Atari - Loses D&D License - Reverts back to Hasbro

[Thrasher]

Yep. It is just a smokescreen for saving money, streamlining, and giving us gamers less, while extolling its virtues.

 

[azarhal]

We are not April 1st right?

Hopefully, Hasbro give the license to somebody who care, or hell, give rights to anybody who want to make a DnD game and don't give exclusive rights to a single publisher/studio this time.

 

[Melvil]

Will this compromise GOG selling all my favorite D&D games? Surely Hasbro won't revoke that.

 

[Thrasher]

No, the license is for creating NEW products. Those have already been approved.

 

[wolfing]

Not really interested. I know that whatever company gets the rights and makes a D&D game, it will be a twitch action game, so basically it will be D&D in name only.

 

[benetar]

But did you see the headlines ? #1 hit smash daggerdale on x- box? If that is true then it justifies a crap game from a business perspective. They will continue to put out crap if it will sell.

 

[DoctorNarrative]

No way. And see EAware turn D&D into a failed Action RPG attempt?

Say what you will about the Dragon Age series but EA are making a hell of a lot more tactical RPGs than any other big publisher is at the moment.

 

[Motoki]

Say what you will about the Dragon Age series but EA are making a hell of a lot more tactical RPGs than any other big publisher is at the moment.

I think calling Dragon Age 2 'tactical' would be a stretch...

 

[JDR13]

EA has never made an RPG, they've only published a few.

I hate to say it, but wolfing is probably right. No major developer is going to make a true D&D crpg in the current market.

 

[BillSeurer]

Given what Hasbro has done to D&D I don't think it really matters.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I thought half an hour ago :

Could it be that "Daggerdale" was so much rushed because Atari/Infogrames felt that they might lose this case ?

Could it be that the game HAD to be ready BEFORE the final court decision, no matter what ?

Could it be that this is the reason that

- it is still buggy (as far as I read from these forums)
- is distributed package-less, which means digitally only ?

Could it be that Atari didn't even bother to develop a retail package for it to get it out as soon as possible ?

Was this game meant to be a very last effort on the brand ß

Could it be that Atari wanted it to be ready as soon as possible to be able to sell it back to ... Hasbro or who ever gets the brand ?

This was what I was asking myself.

 

[bkrueger]

This was what I was asking myself.

And, did you get an answer?

 

[blatantninja]

Hope this doesn't delay Neverwinter too much, that game looked really interesting to me. Would love to see a more hard core AD&D game in the future though.

 

[Avantenor]

Nope. Hasbro / WotC has to approve every D&D game, always was part of the deal. I also don't think that would have affected games already being developed.

Daggerdale was never meant to be AAA. It's simply a quick and dirty low budget XBOX Live game in the tradition of Dark Alliance. For Interplay DA seemed the last salvation and so it seems for Atari, after the Cryptic acquisition doesn't seem to have pay out. I guess Atari is close to death or at least to insignificance.

 

[Thrasher]

@bkrueger

Let me guess…. "TL;DR"

 

[rikus]

Er.. are you talking about the same Hasbro and Atari as the rest of us? They are both relatively small.

Atari have done D&D proud overall, shame recent things haven't been great, but when the likes of Bioware are going to EA it was good to see Obsidian given the chance to make the type of game in NWN2 that other publishers deem non-viable. And good work nurturing The Witcher into a viable gaming franchise, even if it looks like other people might take it on further, Atari had the initial belief in the project.

So I wonder what next? I can't see much publisher demand for a AAA D&D game, the only niche I can see at the moment is an indie-like - dungeons of deldthingy or avadon-esque. Lower development costs but with old-school charm, rather than trying to make a modern style game on a budget.

hasbro from what i know is a giant firm of toys with many sub-firms, atari is much smaller but still one of the largest publishers in the gaming market.

regarding the rest and what everyone is wondering,
i think you're all right in your assumption- it's a dying breed of games, hasbro knows it, atari probably just wanted to leech the last remaining hardcore disappointed gamers who still hope for a decent crpg.
the most annoying thing about this situation, and since i was once an indie dev hobbist, that hasbro will just hoard the license and do nothing with it.
i know, because i tried to get the license and even buy it and i(and the team) was denied and refused to even set a meeting.
and that's what i don't get, if a company won't sell it, and don't do nothing with it, what's the point of keeping it?
why not give it to the indie market which has shown success in every genre?

if someone can explain me hasbro logic….

 

[jhwisner]

Hasbro will probably try to find a third party developer and publisher to license one or more projects through fairly quickly. The purchase of Marvel by Disney kind of threw a wrench into their plan for the joint cable channel they set up with Discovery. For it to be worth it for them they will probably be looking for a solid developer and publisher who is able to commit to a long term agreement for several licensed products - either a few AAA titles or a few dozen crap social network and mobile games. This limits the possible takers to well financed stable developers with solid developer partnerships (or parent companies.)

The fact that they seem to be in a little trouble in some markets though further limits possible partners as any publisher/developer would have to be able to make that big commitment quickly and all at once- though the projects themselves might take years to complete. So any prospective licensees will have to be stable, successful, well capitolized, and not have too much already in the pipeline. As much as some will hate to think this, that may very well describe Bethesda/Zenimax unless they make any announcements of huge post-Skyrim plans.

I'd kind of hope that Bethesda/Zenimax as publisher worked out a deal for them and Obsidian to each work on a D&D game - perhaps released a year apart from each other but using the same technologies loosely related stories. Unfortunately I am not confident that Bethesda could deliver the core tech for a party based game. While they certainly show an ability to improve what they do over time, they rarely get things right the first go around; and they would be doing UI, controls, AI and balancing for a party based RPG for the first time if they did this.

The reason I still kind of hope they get it is because it's about the only way I can imagine Obsidian getting to do an Icewind Dale or Planescape (yeah, it's a dead property I know) game. What Bethesda themselves might be able to produce would be a real roll of the dice in terms of how it turned out, but I would really like to get to play an Obsidian D&D game.

 

[kalniel]

Bethsoft doing a modern refresh of Eye of the Beholder would be cool

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

@bkrueger

Let me guess…. "TL;DR"

Yes, I assume so; yes.

 

[rune_74]

Funny how one person mentions they should let CDprojekt do games(2 games to their name) and another states that Bethesda couldn't handle it....weird world we live in.