Interplay counters Bethesda's claims

[Vik]

I get your point, quality over quantity and all, but I do think that the quality of most locations was good enough and the huge amount of locations just gave a sense that you're really exploring a huge world. That's a bit better than having a game pretending to have a huge world.

It was a problem in Fallout 3 though, there were too many locations and not enough quests, but at least most of those locations had some kind of reward.

 

[Lexx]

The quality of what was there in FNV was good, but this doesn't make them feel less empty to me.

 

[Ausir]

Juding from comments on mainstream gaming sites, this case is getting worse and worse for Bethesda's public image.

 

[Vik]

Doubt it will hurt their sales though

 

[Crni Vuk]

we will see.

But what it might do is narrow their future buisness with other companies or game developers when they have to fear that "big" Bethesda (or zenimax) is making contracts in "bad faith" ~ particularly when youre a studio of much smaller size !

You know. No one likes to have a buisness partner he cant thrust. That counts for Bethesda like for anyone else. And its pretty clear (even before this curt thing) that Bethesda is a quite paranoid company.

 

[Vik]

Look at how badly Activision screwed over the COD MW2 developers. So what? The next CoD game sold better than the last. And Activision still publishes a ton of games.

Business world. Business world never changes.

 

[Ausir]

While I have little love for both Bethesda and Interplay, Interplay actually winning back the franchise would be pretty damn funny.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think focusing on not fulfilling the financial requirements would do them more good, because here it's Interplay's arguments that are rather silly. And the more frivolous claims Bethesda adds, the fewer people actually remember that interplay doesn't have the 30 million, and the more apparent it is that Bethesda has been acting in bad faith.

 

[Knödelkarpfen]

No one likes to have a buisness partner he cant thrust.

Apparently Bethesda is actually quite good at thrusting its business partners. Watch out Obsidian!

I really have been surprised by the amateur nature of the whole affair. I know they probably weren't planning this way back when they made the agreement with Interplay, but surely Zenimax could have bought better representation...

 

[Ausir]

I wonder when they'll fire their law firm and hire a new one again (they did it once already after the preliminary injunction fiasco).

 

[Elven6]

Oh cry me a river, Interplay is a wank of a studio that can't produce a decent game without hanging on a license they milked, butchered and sold over the years. I have an advice for them if they want to support their families - stop dicking around and hanging on the past and actually make an actual game for the first time in what, close to 10 years?

Actually, they have released quite a few internally produced things onto digital platforms, Legendary Wars is pretty fun from what I'm hearing. They've also released a few DSiWare and iOS internal stuff. They've also successfully licensed out projects like Earthworm Jim HD, MDK 2 HD, etc. Not to mention games like Pinball Yeah and Tommy Tronic were also released. The fact that a majority of their upcoming remakes are being developed by a good chunk of their original team (respectively) is huge fan service and nothing to scoff at.

But I wouldn't expect you to know any of that.

 

[Ausir]

They've also successfully licensed out projects like Earthworm Jim HD

Well, Doug TenNapel, the creator of Jim, would disagree with the "successfully" part.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Look at how badly Activision screwed over the COD MW2 developers. So what? The next CoD game sold better than the last. And Activision still publishes a ton of games.

Business world. Business world never changes.

THe question is if it happend several times and at some point faced the court ? I mean I am sure many companies do stupid things sometimes. But Bethesda has a quite long history of screwing smalle development teams as publisher ... (A place where no Trekky can go anymore ...).

As said. I dont know if it will do any damage at all. But I mean a certain image is important afterall.

 

[Stanislao Moulinsky]

While I have little love for both Bethesda and Interplay, Interplay actually winning back the franchise would be pretty damn funny.

I wonder what would happen in that case. Fallout right now is a big license with players expecting expensive AAA titles from the series. What would they do? They would sell the license again? They would outsource it? Sell the license for individual titles like they did at the beginning? Try to develop one in-house?

