Gothic 4 - Official Announcement by JoWooD

JoWooD made real good money with Gothic 3 (according to their own press releases) and now dumps the development team that safed their ass (JoWooD was always in money troubles over the years, without Gothic 2 and Aquanox they would've been vanquished). That's really frustrating.

That's not quite the whole story though ;) . You need to remember that it was JoWood who saved PB's ass first when the publisher of Gothic I, Shoebox, and Phenomedia (the company that owned PB back then) went out of business. PB was very lucky to survive during that phase thanks to JoWood. There would (most likely) not be a Gothic II without JoWood or -similar to the situation now- it probably would have never been done by PB since PB would have been forced to auction off the brand or the brand would have ended up as part of the bankruptcy assets.
Anyway, in terms of "ass-saving" they're sort of even ;) .
 
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JoWooD already was the Gothic 2 publisher when Phenomedia imploded. But yes, they supported the change to PB.


How come nobody noticed that the German and English announcements are not identical?
 
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How come nobody noticed that the German and English announcements are not identical?

You mean other than the fact that I can read one and hack through about half of the other with my pathetic grip on German? ;)
 
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No, the 2nd half of the first paragraph has different content. The German version indirectly blames PB while the English one tries to earn the community´s sympathy. Maybe I´ll translate it when I´m back in a few hours.
 
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Maybe I am the only one, but I did not that thing that Gothic III was that bad. In fact, I thought it was quite good, but clearly rushed. A big patch could have turned it into a top title, but we will now never see it. A shame, really. Gothic 2 with the expansion is one of the best RPGs ever, and now with a big corporate "brand" mentality to the game, and a new developer it is unlikely that Gothic III will be fixed, nor any future Gothic game be remotely close to Gothic 2.
 
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I don't know - I blame all persons who wanted to make a second Morrowind out of Gothic 3. They should have stayed by their old Gothic 1 virtues - small unmistakable world, interesting characters, chapter system leveling and so on.
Developing an engine and a huge game with such a small team was a bit too tough.

My thoughts exactly, HiddenX. They over-reached, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. The disappointing part is that instead dying trying to deepen what they were so good at and what set them apart, they fell on the sword of trying to twist their game in such a way as to be more like Oblivion and less like Gothic in a poorly executed attempt to get to the big leagues in global sales. Just a sad way to go out for such a unique developer, I think.
 
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JoWooD is searching a developer for Gothic 4.
The official advertisement can be found on corporate.jowood.com (also in English).
 
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JoWooD already was the Gothic 2 publisher when Phenomedia imploded. But yes, they supported the change to PB.

Hmmm... JoWood's Stefan Berger put it differently here...

Wir haben Gothic II damals als Publisher/Distributor von Phenomedia, den ehemaligen Eigentümer von Piranha Bytes, übernommen. Nach den finanziellen Problemen von Phenomedia haben wir uns entschlossen, das Spiel Gothic II komplett zu übernehmen und die Marke, aufgrund der unzähligen Fans, dem tollen Spieldesign und dem grandiosen Spiel, fortzuführen. Der erste Teil wurde damals von "Shoebox" / Egmont Interactive veröffentlicht.

Translation:

Back then, we took over Gothic II as publisher/distributor from Phenomedia, the former owners of Piranha Bytes. After the financial issues of Phenomedia, we decided to take over Gothic II completely and to continue the brand because of its numerous fans, the great game design and the terrific game [Gothic I]. The first part was published by Shoebox/Egmont Interactive.

 
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Yep, and it remains absolutely gorgeous to this day. Perhaps something to be learned there ...
Trees/shrubbery look AWFUL in G1, but they did improve upon them for G2/NotR.

BTW, I found this on world of gothic forums:
JoWooD Productions works on Gothic 4 Liezen, Austria, 22 May 2007; JoWooD Productions is already for several weeks in positive discussions with potenziellen Entwicklerstudios for Gothic 4 on PC and console. With the selection of the developer on very high quality standard as well as a finally error free programming of the play one focuses in particular. With the publication of the fourth part of the successful game of roles on Current gene consoles JoWooD pursues the new enterprise strategy purposefully toward console market. The discussions with the past developer Pluto 13 led to no acceptable result, why co-operation was terminated
i.e. looks to me like they already have a new developer, so they must've been expecting this for a while...
 
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I seriously don't want to side with anyone here, but if I have to read something like this:

Gothic ist Gothic und Gothic ist erfolgreich. Der Erfolg eines Spieles liegt nicht ausschließlich in der Entwicklung. Wie dem auch sei, Gothic wird auch ohne Pluto 13 oder JoWooD erfolgreich sein. In der Maschinerie Gothic gibt es nur einen Part den man nicht durch gleiches oder vorzugsweise besseres ersetzen kann und das ist Gothic selbst.

I seriously doubt that JoWood can pull off G4 without screwing it up?

Translation:

Gothic is Gothic and Gothic is successful. The success of a game does not exclusively depend on its developement. Anyway, Gothic will be successful, even without Pluto 13 or JoWood. There is only one part in the whole Gothic-machinery that you cannot replace by similar or preferably better aspects and that is Gothic itself.

It's fairly hard to get what they want to tell us, even from the German statement. But to assume that Gothis is successful simply because it's Gothic seems to be rather dumb. It somehow falls into the pattern Ultima is successful because it's Ultima - and we all know that the last two parts were not very successful.

Edit: Forgot to mention it - the statement is from Stefan Berger, Head of Product Management JoWood.
 
