Obsidian raises $3.9M on Kickstarter for Project Eternity role-playing game

Obsidian Entertainment raised $3.98 million through its Kickstarter crowdfunding project, Project Eternity. A total of 73,986 donors pledged the donations to Project Eternity during its month-long fundraising effort. Just last night, there were only 66,174 backers.

Obsidian Entertainment, the maker of Fallout: New Vegas and the upcoming South Park: Stick of Truth, raised more than three times its original goal of $1.1 million for the two-dimensional, party-based role-playing game set in a fantasy universe.

The team hit several of its stretch goals since it raised more than it targeted. Obsidian is adding new features such as crafting and enchanting, Barbarian and Cipher classes, an adventurer’s hall with full party creation, Paladins and Chanters, and a feature dubbed Stronghold.

As we noted yesterday, the project shows that proven game developers who have loads of experience can turn to Kickstarter as an alternative publisher or venture-capital funding, which always comes with strings attached.

“The incredible opportunity that Kickstarter and our fans are giving us is the capability to build a whole new RPG brand,” Feargus Urquhart, the chief executive officer of Obsidian, told GamesBeat in an interview a few weeks ago. “It’s one that we control, one that we can continue to invest in, and one that we can direct according to our conversation with the people we are making it for. At Obsidian, we really hope that this won’t be the first Project Eternity game or even the only use of the new world that we have been creating. We have already heard from people interested in seeing novels, board games, card games, and future games within the universe. The fact that we can explore all of those opportunities ourselves is really refreshing.”

Obsidian became an indie game studio after Black Isle Studios closed in 2003. Black Isle had published and developed games such as Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment — three big influences on Project Eternity. Project Eternity is a return to roots for Obsidian’s creative director Chris Avellone and game designers Tim Cain (creator of Fallout) and Josh Sawyer (Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance).

Project Eternity has beaten other records for Kickstarter funding for a game. Double Fine Productions asked for $400,000 and raised $3.3 million for its adventure game, and Ouya set a goal of $950,000 and pulled in $8.6 million for further development of its Android-based console. Another major game Kickstarter still in the works is Shaker, an RPG being built by Loot Drop’s Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall. That project has 7,570 backers, who have pledged $245,000 of a $1 million target.