Fallout "True Sequel" Community Effort

Brother None said:

..Oh yes, we're much worse than, say, people that obsessively hate us without any direct provocation. We're such bad guys...

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And a bit paranoid.

Brother none....Did you guys ever think if you put things out rationaly and tried to be constructive rather then destructive you would get more things done?

Lucky Day said:

And a bit paranoid.

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Paranoid? I had 6 months of continuous attempts to penetrate the firewall on my PC from Something Awful at a time, which was the same time they were DOSsing NMA and had banned all known NMA members from their forums for being NMA members, all after the whole HayT business. Then more recently another attempt to break into an admin's account, and I stumbled upon a planned 420chan raid towards NMA not a month ago that could thankfully trip up before it started. I've heard a GameSpy editor utter the personal wish that we all die from a horrible disease to then mozy over to SA and see them ready to break upon the champagne bottles to celebrate how awesome it is that we've had horrible diseases wished upon us. I've been personally called a psychopath over a weird misinterpretation of the Glittering Gems article.

I think that all goes beyond paranoid. It is pretty obvious there are groups out there with stated malicious intent towards NMA, who will not shy from attempting to DOS or hack our site or PCs.

And what's the worst we've done? Our front page is clean, mostly even of personal opinions. Our forum users are foul-mouths, and there're some bad apples, but they're no worse than the average SA user, and we remove the worst idiocies (like death threats). We ban people who try to incite cross-forum trolling or invasions on other forums.

Run by me, nice and slow, how NMA is the bad guy in this game of chess.

Hell, I'll be controversial and posit the opinion that the biggest problem people have with us is that we refuse to bend to their position, and that it makes them uncomfortable to see a group with stolid, different opinions than them, and that different-thinkers always annoy people. Considering this is the internet, I really don't see what else could be the cause of the way many people see us...well, that and reputations do grow themselves, with much to thank to Rosh there, which I'll gladly admit.

And yes, I'm keeping Bethesda out of the equation. I know this going to sound all "inside info lol!" but I've had Bethesda's internal policies and interest towards us revealed to me via via, and I have a hard time mentally placing them in the good guy category. That doesn't reflect on their gaming company part, though. Only PR and marketing. So purely from a "fan interaction" standpoint, not a "game making" standpoint. Very secondary, I know.

Brother none....Did you guys ever think if you put things out rationaly and tried to be constructive rather then destructive you would get more things done?

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I don't possess a magic on-off switch that'll make all the forum users of NMA turn into hyper-intelligent rational beings. I hold no responsibility except for myself. Please point out where I've shown the tendency to be destructive rather than constructive, or irrational rather than rational.

A good start, count how many threads are informative or try to start a good discussion vs. irrational slobbering. They're all tending towards negative, I'll gladly give you that, but that's not the point.

Right, you're sorry, my bad, it wasn't Todd Howard, it was Pete Hines who referred to the nude mod of Oblivion as "hacking" despite the fact that the extraction utility used for the mod was publicly used by other modders on the official Bethesda forums.

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He doesn't like cunny and boob mods? Oh dear! He's quite the villain. Who doesn't make fun of the people who make those? Calling them 'hackers' is rather kind considering some of the nomenclature out there. Considering they're actually promoting a mod that cracks wise with members of their management team I'd say they've got a better sense of humour than some folks out there...

A good start

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To what? A primer on how to talk out of your ass about things you couldn't possibly know? As for somethingawful, you burned one of their long time members who's been an active participant... and the site is full of assholes... you should have seen that coming miles away.

I don't visit the NMA forums; the link doesn't even show up with the protections I run, but let's be fair here. Unless you want Mods who insta-ban and close threads etc, which from experience places like Beth$oft regularly do, then a site can't be held totally responsible for the content of its forums. We try to be very tolerant here and our posters respect and honour our intent. Other than spambots, we've done VERY little banning here. I judge NMA by its front page and by the team members who post here. By that criteria, they are doing well.

Moriendor said:

Yes, but on the other hand you have the modders who "automatically" assume that they can screw around with a foreign IP as they please. I have very rarely heard of a case where a mod team -instead of basically starting a sneaky guerilla attack on the IP- actually, you know, ASKED the IP holder for CONSENT in advance of starting work on the project.

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I know of one -- TSLRP, the one I mentioned above.

LucasArts and Obsidian didn't answer.

