When you have a license, you gotta run stuff by them, and it depends on the license. Some are pretty reasonable and easygoing, others not so much.

For example, Steve Jackson Games was part of the original Fallout, and we showed him the opening where the gun in the back of the head waves at the camera. He said, "I'm not going to approve that, that's too violent." I said, "Well, you ain't seen nothing yet." So that's why it did not become a GURPS project because we had a definite mature angle that we wanted to take, and we weren't going to cut it down to have the GURPS license.

Paramount was pretty good, but you still had to run stuff by them. Nintendo, oh boy, every single thing. But I only did a kid's typing thing with them, so it was pretty safe. With TSR, we did fantasy material that wasn't that dark, and I wasn't as much in the weeds on the approval for the stuff we did with TSR. It very much depends on the licensor. Some are rigid, others are not.

From an emotional perspective, there are worlds where like, we worked with the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien. That was awesome. I grew up reading the books. If they wanted us to change something, no problem. We knew the material well enough that we didn’t try to be edgy, so we didn't run into many issues. They were quite reasonable.

When you were working on Star Trek, did you have a chance to work with any of the actors or creators?

I worked with every one of them. I even got to meet Gene Roddenberry. That was fun.

Did you enjoy it? How was it to work with those guys?

Oh, I have great stories from all that. Shatner was tough, I'll tell you that. At the end of the day, we ended up getting a mutual respect and everything was fine. But if you didn't have his tea ready when he came in, watch out. He was tough, but once he started doing his thing, he was just a pro. Leonard Nimoy was the easiest going guy, not a problem. Every one of those actors was different.

It was neat because they were never all going to work together again, so we were the only ones bringing them together. They weren't literally in the same room, but we had them do all the lines for the Star Trek game, like the 25th anniversary. It was golden. You’d write it, we’d play it, and then you'd get their recording performance. It was like magic. Hearing Shatner read it was like, wow, he nails it and brings it to life. I loved all that part of it.