Edge interviews Eric Caen on FOOL

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Brother None

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Edge Magazine has an interview with Eric Caen in its latest issue (211). Edge's site reports from there that 90 people are working on the title.<blockquote>"I can’t say too much. What I can say is that everyone who is registered is getting a newsletter every five or six weeks," Says Caen. "The content is not a typical newsletter with a lot of technical information; it’s letters from NPCs inside the game, writing to other NPCs about what they’re experiencing.

"We’re giving a lot of hints about the future of the game. We have a beta scheduled for 2012, with the commercial launch in the second half of 2012. We have 90 people working on it. Even in January 2009, you were already able to move across the world."</blockquote>And in another article reports Bethesda turned down an offer to originally purchase the full IP at 50 million USD, rather than the 6 million they paid for the partial purchase.<blockquote>"Hervé [Caen] started negotiations with Bethesda to sell Fallout to them," reveals Eric. "My brother said: 'If you want the full IP, the value of it is $50 million.' They said: 'No way. Why $50 million?' We said: 'Because the MMOG strength of this universe is huge.' Bethesda said: 'We don’t want that. Let’s buy everything else but the MMOG. Do the MMOG.' They said that Interplay had to start development and by a certain time we had to have a full game in development."
(...)
"They bought everything, but left Interplay with the licence to do the MMOG - under certain conditions, thinking that Interplay would never fulfil these conditions. But Interplay did. Spring 2009 - this is public information - Bethesda sends a termination letter to Interplay, saying: 'You did not fulfil your obligation.' So all the litigation is about that. I think Bethesda, off the back of Fallout 3’s success, realised that Hervé was probably right about the value. They said: 'OK, how can we get that without paying?'"</blockquote>
 
There are only a few things you can learn from these interviews, but one of them is definitely that Hervé Caen is a terrible negotiator.
 
Terrible doesn't even begin to describe it. I took a double-triple take when I read this. 40+ million extra or a contract with very unfavorable demands on Interplay? This is like the easiest choice Bethesda ever made in its life. Whether they win the suit or settle out of court, there's no way regaining the license will cost them anywhere near 40 million.

Frith, seriously, Interplay...
 
"We appreciate some portions of [Bethesda's work], and we’re not necessarily fans of everything. I think they miss a lot of the humour, and the fans seem to agree with that. Fallout 3 was a little bit too serious - that’s definitely not where we’re going. Our Fallout MMOG will be extremely funny."
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well... i lost my hope in PV13
 
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ9EJIvi8PU[/youtube]

Video quality sucks, but its simply too perfect not to post.
 
* performs the 'summon Corith ritual *

Really curious what he has to say on this.

What made you loose hope Ausir? (if you had any to start with)

Me? I never had any but when I saw some of the design documents for equipment I shuddered.
 
And in another article reports Interplay turned down an offer to originally purchase the full IP at 50 million USD, rather than the 6 million they paid for the partial purchase.
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Shouldn't that read "Bethesda turned down"?
 
Ausir said:
Huh, what design documents?
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I'll guess he means the concept arts, which... just have been concept arts, which means nothing. :>
 
"Fallout 3 was a little bit too serious - that’s definitely not where we’re going. Our Fallout MMOG will be extremely funny."
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You can't possibly make it any funnier (in a stupid way) than this statement.
 
Ixyroth said:
"Fallout 3 was a little bit too serious - that’s definitely not where we’re going. Our Fallout MMOG will be extremely funny."
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You can't possibly make it any funnier (in a stupid way) than this statement.
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The only way I see it, is that they go FOPOS' route again, cause honestly I wouldn't know how else they could achieve it.

Guess we will have pie pie and poo poo jokes again.
 
Brother None said:
Terrible doesn't even begin to describe it. I took a double-triple take when I read this. 40+ million extra or a contract with very unfavorable demands on Interplay? This is like the easiest choice Bethesda ever made in its life. Whether they win the suit or settle out of court, there's no way regaining the license will cost them anywhere near 40 million.

Frith, seriously, Interplay...
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Long time lurker here, first time poster.

