JE talks about Bis/IPLY

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Odin

Odin

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Josh Sawyer took some time to debate why Bis/IPLY is crashing and posted this little snibblet on the Obsidian boards:<blockquote>My point is that a large number of IPLY titles failed by a huge margin. Icewind Dale was very profitable. Heart of Winter was also very profitable. Even Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale II were profitable. Remember that IWD2 only took ten months to develop. It really didn't have to sell a large number of units to turn a profit.

It is also important for people to recognize that cancelled projects are often less damaging than projects that linger on and on for years, then finally get released to poor sales. Combine Jefferson and Van Buren. You're looking at about three years of development, with a fluctuating team size of between 6-25 people. Compare that to Run Like Hell. RLH was in development for about four years, with (as far as I know) a similar team size. It shipped and tanked hard. The cost of development certainly wasn't covered, and the cost of publishing and distribution was just thrown away, since barely any units moved. Jefferson and VB also never had to pay for audio development and voice acting. I am pretty confident that even those two titles combined did not lose anywhere near as much money as RLH.

Feargus made good decisions in cancelling Torn and SK2. One might suggest that it would have been an even better decision to never start them, but hindsight, etc.

Profitable BIS titles: Fallout 2, Torment, IWD, HoW, IWD2, BG, TotSC, BG2, ToB
Unprofitable/loss BIS titles: SK2, Torn, Jefferson, Van Buren, Lionheart

Of the above, only Lionheart actually shipped. Compare this list to the general Interplay list. Christ, Sacrifice sold about the same number of units as Heart of Winter, and Heart of Winter was not good. I remember walking through the halls of Interplay's marketing/PR department around the time before Sacrifice and HoW were supposed to ship. At the time, HoW was getting one-page ads (this was before Justin's two-page spread). Sacrifice got six-page spreads (yes, six) in holiday issues of something like fifteen magazines. It blew my mind.

Interplay's problems certainly can't be traced to a single source. However, I'd start pointing at a lot of other places before I'd point at games that didn't ship in the past two years.</blockquote>And let's not forget the fact that IPLY took resources away from VB/Fo3 and put it into Fbos, which also tanked big time!
Thanks to Briosafreak for informing us about this..
Link: Thread on the Obsidian Boards
 
Bishop still has a lot to learn but he's got a few points dead on.

My point is that a large number of IPLY titles failed by a huge margin. Icewind Dale was very profitable. Heart of Winter was also very profitable. Even Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale II were profitable. Remember that IWD2 only took ten months to develop. It really didn't have to sell a large number of units to turn a profit.
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Well, it turned a profit, but pretty much urinated upon the franchise. Well, what was left of it after people bought the first and got something that didn't quite meet their expectations of BIS' work, but it had a full price tag. It probably didn't sell as well as it could have due to numerous reasons. Or has anyone else there learned that you can't nickel and dime in the game industry and still try to keep a high profile? People will not pay for a shiny nickel when they didn't like the first one. The lesson should have been a painfully obvious one by now, one more painful for some than others. To advocate the dishonesty of a thinly-developed and/or rushed title that is sold at full price puts question to the integrity of anyone who promotes such an asinine case of fraud.

It is also important for people to recognize that cancelled projects are often less damaging than projects that linger on and on for years, then finally get released to poor sales. Combine Jefferson and Van Buren. You're looking at about three years of development, with a fluctuating team size of between 6-25 people. Compare that to Run Like Hell. RLH was in development for about four years, with (as far as I know) a similar team size. It shipped and tanked hard. The cost of development certainly wasn't covered, and the cost of publishing and distribution was just thrown away, since barely any units moved. Jefferson and VB also never had to pay for audio development and voice acting. I am pretty confident that even those two titles combined did not lose anywhere near as much money as RLH.
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Everyone I've spoken to has said the game was pure shit. It doesn't take much to see how or why, either. The game should have been cancelled early in it's development and you don't need to have hindsight for that one.

And yet, they let Chucklehead Cuevas go ahead with another craptacular title.

Feargus made good decisions in cancelling Torn and SK2. One might suggest that it would have been an even better decision to never start them, but hindsight, etc.
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It's always easy to trot out "hindsight" as some kind of excuse. Excuse me while I put that excuse out of its misery.

People said "shit" when they first saw it, and then it went into one of the most bored press followings I've ever seen. Please tell me it did occur to someone on the design team, though maybe it didn't occur to them until months later, that the concept wasn't exactly a bright one?

Of course, it could have been the "What Fallout fans have been waiting for..." line, along with the rest of the hyped bullshit, that was the only real interest for people to read the articles about it.

