Why isnt fallout sold in shops any more?

F

farlard

It Wandered In From the Wastes
Ive always wondered why. Is it because Black isle went bankrupt? Or the violent nature of the game? Or maybe its just too old.
 
It's the age of the game. You find it in redone cases sometimes, but there is very little chance of finding it regardless (in the US, anyway). I checked some local game stores, and even called a couple out-of-town ones, but no dice. I was able to get ahold of a new copy over amazon, though.
 
Yes it can be found on Amazon.com, many times over, which is where I noticed that Bethesda appears to be shamelessly name-dropping Wasteland.

Vault-tec engineers have worked around the clock on an interactive reproduction of Wasteland life for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own vault. Included is an expansive world, unique combat, shockingly realistic visuals, tons of player choice, and an incredible cast of dynamic characters. Every minute is a fight for survival against the terrors of the outside world - radiation, Super Mutants, and hostile mutated creatures. From Vault-Tec, America's first choice in Post-Nuclear Simulation.
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Dear Todd: You suck ass, fraud.
 
I found my copy of F1 on Half.com. I'd lost my old copy and I wanted the jewel case (maybe just because I'm anal). Perfect condition and only cost me eight bucks or so.

But yeah, eventually games just go out of print. The prevalent opinion is nobody wants ten year old games anymore no matter how good they are. I also have a cynical opinion that games with replay value are going straight down the drain. Replay value = You don't buy a new game this month = Corporations don't get your additional fifty dollars. Blah.
 
The worst thing about the games going out of print would probably have to be the loss of items they included with the original publication. The wire wound manual, the words "Remember Wasteland?" on the inside flap, neat touches like that.

Now, with Fallout 3, I'm wondering what connection to Wasteland is present. Oh! I get it, because it's set IN a wasteland! I forgot that I had to wait until I had Mentat withdrawal to understand Toddler's reasoning.

:roll:

As for replay value going down the drain, I found it quite symbolic of a BioWare developer saying that if a certain percent of people aren't going to see a game element, then the game element shouldn't be included.
 
I'm so glad I still have the original manuals, even though I'm on my like third FO1 disk and my FO2 disk (second time I've "owned" 2) doesn't exist in the material plane. I still look for a real Fallout 2 every time I pass a store that sells computer games. I still see Baldur's Gate, but never Fallout. pisses me off >:(
 
Roshambo said:
As for replay value going down the drain, I found it quite symbolic of a BioWare developer saying that if a certain percent of people aren't going to see a game element, then the game element shouldn't be included.
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richard garriot would disagree quite vehemently.

all you have to do is look up the discussion around ultima 4 and the child room.

and i daresay that richard garriot made more money than any bioware developer.
 
TheWesDude said:
richard garriot would disagree quite vehemently.

all you have to do is look up the discussion around ultima 4 and the child room.
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Which one? I've heard a lot of the design philosophies, most of which revolved around secrets and how they should be used - plentiful and to add to the setting.

Ohhhh, yes, that one-

Richard Garriott said:
I can give you another example about killing children. When I was developing Ultima IV and I was trying to fill the game with these ethical tests. In reality, one of the things I've learned is that you don't actually have to do the test so long as people believe there is a test. What I mean by that, if the players are always wondering if the game is capable of testing their behavior then they always remain on their best behavior, even if you do not manage to think of a way to test for a particular behavior. One of the things that I was very proud of in Ultima VI is a room I had created in the final dungeon and the room included a lever in middle of the floor and when you threw the lever it opened the gates on some cages that were in the corners of the room and the cages were full of children. The children were in fact really monsters, because that is all they could be at that level of technology, and the children would attack you in the center of the screen next to the lever. You'd be surrounded by these children who were attacking you and since you were the Avatar at this point and you were at the very end of the game, I knew - or I hoped - that players would be very worried about what to do about the situation. They wouldn't want to kill the children because they'd be in fear of losing their compassion or their honor or a wide variety of other metrics that the game really was watching. I assumed players would struggle over what to do in this room. But in fact, as a developer, I knew that there was no test. There was no judgment made as to how they solved this room. But since I knew that it would cause them a mental quandary, I chuckled and thought 'haha' it would be interesting to see how people deal with this problem and then moved on.