The alternative was bankruptcy wasn't it? The $6 million or so saved Interplay from actually going under and allowed them to restart internal development. Even if they do end up losing the license, their condition overall would have improved since that time and they would be in a better position to take advantage of their back catalog (which they have already begun doing).

Had Interplay declared Chapter 11, how could they have paid off their creditors? The only likely way would have been to sell things off but a company in bankruptcy rarely gets a good price on things so they may have lost more than just Fallout.

Would the $50 million just have included the MMO or everything (including the complete rights to the originals)? If it includes everything, that wouldn't be that bad a deal for the Fallout franchise. Asides for Brotherhood of Steel, the games did sell and review pretty well.

The MMO market itself has changed a lot since 2004, that was at a time when the MMO market was new territory for many companies, plenty of IP's transitioned to MMO's and either did decent or failed. In recent years, the only MMO's that have done decent or really well have been those with a brand name behind them. In many cases they would only do well for a while but then begin to drop off.

Whether Bethesda actually had interest in an MMO at that stage or would have even considered the offer if the price was lower is unclear. Herve's original pitch to investors showed the MMO could easily do over $50 million USD per year with 1 million subscribers, but again, the MMO market has changed a lot since then. Talk about a Fallout MMO has been brewing since the 90s according to Urquhart so I assume they must have crunched the numbers a few times.
 
Agree with Elven

Elven's analysis makes a lot of sense. Interplay was forced into a less than ideal deal with Bethesda because involuntary bankruptcy proceedings had been initiated against them (Corith takes a lot of credit for that one. Corith's claim to fame can be that by pushing the involuntary bankruptcy issue when he did, he neatly hamstrung Interplay by forcing them to take a less than ideal deal with Beth including the very Beth friendly MMORPG clause, and he very nearly took Interplay down.)

I do think owning everything Fallout, including the past games and Fallout online, was well worth 50 million, but I also think no one in their right mind would actually pay that much for it. That's just its paper worth not actual worth in the free market place. Heck, Herve was able to sucker Atari into paying 15 million for the Hunter license, which is a mediocre license at best.

I actually think Herve did pretty good in his deal with Beth considering the poor financial position of Interplay at the time combined with the preliminary injunction against them.

BTW, When Herve took over Interplay they were over 100 million in debt, courtesy of Brian Fargo. Interplay is now only around 2 million in debt with very low overhead costs and several upcoming games, including the possiblity of Fallout online. That's a pretty good turn around story any way that you slice it, even though I think Herve did make a few mistakes along the way.
 
Herve's delusions aside...

Elven6 said:
Would the $50 million just have included the MMO or everything (including the complete rights to the originals)?
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MMO, yes, complete rights it doesn't say, but the rights to resale of Fallout 1/2/Tactics/BoS were throw-ins, they're irrelevant to a publisher of any size. Kind of give the dog a bone because the revenue stream from those resales is so small as to be meaningless to ZeniMax and a lifestream to what Interplay is now.

But I think you missed one simple fact: they bought the relevant part of the license sans MMO rights, which they licensed back at requirements Interplay was highly unlikely to hit and presumably did not (but that's for the court to decide) for 6 million (IIRC). The MMO part of it does not make up to 44 million. Far from it. The MMO bubble has long since collapsed and everyone seems to realize that except Herve. Most MMOs fail, including MMOs chained to attractive franchises, and including well-made MMOs. Meanwhile, I would hardly dare count the amount of profit Bethesda has made from Fallout 3.

But even if from a business perspective the MMO license was worth 7 times as much as the single-player license (a ridiculous outlook when stated like that), Bethesda will get the MMO license for much less when Interplay fails, which from most commonly held perspectives, including presumably Bethesda's, is inevitable.
 
Brother None said:
Herve's delusions aside...

Elven6 said:
Would the $50 million just have included the MMO or everything (including the complete rights to the originals)?
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MMO, yes, complete rights it doesn't say, but the rights to resale of Fallout 1/2/Tactics/BoS were throw-ins, they're irrelevant to a publisher of any size. Kind of give the dog a bone because the revenue stream from those resales is so small as to be meaningless to ZeniMax and a lifestream to what Interplay is now.