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It's nice that they want to make another Gothic game but it all depends which road they will take. The oblivion path or the true gothic path. The first one will probably lead to oblivion and the last one could very well be a hit if they can manage to capture the atmosphere of gothic 1.

But anyway, I'll probably think twice before purchasing another gothic game, either from PB or JW. Unless one of them or both can fix G3. Then they can win my trust back.
 
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http://corporate.jowood.com/

Jowood:

JoWooD Productions – Offizielle Ausschreibung zur Entwicklung von Gothic 4
Liezen, Österreich, 23. Mai 2007; JoWooD Productions arbeitet bereits an der Fortsetzung des erfolgreichsten und bekanntesten Rollenspielbrands der Firmengeschichte. Nach abgeschlossener Planungsphase und ersten positiven Gesprächen mit potenziellen Entwicklern schreibt der österreichische Publisher die Programmierung von Gothic 4 offiziell aus. So will man allen interessierten Studios die Möglichkeit bieten an diesem großen Projekt mitzuarbeiten. Gesucht werden geeignete Entwicklerteams für die Plattform PC sowie für Current-Gen-Konsolen. Für JoWooD steht bei der Entwicklung dieses Rollenspiels die Qualität des Produktes sowie der Erhalt und die Fortführung des typischen und unverkennbaren Spiel-Stils im Vordergrund. Die Ausschreibung läuft bis zum 22.6.2007.

Public invitation of tenders to develop Gothic 4 - valid until 22.06.2007

I think Jeff Vogel should make a submisson :)
 
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Hmmm... JoWood's Stefan Berger put it differently here...

Wir haben Gothic II damals als Publisher/Distributor von Phenomedia, den ehemaligen Eigentümer von Piranha Bytes, übernommen. Nach den finanziellen Problemen von Phenomedia haben wir uns entschlossen, das Spiel Gothic II komplett zu übernehmen und die Marke, aufgrund der unzähligen Fans, dem tollen Spieldesign und dem grandiosen Spiel, fortzuführen. Der erste Teil wurde damals von "Shoebox" / Egmont Interactive veröffentlicht.

Translation:

Back then, we took over Gothic II as publisher/distributor from Phenomedia, the former owners of Piranha Bytes. After the financial issues of Phenomedia, we decided to take over Gothic II completely and to continue the brand because of its numerous fans, the great game design and the terrific game [Gothic I]. The first part was published by Shoebox/Egmont Interactive.


--- I'm a bit - or rather very confused at the moment :S

Does the statement from Stefan Berger indirectly say that Jowood owns part of the Gothic series IP rights. They could have bought the IP rights to Gothic from Phenomedia back when this firm went bellyup :S

How does this statement compute with the statement from Michael Rüve in WOG forum where says that PB did not sell any IP rights to Jowood :S
I'm sorry, but this really is just mudding the waters more than the waters need to be muddied at the moment, imo.

There isn't much we can do --- other than wait and hope for the best :)
 
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:disappointed:
 
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We could become a disgruntled fanbase such as the Fallout one, post a petition for a patch, see Jowood going bankrupt, PB's developers joining other development teams.
One of those development teams creating a great game in the style of Gothic (i.e. Troika), then see them going bankrupt. Wait several years to hear that another developer bought the rights of Gothic and plans to finally release the sequel.


This means we'll probably see Gothic IV sometime between 2015 and 2017.
 
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I´ve updated the newsbit. Comparison added. Sorry for the weird translation, the German source didn´t make much sense.
 
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We could become a disgruntled fanbase such as the Fallout one, post a petition for a patch, see Jowood going bankrupt, PB's developers joining other development teams.
One of those development teams creating a great game in the style of Gothic (i.e. Troika), then see them going bankrupt. Wait several years to hear that another developer bought the rights of Gothic and plans to finally release the sequel.


This means we'll probably see Gothic IV sometime between 2015 and 2017.

The problem with petitions (especially online ones) are that they don't work at all. I suggest a more pro-active method of getting our point across. I need a large metal canister, napalm and the address of Jowood's HQ. STAT!
 
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:whip: :shakefist: :plotting: :cm: Just let me find my ammo!
 
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You need to remember that it was JoWood who saved PB's ass first when the publisher of Gothic I, Shoebox, and Phenomedia (the company that owned PB back then) went out of business.

Shoebox was a Joint-Venture between dtp and Ehapa, I think.

I might not be right, but I believe that the label ist still in existence today (I mean the mere label, nothing more).

Shoebox once even distributed the 3-CD version of the German "Nordlandtrilogie" (Realms of Arcania in German) in a DVD-Box. And yes, they really labelled it "Nordlandtrilogie" ! I have one specimen of this.

dtp, by the way, is perhaps not without guilt as well - rumors say that they didn't want to lend money to Ikarion - the makers of the never-finished RPG "Armalion" - like no-one else did - which drove them into bancrupcy and eventually in Ascaron buying the remains.
The irony is that Ascaron was still willing to save the *whole* game based on the "Dark Eye" ruleset, but by the time they shifted into making it into an "action" game under the constant pressure of German gaming magazines comparing Armalion with Blizzards megaseller. This point was noticeable within the forum - there was a definnitive point of turn.

And, Jowood was one of the candidates in lending money and thus saving Ikarion as well. A well-mmade search in their forum's archives could reveal a few postings hinting to that.


Edit : Correction : Quote from above :
Der erste Teil wurde damals von "Shoebox" / Egmont Interactive veröffentlicht.

Egmont and Ehapa are two publishers of comic books here in Germany, hence my confusion.
 
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Egmont = Ehapa
Swdish mother company or something like that.
 
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