Newport Beach-based video game maker inXile Entertainment knows how to run an online fundraising campaign.
The company behind one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history already has zoomed past its $2.75 million goal for “Wasteland 3,” a second encore to the popular post-apocalyptic, role-playing Fallout computer game series.
The game has attracted nearly 15,000 backers and more than $2.9 million on fig.co, a San Francisco-based crowdfunding site launched last year. Fig mixes reward-based crowdfunding—a la Kickstarter and Indiegogo—but combines that with equity investing through which accredited investors get a cut of game sales.
“I had quite a few people question why I would switch from Kickstarter to Fig after three successful campaigns, but I knew that the winds of change created a different dynamic for crowd funding,” said inXile founder and Chief Executive Brian Fargo. “Rewards-based campaigns were becoming more difficult to rally the base and interest the higher-end backers that were such a big part of our earlier drives. Fig allows gamers to profit from their favorite games, and that concept will never fatigue.”
The startup has several industry executives as board members, including Fargo, who’s considered a founding father of OC’s vibrant video game sector.
He has parlayed a loyal fan base and eager backers into a new-age business model of sorts and raised a record-setting $4.1 million through about 74,000 backers in a 2013 Kickstarter campaign for inXile’s role-playing game “Torment: Tides of Numenera.”
That’s still among the top 20 Kickstarter campaigns since the New York-based website launched seven years ago, a period that includes more than 113,000 projects and an Academy Award.
“Wasteland 2,” which took Fargo more than a decade to get off the ground, raised more than $2.9 million in a 2012 Kickstarter campaign that drew 61,290 backers.
The original title, developed by Interplay Entertainment Corp. in Irvine, was published in 1988 by Electronics Arts for the Commodore 65, Apple II and PC DOS computers. It went on to spawn a franchise, selling more than 400,000 copies, which was considered a major success at the time.
Interplay’s 1997 role-playing spinoff game, “Fallout,” sold more than 3 million units. The third installment, released in 2008, sold more than 4.7 million copies.
Quest Connections
Toba Capital’s recent investment in San Francisco human resources software maker Restless Bandit carries some interesting ties to Vinny Smith’s days at Aliso Viejo-based Quest Software Inc., which Dell Inc. acquired in 2012 for $2.8 billion.
Restless Bandit’s founder is Steve Goodman, a Toba executive who led bright.com’s $150 million sale two years ago to LinkedIn. Goodman also founded Packet Trap Networks, which Quest acquired under Smith’s watch as chief executive. Smith used some of his $800 million-plus in proceeds from the Quest sale to launch Toba’s evergreen fund in late 2012.
Toba, now OC’s largest VC firm, was launched with former Quest executives.
One of its early investments in 2013 was in Minnesota-based storage networking provider Parsec Labs LLC, headed by venture partner Walter Angerer, who served as senior vice president and general manager of data protection at Quest.Â
Sustain OC
More than 200 industry insiders attended the 2016 Sustain OC Conference and Expo on Oct. 13 at University of California-Irvine’s Applied Innovation Center.
The conference, now in its seventh year, provided a forum for the trade group to announce a new branding initiative and name change to a host of constituents. Sustain OC had been known as CleanTechOC since 2009.
Here’s a quick recap of honorees:
• Cleantech Company of the Year Award: Irvine-based Smart Utility Systems
• Sustainable Government of the Year Award: Huntington Beach
• The Van Vlahakis Sustainability Excellence Award: Raytheon SAS, aerospace business unit in El Segundo
