Fallout license changes hands

[Frog]

What is happening to the video gaming industry?

Its getting less and less of video gaming and more and more of industry

 

[13pm]

The soundtrack will be superb. Bethesda has never dissapointed in that regard, Jeremy Soule worked wonders with the Morrowind soundtrack.

yup. if Jeremy Soule, then it may be nice.

In fact, the only reason that I've ever liked Bethesda was because of Morrowind, and due to the quality of Elder Scrolls 3, I was actually excited about Oblivion. I awaited it so gleefully that I actually missed school intentionally claiming to be sick to run down to EBGames and get a copy.

as for me, i disliked Morrowind also. Yes it was fun for couple of hours, but i am not a fan of real-time battles like it has. the most balanced RT-battle for me is one of KoTOR.

What is happening to the video gaming industry?

the games became less deep. the whole industry became less in-game plot or characters-oriented but visual-FX-for-bigger-money-oriented. yes, Oblivion is vast (wide), shiny but it is not as beautiful and big (deep) as Fallout.

and also there's a bad tendency that people dislike turn-based games. no thinking, but "actively pointing and shooting" (c)

 

[pnutz]

Also don't forget Bethesda have the option to license Fallout out now, so if they don't do well with Fallout 3, we could be seeing Fallout 4 made by another company.

MORE WORK FOR OBSIDIAN!

 

[Big T]

5.3.2 Interplay shall not offer or provide any products or services whose nature or quality does not comply with the quality standards of Bethesda.

Miss print? I think it should be:
5.3.2 Bethesda shall not offer or provide any products or services whose nature or quality does not comply with the quality standards of Interplay .

No, that part is about Interplay's responsibilities when making the MMOG. They can't do anything bad that would hurt Bethesda's reputation by association, Bethesda has the right to check up on their progress, and so on. Bethesda on the other hand own the actual IP so they can do whatever they want.

To backtrack, just a little, this seems a strangely ambiguous term to use in a legal document.

It's rather open ended: couldn't Bethsoft, should they decide to, just veto anything that Interplay produces? After all, quality is an (almost) entirely subjective term.

 

[Brother None]

It isn´t odd, Big T. Even moreso, it´s a standard clause in a licensing contract. Interplay is licensing from Bethesda, hence Interplay can do nothing to hurt the value of the license.

Remember GURPS? I believe the clause used to get out of that one had to do with mutual promises of quality. It´s ambiguous, but it can easily be so simply because there´s usually no gain to be made by either party by pulling out of the license unless the game being made is REALLY bad.

Also, for all of youze guys somehow saying this is a large amount...Interplay sold the Hunter The Reckoning license for USD 15 million Q1 2003.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Also, for all of youze guys somehow saying this is a large amount...Interplay sold the Hunter The Reckoning license for USD 15 million Q1 2003.

Yes, it's not a big sum. Funny how the american dollar is losing value, and american assets are gaining value.

An FX movie like 300 had a buget of 60$ milion. That's almost as much as Alien: Ressurection, and, by looking at the cast alone, the dollar has lost terrible value.

 

[Silencer]

Also, for all of youze guys somehow saying this is a large amount...Interplay sold the Hunter The Reckoning license for USD 15 million Q1 2003.

I still can't put my finger on this 1.8 mil in escrow "for liabilities".

Maybe it's supposed to pay for this 1.8 mil of debt IPLY claims not to see? Might it leave Frenchie with $600,000 instead of $6,000,000?

 

[Brother None]

I still can't put my finger on this 1.8 mil in escrow "for liabilities".

Maybe it's supposed to pay for this 1.8 mil of debt IPLY claims not to see? Might it leave Frenchie with $600,000 instead of $6,000,000?

It would be illegal to claim debts are gone in a SEC filing only to then pay it from a sale.

I´m guessing it´s a number of different costs, including the 5 (?) employees Caen now has, but perhaps also the most pressing debts, like the IRS and, hopefully, finally paying his employees (unlikely).

 

[Silencer]

It would be illegal to claim debts are gone in a SEC filing only to then pay it from a sale.

I'm pretty sure you're right, I'm just curious if the matchingg of those two amounts is coincidental.

the 5 (?) employees Caen now has,

How can he have employees if he's not incurring costs?

