Obsidian's Josh Sawyer thought Pillars of Eternity's Kickstarter had a 50% chance of failing, only for the RPG to be fully funded within 27 hours

gamesradar.com:

Obsidian Entertainment has been pumping out beloved RPGs for decades now, but there was a long period of time where the studio's financial footing was on shaky ground, prompting it to turn to crowdfunding. Though Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity director Josh Sawyer now says that even Kickstarter, the studio's saving grace at the time, seemed like a risky move.

Speaking to Edge Magazine Issue 404, Sawyer says the idea to go down the crowdfunding route with an Infinity Engine-style game came after Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend) successfully raised millions on Kickstarter to fund both a throwback point-and-click adventure game and a behind-the-scenes making-of documentary. Despite Double Fine's huge win on the platform, Sawyer recalls that Obsidian's "owner did not want to do it" and that he himself "was actually ready to leave [the studio] to do it."

"Other people at the studio were also like 'are we really not going to do this? If we don't do it, there's going to be another studio that [does],'" he continues. "There were a few ideas and the initial work didn't go very far. We knew the clock was ticking on this." Sawyer then came up with the idea to plan an old-school-style CRPG that mixes Planescape: Torment's metaphysical ideas, Icewind Dale's dungeon-diving, and Baldur's Gate's emphasis on companions.

"That's the dream, right? A lot of people will probably say we didn't come anywhere close on any of those things, but that was the idea - to blend the best things from the different Infinity Engine games into our own thing," he says.

The idea was rock solid. The studio had more than proven itself in the genre. Double Fine had legitimized Kickstarter as a viable funding route. And top-down throwback CRPGs were just as rare as point-and-click adventure games. Even still, "I thought there was a 50/50 chance that we would get funded in a month," Sawyer said, "so the fact that it was funded in 27 hours blew us away." 

"Creatively, I did feel more