Come on. After a couple of months, it's obvious it's just a paycheck milking of a really bad idea. Starting piss-poor projects and letting them linger on costs a bit more than actually pulling through with a project that would sell. TORN was another Run Like Hell. Van Buren and Jefferson were not. HUGE difference.

Of the above, only Lionheart actually shipped. Compare this list to the general Interplay list. Christ, Sacrifice sold about the same number of units as Heart of Winter, and Heart of Winter was not good.
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Neither was Suckrifice. Shitty is now clearly a team of overpaid no-talent whores. They are quickly taking their street cred into the ground. Take a look at their latest title for the epitome of shit licensing. That would have likely been an Interplay title, and the management would have beat their chests at how profitable it was, without taking into consideration the integrity of the game (which has Warner Bros chewing at Bruno Bumblefuck, CEO of Atari). Something that was becoming quite common at Interplay. I also suspect that someone's "SLAM DUNK!" CRPG plan got a little too infectious to IPLY's management, and therefore they'll give years for shitty action titles, but only give a few months for a CRPG.

Good one, Feargus. :roll:

I remember walking through the halls of Interplay's marketing/PR department around the time before Sacrifice and HoW were supposed to ship. At the time, HoW was getting one-page ads (this was before Justin's two-page spread). Sacrifice got six-page spreads (yes, six) in holiday issues of something like fifteen magazines. It blew my mind.
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A lot of the problems with Interplay was in how they revered every piece of idiocy their marketing dept spewed, and instead of teaching the game industry to the inbred chimps of marketing, they had the chimps pimp whatever their feeble minds could understand. Bonus points if they used as many feature buzz-words found on other boxes as possible for their ilk.

That is why I am not too sympathetic for some of the people who lost jobs at Interplay. Those people are likely a good majority of those left, crying about work, when they were likely as clueless about planning their own life as much as they were in marketing and gaming. They probably couldn't get a real job in a real marketing dept, but that's not saying much as the whole of that breed should be shot. They serve no purpose other than some idiot to order ads, but they will harm good game design by wheedling up to the CEO/CFO that trendy shit should be dry-humped into the ground.

Interplay's problems certainly can't be traced to a single source. However, I'd start pointing at a lot of other places before I'd point at games that didn't ship in the past two years.
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It is part of the core problem. The management and marketing dept on many levels were so entirely clueless that they would rather prolong crap projects that turn into shit games versus actually work on something that people actively want and would make the company money...which were cancelled in favor of bullshit like Run Like Hell and F:POS. You see, the cancellations and the prolongings are both large parts of the problem. After all, how can Interplay make any money if they don't have any selling games?
 
Interesting post with a lot of waffle to cut through as usual, but you make some good points. You can't write off sacrifice though, because even though you thought it sucked, I thought it was completely unique, thoroughly involving and entirely succesful as a game (though not as a profitable one).
 
Mr. Teatime said:
Interesting post with a lot of waffle to cut through as usual, but you make some good points.
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As per usual, you try to equate your personal opinion as some validation in the argument.

You can't write off sacrifice though, because even though you thought it sucked, I thought it was completely unique, thoroughly involving and entirely succesful as a game (though not as a profitable one).
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I don't care if you enjoy punching yourself in the nuts, either. It doesn't invalidate the fact that you're an easily-impressed idiot.
 
Roshambo said:
Mr. Teatime said:
Interesting post with a lot of waffle to cut through as usual, but you make some good points.
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As per usual, you try to equate your personal opinion as some validation in the argument.

You can't write off sacrifice though, because even though you thought it sucked, I thought it was completely unique, thoroughly involving and entirely succesful as a game (though not as a profitable one).
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I don't care if you enjoy punching yourself in the nuts, either. It doesn't invalidate the fact that you're an easily-impressed idiot.
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what a well thought out argument. guess i was wrong about you.
 
If you really need it pointed out to you, then I could do so at length.

I could go into how Sacrifice wasn't really unique, wasn't revolutionary, nor innovative as that idiot at VE3D claimed.

There's a reason why it essentially bombed. It had poor gameplay; equivalent to an infinite rush possibility in an RTS, and it was otherwise so banal and predictable after some time. Well, except for the stupid rock-paper-scissors combat scheme.

Of course, I could point out that it was completely foolish of you to try and say "You can't write off sacrifice though, because even though you thought it sucked, I thought it was completely unique..."