Oh, wait.

 

[Wooz]

EVERYBODY PANIC!

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

I'm sorry if it's old news, but Gamespot mentioned us in their 13th april "Bethesda puts Fallout IP in vault" article.


Bethesda puts Fallout IP in vault on Gamespot

 

[Brother None]

Yah, most recent Fallout 3 Gamespot articles mention us.

I can still remember that Tor was asked by Herve not to post the Van Buren screenshots on Gamespot, so he linked to them on NMA.

NMA and Tor Thorson have pretty good contacts. More or less.

 

[PhredBean]

I'm sorry if it's old news, but Gamespot mentioned us in their 13th april "Bethesda puts Fallout IP in vault" article.


Bethesda puts Fallout IP in vault on Gamespot

Jeez, most of the comments the article spawned will make you want to start indescriminately choking people.

 

[Dracon M'Alkir]

I'm sorry if it's old news, but Gamespot mentioned us in their 13th april "Bethesda puts Fallout IP in vault" article.


Bethesda puts Fallout IP in vault on Gamespot

Jeez, most of the comments the article spawned will make you want to start indescriminately choking people.

I whole-heartedly agree.

I like oblivion personally, but that might be because I never played through morrowind. I've never played a fallout game either, but it sounds nice.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Don't worry zsc4 I doubt they will ruin it. Bethesda is really good at creating open ended RPG games like what Fallout was. It will probably be awesome!

Open fire, Bean.

 

[Bradylama]

This is INCREDIBLE news! Interplay blew it but Bethesda could definitely pull this off correctly. RIP Troika ... you had your chance.

=/

I'm actually impressed that they aren't confusing the IP with Flatout.

 

[Mick1965]

I don't think it will work in this case, because the Fallout fan base is jaded/educated and can't be easily conned. Also because it is not a swords and sorcery CRPG, average Joe/Jane won't get it.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but I'll stick to my theory until proven wrong. I've seen research on the user bases of massively multiplayer games and 95% of them are playing fantasy games. I've also spoken to and read interviews with developers over the years and they were punished when they tried something other than swords and sorcery in a CRPG.

Bethesda don't really do CRPGs, they do action/adventure games with RPG-like elements thrown in. This type of setting has been a winner for other FPS games like Half-Life 2, so there's no reason Bethesda can't make a game that will be successful for them as far as sales go. They don't care about the FO fans or hard-core RPG fans, as is shown by their focus on developing the game primarily on the XBox.

As an aside, a work mate of mine bought Oblivion for his XBox, but sold it halfway through because he got bored with the game. Recently he decided to get a copy for his PC so he could play the game again... don't ask! He said the PC version was inferior to the XBox version, and the game played a lot better on the XBox. Just goes to show that Bethesdsa port their XBox developed games to the PC without much consideration to the needs/wants of PC owners.

Mick

 

[Bradylama]

They've pretty much admitted that the Xbox is their primary development platform and that if anything is cross-platform the PC version is an Xbox port.

 

[13pm]

what really drives me angry are those oblivion fanboys that NEVER played FO, but crazy about Beth and post like:

"I've never played Fallout, but I'll surely play FALLOUT 3, because Bethesda does great games"

aaaargh =(
kill'em all.

 

[taxacaria]

Bethesda don't really do CRPGs, they do action/adventure games with RPG-like elements thrown in.

Daggerfall had RPG-qualities. Morrowind had some bad mistakes in RPG design, but still has been an RPG. Oblivion is only called "RPG". So I think Beth knows, what an RPG is, but prefers to make dumb down genre mixes to get a bigger mainstream audience.

He said the PC version was inferior to the XBox version, and the game played a lot better on the XBox. Just goes to show that Bethesdsa port their XBox developed games to the PC without much consideration to the needs/wants of PC owners.

The xbox version had same roleplay, same story, same quests, same short topic-click dialogue, same hack&slash, same over-all-levelling etc. Same game - same shit. I can't see the difference here. Graphics is slightly better on xbox than on older pcs, but that's depending on your hardware, and you need a hard disk to get a satisfying performance on xbox. It has been designed for xbox, that's correct, but the poorly designed pc port without a decent pc interface is a major flaw, but that's not the reason for the sucking nature of Oblivion.