Interplay - Starts Internal Development

Anderson is in real estate isn't he? Chances are he accepted the Fallout job because it was there and doesn't really require him to abandon his current career. If the funding falls through and the Interplay game doesn't happen, he hasn't lost anything. If the funding comes through and full scale production gets underway, he's got the job and can carry on doing that.

As for Bethesda not availing themselves of talent from the original Fallout games, well, they haven't exactly gone after those developers to work on FO3, so why would they do so for FOOL? If Bethesda are known for anything, it's hubris, so it's hardly surprising they're "going it alone" so to speak.
 
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Well by starting at Interplay once again he gets to be Creative Director; I'm sure that is a major part (as well as Fallout) why he would want to do this. I hope it goes well because then maybe they could start putting together a development house like Troika once again, or at least, a decent RPG developer once again.
 
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I got the impression from the article that Black Isle Studios will be re-born. The article said something about bringing back it's in-house design studio, which was BIS. But BIS without the old crew is so wrong. Though if something can be put together, then it's all good I suppose.
 
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Well if BIS is reborn they only have games like Fallout and Planescape Torment to live up to :sweatdrop:
 
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"That is not dead which can eternally lie,
but with strange eons, even death may die"

How fitting, eh? ;)

Seems Herve want to move to a bigger cardboard box again...
As to Anderson.. let's hope its not another legend dead-set on destroying his own legacy. That seems to be a trend these days: Molyneux, Garriott,...
 
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Last time I checked, Raise Dead still required an intact corpse. When there's nothing left but dust and ash, you need a full Wish, and I expect this DM to take the most painfully literal interpretation of Herve's wording.

Also can't help but wonder if this change in Anderson's profession is another bit of fallout (er, no pun intended) from the collapse of the mortgage industry.
 
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from the collapse of the mortgage industry.

Well I think we are going to read that a lot, but in all fairness the first time I heard he was dreaming of getting back to the gaming world was a couple of years ago; there were other limitations, mainly from other aspects of his personal life stopping him, and those seem to have been resolved in the last year or so.

But maybe that helped, I don't know, although one thing we know is that business is good enough for him and Sharon, he could have kept quiet for now. Why he chose to return right now only he knows for sure, but why the deal with Herve now THAT is a mystery.

Of massive proportions...
 
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Do you note how these two paragraphs contradict?

Bethesda never was taking any chances on the MMO rights if nobody is going to invest that kind of money, now are they?

Your speculation makes no sense to me.

No, I don't see a contradiction there. Why were that passage and the detailed provisions regarding the Fallout MMO rights included in the contract between Iply and Bethesda at all? If Bethesda was only interested in the single player (or everything-but-MMO) license they could have just left out any provisions in regard to the MMO stuff. They could have just grabbed the IP minus the MMO rights and left it at that. But they didn't. Instead they set up a schedule and very detailed provisions under which the MMO rights would default to them at a certain point in time unless certain conditions were met. Would they really play a gamble and just count on Iply not being able to meet those certain conditions? I don't think so. I think the plan was all along that Iply would meet those conditions with the help of Zenimax/Bethesda.

Remember... the contract very specifically mentions a sum of ummm... yeah, I'm still too lazy to look it up :biggrin: but I think it was $20 million... that Interplay would need to have up front for the development of an MMO. This means that Interplay must have somehow gotten their hands on $20 million or otherwise the criteria of "full scale development" as required by the contract is not met. Who other than Bethesda/Zenimax would cough up $20 million for Interplay?
Bethesda obviously does have an interest in a Fallout MMO or otherwise -as I said above- there wouldn't have been a need for any provisions regarding the (auto-)transferral of the MMO rights.
Now, if Bethesda does indeed have an interest in a Fallout MMO then why wait until 2009 or 2012 or whatever it was before the MMO rights auto-transfer to them? Why not fund the MMO right now like any publisher that funds an external project? It's going to cost them ~$10 - 20 million either way. Might as well fund and build up a studio at Interplay. Plus, the publishing contract might have other provisions than the IP contract so that the MMO rights are transferred to Bethesda as a security in exchange for advance payments. That way they'd get 100% control of the MMO rights w/o actually owning them and wouldn't have to wait until 2009/12.

That does make sense to me but naturally only time will tell who it is that is funding Interplay's internal development. I could be totally way off and wrong, of course, but a lot of signs are pointing in Zenimax' direction IMHO. I don't think they would need a whopping $300 million injection just for a TES MMO. They are surely planning on bigger things. Heck, maybe they have even acquired (and not yet announced) or will acquire Iply in the very near future. Anything seems possible...
 
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My jaw dropped at first when I read Jason was going to work for Interplay. But perhaps he is just going for the prestige of creative director's position and does not believe he will be there for too long before moving to other company? You know like a tactical move, so he could say he has lately been in a high level position in a gaming company?

Yea, he has previous experience working in a high level position from Troika and Interplay, but those are still mostly from the 90's and technology has taken a few steps from there.
 
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Herve Caen must surely be declared the comeback king, Master Liche or something.

I wonder if this seemingly enormous effort to patch up a sunk ship has anything to do with EA's acquisition of Bioware, and the resultant overtones EA put out to the industry of "we lack an RPG developer in our catalogue. RPGs are good and we want them."
 