But I think you missed one simple fact: they bought the relevant part of the license sans MMO rights, which they licensed back at requirements Interplay was highly unlikely to hit and presumably did not (but that's for the court to decide) for 6 million (IIRC). The MMO part of it does not make up to 44 million. Far from it. The MMO bubble has long since collapsed and everyone seems to realize that except Herve. Most MMOs fail, including MMOs chained to attractive franchises, and including well-made MMOs. Meanwhile, I would hardly dare count the amount of profit Bethesda has made from Fallout 3.

But even if from a business perspective the MMO license was worth 7 times as much as the single-player license (a ridiculous outlook when stated like that), Bethesda will get the MMO license for much less when Interplay fails, which from most commonly held perspectives, including presumably Bethesda's, is inevitable.
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Every little bit helps, I think it's safe to say Interplay has made a good chunk of money from selling the Fallout Trilogy. Out of their back catalog, the Fallout titles seem to be selling the best on sites like Good Old Games, they were even charting on NPD PC charts at retail. Given the fact that Bethesda named the Fallout Trilogy in their suit, it surely means something to them. There is also a "peace of mind" that comes with owning everything, you have more control over what you own and you don't have to worry about others screwing up your brand or name.

The MMO bubble has not collapsed (it's actually showing signs of growth due to the popularity in Asia/Eastern Europe and "social games") and it certainly wasn't showing signs of collapsing in 1999 or 2004 (when the contract was signed). Investments were taken, contracts were signed, Interplay can't just back out of the MMO just because Tabula Rasa or APB failed.

Interplay and ZeniMax are businesses, the higher ups for both companies saw opportunity and they went after it. There is no guarantee that a MMO will do well but there is a chance, just as there was no guarantee that Fallout 3 would do even a fraction of the sales that it did once released. It's difficult to put a true value on the Fallout MMO, or any game that hasn't released yet for that matter.

As I previously stated, the requirements don't matter much (well they do, but looking at a sink or swim situation) since even if the MMO is taken from them they will still be in a far better position now than they were in 2004 when they were on the verge of closure and liquidation. The requirements Interplay signed may have been ridiculous, and for all we know, Herve could have met them, only time will tell. What we can say for sure is that Interplay is in a much better financial position now than they were for quite some time, the debt is almost non existent, they've begun publishing again, redeveloping old IP's and new, etc.

Something to keep in mind, MMO's like Age of Conan initially sold over 1 million units with a subscriber base to match, it has shrunk since then of course but it's still a pretty good install base of a few hundred thousand users IIRC. Star Wars Galaxies before the overhaul was doing good too. Star Trek Online wasn't the best MMO ever but it still broke the million mark in no time due to the appeal, there hasn't been any word of server closures so one can assume it's still doing great. There are plenty of other examples as well, the common factor here is a brand name is behind them in more ways than one. This works in the MMO's favor but it doesn't really guarantee a success. It does however guarantee better odds than if they went in with a new IP.

Going forward, Star Wars: The Old Republic will likely do pretty well. Speaking of which, assuming Interplay gets past this lawsuit I think they should be worrying more about how Fallout 4 (which Howard gave a 2012 release window at the earliest IIRC) and Star Wars: The Old Republic will do since those are the biggest threats.

My personal opinion about the MMO is that Interplay, or who ever ends up with the MMO has an up hill battle. From what I know so far, am I sold on the idea? Not really, but I'll definitely be open to giving it a chance when it releases.

Edit: Spelling.
 
Disappointed how everything has to follow on from the Fallout 2 thing of being "funny". There will never be a proper Fallout sequel that has the same atmosphere as the original.
 
Reconite said:
Disappointed how everything has to follow on from the Fallout 2 thing of being "funny". There will never be a proper Fallout sequel that has the same atmosphere as the original.
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While Fallout 2 was over the top in terms of corny humor, it wasn't like the first game was humorless. Among other things, the very setting of Fallout is meant to have a bit of humor. If they wanted to play it straight the world of Fallout would be a generic post-apoc future. Instead they purposely chose the 1950s "World of Tomorrow" future because it is funny, especially when juxtaposed into a bleak, destroyed landscape.

What is wrong with New Vegas's atmosphere? As long as you don't choose the Wild Wasteland perk you will avoid the corny elements of the game.
 
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