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Seeing as Herve's Interplay already considered Fallout 3 to serious, I would seriously worry if they would make a new game in house.

 

[Elven6]

They've also successfully licensed out projects like Earthworm Jim HD

Well, Doug TenNapel, the creator of Jim, would disagree with the "successfully" part.

Eh, it reviewed pretty well from what I remember, and it was pretty feature packed. Judging by leaderboards (take it with a grain of salt of course), the game wasn't selling too bad either (50k on the 360).

 

[Ausir]

They did a crappy job at recreating the graphics (particularly Jim himself), as noted by Doug TenNapel, who was never asked to cooperate on it.

HAHHAHAHA! Look at those hideous Jims! At least the obviously bad art will give true Jim fans something to laugh at. We finally have the HD resolution to get a good look at Jim and he looks like this?! Put it back! Go back to 16 bit!

That four player mode does look fun.

I have no idea what's going on with this game. It's weird, but I'm kind of used to Jim looking and acting not-Jim for most of his life since EWJ2. What bugs me is that it doesn't cost more money to make these things look right, it just takes humility for a production to admit that they might need some help.

I'm still hoping Interplay will do a legit, new, next generation Jim game we've talked about. It's financially tough out in the gaming world right now. Companies like EA are laying off people and studios are shutting down everywhere.

Also, it turned out that they plagiarized some fan art and an image from a Disney film or something like that. It was all in TenNapel's forums. See this and the rest of the thread:

http://tennapel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11391&start=30#p182109

 

[Brother None]

He should be used to his creation getting treated shittily by now.

 

[Ausir]

Yeah. Wonder if Disney will find out about the plagiarism, though. They're less forgiving.

 

[Elven6]

They did a crappy job at recreating the graphics (particularly Jim himself), as noted by Doug TenNapel, who was never asked to cooperate on it.

HAHHAHAHA! Look at those hideous Jims! At least the obviously bad art will give true Jim fans something to laugh at. We finally have the HD resolution to get a good look at Jim and he looks like this?! Put it back! Go back to 16 bit!

That four player mode does look fun.

I have no idea what's going on with this game. It's weird, but I'm kind of used to Jim looking and acting not-Jim for most of his life since EWJ2. What bugs me is that it doesn't cost more money to make these things look right, it just takes humility for a production to admit that they might need some help.

I'm still hoping Interplay will do a legit, new, next generation Jim game we've talked about. It's financially tough out in the gaming world right now. Companies like EA are laying off people and studios are shutting down everywhere.

Also, it turned out that they plagiarized some fan art and an image from a Disney film or something like that. It was all in TenNapel's forums. See this and the rest of the thread:

http://tennapel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11391&start=30#p182109

Oh don't get me wrong, I was also pretty vocal about the lack of a "classic graphics" option in EWJ HD and the current style is hit or miss but I do commend Gameloft for actually trying to re-master the original at a time when most simply put our basic rom emulations for the same price.

I haven't heard about the Disney thing but I remember the controversy over the Deviant Art Jim icon that made its way into the game. I haven't followed it for a while though so I'm not sure how it turned out.

Wasn't TenNapel also working on EWJ 4? Interplay announced the project in 2009 I believe but they've been quiet about it ever since.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Fanart
Disney

The worst thing was that apparently they knew about the Disney plagiarism before release and never dealt with it. That's just begging for a legal ax to come down on your neck.

As for the fanart, a guy at HQ found it on the internet assumed it was official art so he sent it over to their Chinese studio (who apparently cranks out a lot) without sending it through their legal department. All he got for doing that was a slap on the wrist.

Granted, this was all Gameloft, the studio it was outsourced to, but it says something about Interplay for outsourcing to such a studio. The thread has a few other interesting tidbits, such as Interplay providing none of the materials from the previous teams who'd worked on the games (which is why not many of the special edition levels made it), so it's not bad to sift through.