I can understand that too -- if they grant explicit permission and the project evolves into or spawns off something they don't like, they'll have a much harder time stopping it then. In any case, it would require drafting a contract, which costs money, which they won't want to spend on something that won't bring in any revenue. OTOH telling them "no" would be bad publicity... and it's quite likely that at least some people in the companies actually *want* something like that to happen.

So not commenting either way is the safest policy. For them.

@Brother -- Do you honestly believe what you said -- that many people don't like NMA only because they can't stand someone with a different opinion? That really, truly you can't think of anything you may have done (wrong) to provoke the kind of response you're getting?

Just askin'...

mogwins said:

Just a small point, but I don't think any of them wanted to licence the IP, per se, they just wanted to politely inform EA what they were doing and check that EA wouldn't object. As small, not-for-profit projects, licencing would be far too formal (not to mention costly!). Though it would certainly be required for a commercial project - if that was really the case with Peroxide, I don't know what they were thinking!

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We never wanted to make money of the Ultima1 project! When I started that project I actually wanted to keep it fairly simple - just add some nice graphics to the simple gameplay of the original Ultima 1 game. Peroxide started that project to learn about game creation, because we love RPGs - and most of all to have some fun. Before we started I contacted Richard Garriott and described my plan, and he immediately gave his permission. I have nothing bad to say about Richard - he was enthusiastic about the idea and even played and gave feedback about our early tech demos. My mistake at that point was assuming that Richard was the one controlling the IP, when it was in reality already EAs property at that time!

What happened then was that the project grew and grew - and at a point we realized that we had some game technology that could actually compete with the commercial games that were out at the time. We also realized that we had put *a lot* of effort into getting there and that it would take *a lot* of effort still to actually finish the game in a quality we were content with outselves. At that point we decided, as a team, that we were *not* willing to risk being sued or shut down late in the process - so we contacted EA directly, multiple times, for an agreement that we were allowed to finish our project and distribute it as freeware. We didn't even get a response to the first few letters, but finally we did get a reply and what they said was quite clear - we were *not* allowed to use their IP, even for a freeware project. They didn't say that they would sue us - but we decided that it was not worth taking the chance. We did get *a lot* of heat for that decision with people yelling at us and saying that we chickened out for no good reason etc (well, easy for them to say - considering that all they did was posting on our forums and looking forward to getting a free RPG game...)

That's when we decided to try and go commercial with another RPG made on our own IP (the game called ERA). We tried to get funding to start up a company, but it's not that easy to make people invest in a small start-up game company. Even with our latest tech demo (which we sadly never released to the net..). We got quite far, made a few contacts - but the adventure ended with us all being hired by various game companies. I'm still a bit sad that we didn't get to make our RPG, but on the other hand it's nice with some job security and a monthly pay-check when you have a family to provide for.

*Ping* - KasperFauerby, now I finally knwo why I always thought I remembered the name, never made the connection until now. U1 / ERA seemed like a great project, I was sad to see it go. Still have the tech demo somewhere. Good to hear the team all got good jobs, at least.

D'oh. Neither did I. Thanks for that background...I'd always meant to find out where Peroxide went.

father lamat said:

He's quite the villain.

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Paying more attention would've noted to you I never suggested he's a villain. I said he calls some modders modders and some hackers, even though both groups use the same tools. That makes no sense.

father lamat said:

To what? A primer on how to talk out of your ass about things you couldn't possibly know?

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I'm sorry. I should obviously use you as a role-model since you're polite and rational.

father lamat said:

As for somethingawful, you burned one of their long time members who's been an active participant... and the site is full of assholes... you should have seen that coming miles away.

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What? We didn't burn anyone. Who did we burn? We quoted a developer's words on our frontpage. Those are his words, his responsibility.

They're assholes, sure, does that excuse attempts to hack or DOS, which, last time I checked, are illegal?

Prime Junta said:

@Brother -- Do you honestly believe what you said -- that many people don't like NMA only because they can't stand someone with a different opinion? That really, truly you can't think of anything you may have done (wrong) to provoke the kind of response you're getting?

Just askin'...

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Hell no, I was playing devil's advocate. I think our "tough guy" nature has produced a lot of bad apples, some of whom are disproportionately represented. Like I said, big nod to Rosh for our bad rep, and to other people.

I'm not going to apologize for other people or our reputation, though. We are what we are, and I fail to see what we're doing wrong that would deserve DOS attacks or media editors wishing us dead on official airtime.

