Article by Corith

[Tannhauser]

Corith has announced, in a post in the No Mutants Allowed forums, that he has written an article on Interplay's decline. It summarizes Herve's history as CEO of Interplay and includes personal reflections by Corith.<blockquote>Herve was not a gamer, nor much of a businessman. In the fall, prior to Interplay's closure. The company produced two, nearly identical products, one of which was ready prior to the Christmas shopping season. Although he had never played either one, Herve held back the completed product back until the first of the year when the second product would be ready, on the justification that they were different enough and they complemented each other. With such a view, it was obvious to everyone, that he had not played either. As a result, Interplay had no products for that Christmas season, resulting in a major loss of revenue.

Herve also failed to understand his consumer base. He came from making games for consoles (xbox, Playstation, gamecube) and pushed Interplay product line toward that market instead of staying with PC titles that Interplay had been renowned for. He also tried to milk a popular title with cheaply made games that had little to do with the original product, other than a similar name. Interplay's customers were not fooled, they knew crap when they saw it. Herve's games did poorly compared to titles created prior to his arrival. </blockquote>Good work on the article Corith, and I'm sure everyone here wishes you the best of luck in finding another position in the gaming industry.

Link: The Fall of the House of Interplay

 

[PsychoSniper]

Great work Corith.

 

[Briosafreak]

Although he had never played either one, Herve held back the completed product back until the first of the year when the second product would be ready, on the justification that they were different enough and they complemented each other.

This was the justification he gave you guys, in fact it was Vivendi that as a part of the deal to end the legal disputes between them and Interplay told Herve that they would distribute the games and move on, but since Iplay received the money upfront using the number of copies sent to retailers as indicative of the ammount to colect and Vivendi didn`t wanted another Lionheart, where they gave Iplay money as if that game would sell a number in the hundreds of thousands and the game bombed hard, making Vivendi to loose money in the process, and Vivendi was getting ready to have their worst last quarter ever, Herve was forced to accept the release of BGDA2 in the first quarter of 2004, the time Vivendi said they were ready to give them money.

In the meantime he canceled FO3 and dismantled BIS, also firing many from the console dev team, just to keep afloat, making a bet that the sales of BGDA2 and FOBOS would allow them to keep afloat.

He lost.

 

[Macaco]

Yeah, Brios, i always tought vivendi might've had more than a hand in these... I've talked to some developers here in Brazil who get distributed by vivendi (nothing big really, mostly "budget" stuff) and from what they told it's one fucking evil corporation. EA is famous in that aspect, and after having heard Atari's director for Latin America, i can assure they are also pretty bad.

I don't know if vivendi was any different with interplay, it being a big developer and all, but if i had to take a guess, i'd say that fact only made them worse.