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who it is that is funding Interplay's internal development.

You are out of context here, it's definitely not Zenimax, Zenimax gave the money to pay for the Fallout franchise, nothing else.

Since then Herve has made public several times that he's trying to get investors for the FOOL project, mainly in Europe (actually mainly in France), with the help of consultants from outside the company. He only got a million or so, through a New York law company representing a Cayman Island Investment Fund, and that's it.

Zenimax is not actively helping him, they set draconian terms in the beginning because it was never their intention to help Herve. And that's in their best interest, as reading the Interplay 10ks and so forth makes it clear.

Herve has a couple of years to gather 30 million dollars, a team, a setting compliant and a gameplay high quality title, and has to find the other 45 million to the rest of the development. "Good luck" for that...
 
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OMG interplay still exist? now that's scary...LOL!. Anyway did you guys still remember interplay's forums ... what a nostalgic place with FIERY discussions on fallout or icewind dale...

Woof!
 
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They could have just grabbed the IP minus the MMO rights and left it at that. But they didn't.

Because that's not legally possible. Fallout is one IP, you'd have to make a different Fallout MMO IP to be able to transfer it without the Fallout IP.

As for your question of why: because Herve Caen wanted those provisions and paid Bethesda (by lowering the selling price) to license back the title. Bethesda loses nothing by it and gets the entire license and cheaper than they would have otherwise (obviously the license is over-valued, but that's another matter).

For the rest, read Briosafreak's post. You're way off here, Mori.

I don't think they would need a whopping $300 million injection just for a TES MMO.

Creation of a new studio (ZeniMax Online), funding their first title (TES MMO) and expansion of publishing activities. 300 mil sounds about right.
 
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Moriendor said:
They could have just grabbed the IP minus the MMO rights and left it at that. But they didn't.
Because that's not legally possible. Fallout is one IP, you'd have to make a different Fallout MMO IP to be able to transfer it without the Fallout IP.

Indeed. As of the the Interplay/Bethesda deal, the latter owns/has total control over anything "Fallout" from single player games to T-Shirts to MMORPGs.
Because Hervé Caen just refuses to die, he demanded the contract left open the possibility for him to make a Fallout MMORPG.
In short Interplay gave everything "Fallout" to Bethesda, then Bethesda gave to Interplay the right to develop/market/publish an MMORPG based in the Fallout universe.
But because Bethesda aren't blind and they know Interplay really is dead, they included provisions in the contract that say, basically, "those rights to an MMORPG are extinct if Interplay fails to fulfill the requirements written in the contract".
It was one subtle way of having Hervé Caen sign while still making him believe he's not dead and that he actually has a project to look forward to while making sure Bethesda will be able to work on a Fallout MMORPG once development of Fallout 3 is done.

Long story short:
Fallout is one IP.
The Fallout MMORPG is one possible USE of that IP.
Bethesda owns everything.
Interplay has the right to use the Fallout IP to make an MMORPG as long as they fulfill specific conditions.

True it's all complicated for nothing, and that's where Moriendor is right : if they indeed just wanted the Fallout IP to just make single player games they could have written a much simpler/clearer contract but no they ON PURPOSE chose to complicate it and put so many provisions and conditions and requirements, etc.
Bethesda wanted to have the possibility to develop an MMO all along.
Interplay didn't want to sign unless they could make an MMO.
Bethesda came up with this trick to still have the MMO and still have Hervé stupid Caen sign.
 
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300 mil sounds about right.
Software isn't my business, but I can't imagine how they'll spend all that money. Are they planning on buying something expensive? Are they going to go out and hire 500 people? Why would they need that much?
 
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Are they going to go out and hire 500 people? Why would they need that much?

In a word: "Assets". Models, art, texture, animations. One might also hope for dialog, story, plot, and those things generally considered missing from MMORGs since players can grind through months of planned content in a few hours, that would assume either forcing players to read, or including massive amounts of voice acting.

Five hundred isn't that surprising a number (yes, I'm assuming you made that up facitously, but I'm ignoring that). Two hundred seems a common number, and I've heard 350 bandied about for WoW. And for MMORGs, there's also the post-launch service -- there's the lion's share of the financial impact for the genre.

I've stopped paying much attention to the numbers any more, but $300M doesn't sound like enough to finance a WoW-killer, and I can't imagine Zenimax aiming much lower. Once you factor in the cost of advertising, I wouldn't be surprised if there are already a few single player games that have hit to $300M mark.
 
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It's been my experience that, unless they acquire things, most startup businesses will spend the lion's share of their investment money paying their employees. Do the math. How many folks do you have to hire, and how much do you have to pay them to burn through $300 million?

I suppose it must be the cost of all those assets then. But the operating costs for running the game won't incur until they're ready to start bringing in revenue, right?
 
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II suppose it must be the cost of all those assets then. But the operating costs for running the game won't incur until they're ready to start bringing in revenue, right?

Actually, operating costs for MMO start before you bring in revenue, unless you want to have people buying the game and then waiting a week while you set up servers.

I believe an MMO will cost about 100 million in production (at least, I'd guestimate that's about the area of what Bethesda wants to achieve, because it really depends on that). Creating a new studio, gathering staff, buying equipment and working space for them will take out a chunk more, and the rest is the expanding publishing, which is expensive.
 
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