That implies and makes the assumption on many levels. I can't write off Sacrifice? Why not, when so many others have done so, that the game was considered crap? Because you say so? Excuse me, exactly what kind of presumptuous moron do you have to be to tell me what I can or can't say on my own forum? What kind of drugs are you on to believe that your argument would fly when you've undoubtedly seen the multitude of other pathetic straw man arguments I've torn apart?

bowlofstupid.jpg
 
the point, that you spectacularly missed, was that sacrifice can not be written off as a total failure because even though you thought it sucked, there are plenty of people including myself who thought it was brilliant and deserving of all the praise it got in a lot of gaming magazines, hence it's not even in the same league as something like Run Like Hell, where everyone thought it sucked. And as for you ripping apart other people's straw men argument on your own forum, 1) Whether you rip people apart or not or just bore them to death and so they give up replying is debatable, and 2) thankfully it's not solely your forum, and you can't just do what you want on it.
 
Mr. Teatime said:
the point, that you spectacularly missed, was that sacrifice can not be written off as a total failure because even though you thought it sucked, there are plenty of people including myself who thought it was brilliant and deserving of all the praise it got in a lot of gaming magazines, hence it's not even in the same league as something like Run Like Hell, where everyone thought it sucked.
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Again, you post another straw man, one even more pathetic than the first. There were people who thought that Daikatana was brilliant. Does that mean we can't write that off, either? Or how about the main bit of evidence that blows holes in your argument, how someone can vote a 95% for Enter the Matrix and how Run Like Hell has more than 10 reviews at 80% and above.

So, you're wrong about everyone saying Run Like Hell sucked. Claiming that a game is noteworthy because some people think a game is unique/revolutionary/etc. because of their own ignorance, that is the fault of their own ignorance. Sorry, but that's how reality works, live with it.

Sacrifice was a shallow game and didn't get much of an audience despite the amount of press put behind it. It got massive spreads and sold very little. Hmmm, now that wouldn't indicate that it wasn't living up to the hype, perhaps? Nah, I couldn't rely on you to piece that together on your own or anytime this year.

And as for you ripping apart other people's straw men argument on your own forum, 1) Whether you rip people apart or not or just bore them to death and so they give up replying is debatable,
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Usually they get tired of being publically mocked and often resort to some tangent argument to snivel their way out of it.

and 2) thankfully it's not solely your forum, and you can't just do what you want on it.
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You've obviously not been here for the last five years. Good job in pointing out that you're not just ignorant about games, but about the location as well.

At this point, although it seems a bit redundant, I would like to note the following. Most people are bright enough to know that you don't start digging when you've already hit rock bottom. Too bad you're not one of those people.
 
Briosafreak said:
Split and vats please kthxbye
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I'm not touching this for now. Tho it will go off the News forum at some point, it has no place here, and then to either GGD or the Vats.
 
What's GGD?


Or do you perhaps mean GGF?!?!?!

Hà! Another mistake!

Haha! Haha!


Haha -*Aaaaaaaah*-........


Ah shit, now I soiled my boxers...
 
Briosafreak said:
GGD, good idea as usual Kharn.
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yeh, but from where do I split it? The start's still about this newspost. Which is why I, myself, am leaving it for now.
 
Mr. Teatime said:
the point, that you spectacularly missed, was that sacrifice can not be written off as a total failure because even though you thought it sucked, there are plenty of people including myself who thought it was brilliant and deserving of all the praise it got in a lot of gaming magazines, hence it's not even in the same league as something like Run Like Hell, where everyone thought it sucked.
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That's one hell of a sentence there.

Sacrifice wasn't "Brilliant" at all. It was Rock, Paper, Scissors with flashy graphics and little else. In fact, Sacrifice's resource system was pitiful considering the first person to lose a battle tended to lose the game. Why? Because not only do you lose all your units, you also gave the enemy the resources to make their army that much bigger.

It's funny considering the nice people at Pandemic figured this one out with BattleZone and fixed that in BattleZone 2, which Sacrifice basically ripped off, yet the "brilliant" chaps at Shiny couldn't figure this problem out.

And really, you're the one missing the point. The point is that Shiny was a black hole that Interplay used to toss money in. Interplay used to dump GOBS of greenbacks in to Shiny and never saw a return on the products. Sacrifice is just one of those products that had a huge budget and the sales were weak at best.
 
It's pointless arguing with him teatime; he is, after all, a self-proclaimed know-it-all. If you argue, he'll just shit himself and ban you totalitarian dictator style.
 
Actually Rosh's point was that an individual's opinion about a game doesn't make it successfull..
 
NCR_Ranger said:
It's pointless arguing with him teatime; he is, after all, a self-proclaimed know-it-all. If you argue, he'll just shit himself and ban you totalitarian dictator style.
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You're just not giving him a chance!
 
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