Interplay founder looks back on the past 20 years

[Chromosome 25]

Call me a communist but I have no pity with the average shareholder who just buys to exploit a company and specualte on it's exsistence.

You guys must think about it differently in Europe. Over here, the general sense is that there is a company that needs money to do X, and they ask the public for funds to help them do it. The public says "what's in it for me" and the company responds with business plans, projections, and an expected return. One of the reason why US stocks take a HUGE value hit when a company misses a profit goal is not the value of the profit loss itself, but the fact that shareholders no longer believe/trust its management. Though I agree that there is a large amount of speculation in the market, most of your individual shareholders are really investors.

 

[Tweaker]

What about MDK, 1&2, I loved those games. The weapons creation system in the second one was awesome!

 

[sposocke]

Eversince the fall of the iron curtain it's basically the same over here, although in Europe we perhaps have less hostile takeovers than in the US and for a long time shareholders interests were only one among many. Instead they had to arrange themselves with everyone else and somewhat everyone got a "piece of the pie". This is shifting nowadays with pleasing shareholder interests becoming the main objective of companies and in response cutting back on social structures and naturally other people's interests. Suppose flat out capitalism evolved out of the collapse of the USSR over here, the structures have become harsher, or atleast so in my country.
But anyway I'm not saying that I mind people making money, but I do believe that the industry was maybe too young for this step, expanded too fast and offered their shares too early at a time when they couldn't guarantee for the profits, thus made themselves vunerable. Because as you said it is a lot about confidence and this can easily drive shareprices down, pulling the company along with it.
Another thing is that there are a lot of medium sized companies with decent products who are not traded on the stockmarket but have a good business running all the same. Thing is the industry grew so fast it's questionable if they really needed the investor money but might have instead made this capita by product sales, which skyrocketed throughout the nineties. The PC industry would have grown anyway, the main motor being the net and the multimedia applications not necessarily soley the games industry.

I was a bit miffed when I found out Sid Meier had nothing to do with SM's AC or SM's Civ 2-3. Gaming magazines still attribute these games to him for some reason.

Ya, same here but it was somewhat noticeable since the games really didn't have the same charm as did the classics. For me he was grand about the same time as Gilbert, he made Civ and Colonization and Gilbert MI, so round about '92. Printing his name on the cover though without him being apart of the project is more or less what I'm on about. Civ2 was no doubt less innovative than Civ1 at it's time, hardly any new features (and there were things which could have been improved no doubt) but basically only the graphics were polished, an obvious shift to moneymaking without delivering in the process.


As for FOOL well I guess that's really a matter of opinion. Obviously none of us seem to be those people because otherwise we'd be making those games and not just enjoying them.
Nor do I believe that modern OL games are contradictory to older games, in fact they have quite a bit in common. Apart from SWG maybe, they are often young companies with absolutely no backing, it's their main project so they're at it with dedication and their ideas are often very innovative even if they sometimes fail due to financing. There is simply a trend in modern gaming towards playing with other people, graphics and sfx have evolved but AI has hardly gotten any better in most games for the past 15 years and most of them get exploited by the player sooner or later simply due to experience.
A FO3 would be nice but it's chances of getting developed are slim. Yet it's not our fault since we would have bought it. But if a company does buy the license and does alter it a bit that doesn't automatically have to be bad imho, we don't know this game yet how can we judge it. What went wrong with FOT wasn't primarily that it wasn't inline with FO1+2 but more that it stripped the game of all what actually made it FO and left it with the action part, which was simply not at the heart of the game. In any case I'm open for anything that can catch FO's atmosphere and nonlinearity in whatever form that may be.

 

[Roshambo]

Another round of cluelessness, debunked.

As for FOOL well I guess that's really a matter of opinion. Obviously none of us seem to be those people because otherwise
we'd be making those games and not just enjoying them.

That's where you show your ignorance, yet again. There are a number of topics, mostly in the Archived Boards, that go into this topic at length. No matter how you want to drool over it, the concept would not remain Fallout in terms of setting and universe. It's kind of hard to be that knowledgable about the subject if I didn't develop in it.

I liked how you claimed it was about "opinion", then keep glossing over it because "some people" would enjoy playing such a concept. That might work for children and those with otherwise no grasp of backstory, because most Fallout fans tended to like the setting and here you're advocating the pissing away of it. That is without taking into consideration that the game would be one of dozens of MMORPGs out there and it really has no chance to do well now, not in 6 months, not ever. It also isn't hard to see that people didn't like Fifi's yapping about FOOL either, so I think that would put you into a minority. Why are you then gushing about a project that has no hopes for the market? To prove you can use the Submit button?

Nor do I believe that modern OL games are contradictory to older games, in fact they have quite a bit in common. Apart from SWG maybe, they are often young companies with absolutely no backing, it's their main project so they're at it with dedication and their ideas are often very innovative even if they sometimes fail due to financing.

So you've admitted that you only care that it has the name of Fallout. Pardon me a moment.

/me carves Fallout: Online onto a dog turd, then hits you with it.

Hey, playing Fallout Online is pretty fun, now.

There's many more that jumped onto the MMORPG bandwagon and many haven't developed much remarkable work. It's not just newbie companies. Frankly, some of the newbie companies could stand to die off, as most of them are just copying the same sad formula. Some do have some quirky feature to flaunt, but they seem to only get press because of how different they are in design, but it isn't really what the market wants out of the game. Therefore, to insist that Fallout be placed in the same position is nothing more than a pure unadulterated "fuck you" to the other fans and to the developers.

There is simply a trend in modern gaming towards playing with other people, graphics and sfx have evolved but AI has hardly gotten any better in most games for the past 15 years and most of them get exploited by the player sooner or later simply due to experience.

AI in MMORPGs is pretty much a near impossibility for a long time, at least until the Johnny-come-latelys chasing the MMORPG trend jump onto some other trend chasing. There is some decent AI in some single-player games, and especially TB, but that's mainly because of the mechanics involed.

A FO3 would be nice but it's chances of getting developed are slim. Yet it's not our fault since we would have bought it. But if a company does buy the license and does alter it a bit that doesn't automatically have to be bad imho, we don't know this game yet how can we judge it.

It's good that you're stuck into the marketing sheep mentality and can't think for yourself. There's ways to tell how a game is treated by listening to the developers and seeing how the treat the property. It's how I saw FOT was shaping up to be crap to begin with, because I was one of the few that did point out the inherent problems with having to upload a code base routinely from across the planet. It's how the poor design on FOS was easily seen except by those who would buy dog shit with the name Fallout carved into it.

What went wrong with FOT wasn't primarily that it wasn't inline with FO1+2 but more that it stripped the game of all what actually made it FO and left it with the action part, which was simply not at the heart of the game.

Well, it's good you at least know that. Wait, you don't. You just pulled that out of your ass. Maybe if you had some real idea about what went on, then we'd entertain your continued fumbling through this conversation. As it stands, you're way off.

In any case I'm open for anything that can catch FO's atmosphere and nonlinearity in whatever form that may be.

In other words, in name only. Go play in traffic with the rest of the strays.