Brother None said:

Hell no, I was playing devil's advocate. I think our "tough guy" nature has produced a lot of bad apples, some of whom are disproportionately represented. Like I said, big nod to Rosh for our bad rep, and to other people.

I'm not going to apologize for other people or our reputation, though. We are what we are, and I fail to see what we're doing wrong that would deserve DOS attacks or media editors wishing us dead on official airtime.

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OK, thanks for clearing that up. And no, you certainly haven't deserved DOS attacks or death threats, official or unofficial.

KasperFauerby said:

Before we started I contacted Richard Garriott and described my plan....

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Awesome post! Too bad you were stonewalled and eventually turned down by EA. I'd say a lawyer, somewhere, probably evaluated your request.

I've found that most managers prefer not to have anything to do with lawyers and are reluctant to ask their opinions. It's difficult enough for managers to work as a team, but legal considerations tend to trump all others. That casts lawyers in opposition. They're like hired guns that you avoid until you need them.

That's why I prefer to work with privately-held companies, especially ones that are owned by individuals. There usually aren't any lawyers hanging around, and decisions are made more quickly and easily.

Instead of making a replicas, why don't they make a variation or even a transformation on the FO theme/setting/engine ?

Call it Desolatium, or Realm Of Anarchy, or Volator or World Of Chaos (or...).

Then, gather some CREATIVE thinking specialists to use free-from imagination to brainstorm & invent the variations & transformations. Then, gather some technical & mechanical thinkers to make the creative artistry real , tangible and implemented practically.

You can do your own version of a post-apoc pc-rpg , heavily *influenced* by Fallout, in that the elements and ideas are fundamentally *derived* from it, but not overtly copied.

Eg. A recruitable Dog NPC that is a 2-headed Pitbull named Hercules. Call the Vaults "cellars". Call the stimpaks "medboosts" and make 'em look different.

Variations on a theme, a viable and legal avenue... and you can make 2 sequels !

(And btw, I'm not pro-corporate... I champion the underdog, the indie little guy in all cases...)

agreed, I dont see why anyone would even want to mess with any possible BS. Go the "spiritual successor" route

Agreed. A number of us are advising the same to them now. It is definitely preferable to go with the artistic sequel route, it's more legal, honest and artistic.

I apologize on that then Brother None. I thought that was a direct comment on myself lumped in with "those that obsessively hate" (you).

I have about as much love for the Something Awful community as so called Fallout Fans. It doesn't surprise me that they'd do that.

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Kasper, great post. Thanks for the update on what happened to you guys. I wasn't liking all the U4+ era ideas you guys were throwing in but I did like the techdemo. In the end it sounds like you got what you wanted, jobs in the industry. And would we have Lazarus today if it wasn't for you?

How bout a parody as someone suggested? It's legal to parody anything you want according to the WIPO (wipo.org). Many TV shows parody movies, songs, other tv shows. I have yet never seen a computer game parody, but I don't see why it would be any different than another entertainement type.
Fallout 1 & 2 were already heavy parodies of 60/70's sci fi movies, comics and books so I don't think it would be difficult to make.
The title should be something stupid like "Fall out tree", the art as well, in the same vein as Fallout 1 & 2 mutants portraits. The original games were already so much like a parody with the goofy Vault Boy and Pip Boy, the videos advertising Mr Handy, etc. that a parody of Fallout could actually remain true to Fallout while courts would still have a hard time telling a parody of Fallout isn't actually a parody but a rip off.

Lucky Day said:

I apologize on that then Brother None. I thought that was a direct comment on myself lumped in with "those that obsessively hate" (you).

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I might've been implying at lumping you in there, apologies.

There're only a few places on the internet that really hate NMA on an irrational level, though. Most either don't care (the vast majority, obviously) or kind of go "yeah, they're a little extreme, but..." something something. Sucks some of the times, doesn't at some others, but in the end you can't blame anyone for your reputation except yourself (malicious individuals aside)

xSamhainx said:

agreed, I dont see why anyone would even want to mess with any possible BS. Go the "spiritual successor" route

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That's what we want to do.

Brother None said:

Agreed. A number of us are advising the same to them now. It is definitely preferable to go with the artistic sequel route, it's more legal, honest and artistic.

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Yes thats right.
Sorry for this confusion again, it was just the very early first "working title".
Never even thought about that this could cause trouble.
Of course that term can be misunderstood really heavily, so
we will change the name much earlier than planned.

But I really can not see why a good spiritual successor can not be a game which stays more true to the series than the actual sequel.