Pillars of Eternity II - Interview

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Gamebanshee's Buck interviewed Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart about crowdfunding, design goals and about Pillars of Eternity II:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Interview
While Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is now successfully funded and moving on toward more stretch goals following the Fig campaign, I was able to sit down with Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart earlier this month - before the past week's events had transpired as this interview had to go through a transcription and review process - and talk to him about the business side of crowdfunding, the RPG sequel's design goals, their forthcoming Pillars of Eternity tabletop RPG, and much more.

Beyond that, Feargus also answers a handful of questions about sales figures on their past games, the "super secret" project being worked on by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, their latest game pitches, and a variety of other topics. Oh, and he essentially announces that Pillars of Eternity III will be a reality:

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Buck: I was curious about the investment aspect of Fig, as that is where this new platform really differs from Kickstarter. Can you talk a bit about how the selling of $1000 shares works? How do these people get a return on their investment? Are these everyday people, friends, family, companies... maybe even publishers?

Feargus: I don't know. So first off what we've been trying to do is, on that subject of knowing who is investing in things like that, we've actually been sort of very separate from Fig. We've been trying to run the reward funding part of it and not talking to Fig a lot about what's been going on since the campaign started as it related to the investment because I wanted it to be their decision as to sort of how they the investment money, what's the due diligence they're doing and things like that. So I am sort of leaving it to them to decide how we do.

Now, how does it actually work? So what we did is we sort of picked a $14 million number which was to say at $14 million of revenue for Eternity, that's where people will - whatever money they get - get their money back plus 13%. Then at that point in time in essence, the return drops by 50% and then they continue to get a return that's sort of 50% lower at that point. How the numbers will work in essence, is it will be something like, it kind of says it on the page, let me just see if I'm saying it the right way. If we get the full two and a quarter million, in essence, what happens is 16% of the money that we're getting in, up to $14 million goes to the investors and then after that 8% goes to them.

So that's kind of how it works, they'll get a return, they'll get their money back plus the return at $14 million and then the speed of the return will go down by half.

Buck: Wow. Does that entitle them to any of the pledging rewards? Do they even get a copy of the game?

Feargus: No. It's interesting; we originally wanted to do that but it kind of creates this weird - it's sort of like, is that then part of their return? Now, there has to be tax documents that say this is the return they're getting including the game. And it was just like, while it seems silly that we can't give them a game for investing, there was tax reasons on why it was complicated.

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