A few weeks prior to us publishing Ultima IV, my brother came into my office with a letter that he'd received from one of our QA testers and the letter basically read: "I refuse to work for a company that so clearly supports child abuse." And they referred to this room as a game design that encouraged child abuse because I had forced the players into harming these children in this room. My brother came to me up in arms and going like, "Oh my god Richard, how could you have included such a horrible thing in your game?" To which I responded and said, "First of all, the fact that someone would take it that seriously and be so emotionally moved by this incredibly simple thing that I put in this game, I find is a statement of success." It tells me first of all that the room has worked, it may have worked too well you might think, but let me tell you why I actually think it's quite right. First off, the fact that that was the kind of reaction that came out was the best reaction I could have hoped for. However, if you are mentally caught in this quandary of 'oh my god, what do I do with this room full of children that are attacking me', one is that you could charm them with a charm spell, that everyone would have at that point in time, and make them walk away; or you could use a sleep spell and put them all to sleep and walk out of the room on your own; or, you'd like that answer, back up to your last save game and don't throw the lever and then the children won't come out and attack you; or if you're at least willing to harm them a little bit, drop your sword, which might kill them and instead use your fisticuffs, until they just ran away. The point was in my mind there was a wide variety of ways and still keep your purity, so to speak, but the fact that someone was worried about their purity, or in fact was provoked to believing that I was somehow doing something horrendous, meant that I had at least provoked an emotional reaction, which is so hard to do in games.

My brother was demanding I removed this from the game or they wouldn't publish and I equally stood my ground and said, "Well, I'm not removing it from the game so you can publish it or not if you like - this game that we had put two years worth of work into - but by the way it's staying in the game." This became enough of a battle that the rest of the board members at the company, which is my Mom and my Dad at the time, got involved in the debate too. Whereas usually my artist mother would take my side of a lot of these arguments, this is one of those rare cases where everyone in the family was against me. My mother included, she would be saying things like, "Oh Richard, surely it's not worth Good Housekeeping coming out against you and your games in some horrible way, surely the path of least resistance here is just to remove this from the game." I still refused and it actually was published in the game and no one ever complained about it, in fact, I am not even sure very many people even noticed the room in any special way. But because of that event and the special place in my heart that that particular scene has evoked, in every Ultima since then - and we're actually also working it still into Tabula Rasa - there has been what we have humorously described as the shrine to killing children, which is the room in which the player can inadvertently get themselves into the circumstance where they are faced with a similar kind of challenge. A challenge where some creatures - generally speaking children - are hostile to them the player at a time and place where they would be worried about how they respond to problem and then I just let people work it out on their own. Generally speaking, as it was in the beginning, is not testing them, this isn't actually any hidden virtue test or ethical parable. It's really just a little challenge, for fun, to see how people react when within the town that they are there to protect, suddenly the innocent children respond with violence. You know, what do you do about it?
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You just don't often see that kind of depth in today's games. The bold was my preferred way of handling them, as part of the morality in Ultima IV included attacking a fleeing enemy in the back. So since they would flee at some point and they are attacking, just smack the kids back until they flee. I loved Ultima IV for the number of little things that added up, and were done better the first time around than how many developers today piddle with the same concepts and few get it right.

Killing Children - a genre staple since the mid-1980's. :D

I believe this should be included into any FAQ for a reason why child killing should be present in Fallout 3. Not only because it fits the bleak setting, but there's a genre legacy the Fallout developers tapped into for Fallout. You know, when they were "living eight years in the past."

and i daresay that richard garriot made more money than any bioware developer.
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Heh, most of them are happy with "salary" and health options instead of going for truly noteworthy work, true. Which is why they don't make the Ultima money, but instead the "We Wish We Had the Rep of Ultima, So Let's Try For Lowest Common Denominator and Get Attention That Way" money.

Yup...to the Origin people, if you could pick up a game and find something new about it on another playthrough, then it would stick in the mind of the player. There is more of the game to experience... It is precisely THAT feeling that instills replay value. For the room of children, it is how you deal with them that is the entire experience, because the player learns more about themselves as a result, I like to believe. What are you willing to do to protect yourself, even if it may be at a cost of what you hold dear about yourself?
 
you could kill children in ultima 3 i belive... couldnt you attack npcs in towns?


EDIT:

and how did i know it was going to be you roshie who found that info about the room i was talking about :)
 
I always did like that Garriott fellow. :)

As for my take on the whole killing children thing... well, really it just comes down to feel real and immersive or not.

If you want to portray a realistic setting, there's probably going to be some kids here and there. If you're not willing to accept the fact that a given player can, if they want to, blow their annoying little heads into goo, then your best bet is simply not to write them in to begin with. ANY form of control that says, "I'm sorry Dave... You can't do that now..." is pure bullshit. Especially true when you're supposedly developing an RPG.

Regardless of the zOMG SHINY! crap and the zOMG innovative combat and whatever other stupid meaningless buzz words they want to toss at their audience, these people need to seriously go back, and remember that at the core, every good RPG finds its roots in table-top gaming. First they were generally war game simulations and battles with armies of nameless miniatures, sure. But when they evolved to what we'd actually call RPGs, the biggest part of that early evolution was choice.

It's an RPG not because "You play the ROLE of the badass hero, that we've pre-scripted to look, act, think, and deal with situations exactly THIS way", it's an RPG because, as the "hero", you can look your GM dead in the face and say, "Yeah Bob. I realize you've worked for 3 months designing that awesome castle, with the badass vampire guy, and I'm supposed to go in there and rescue the princess. Fact is though, my character is feeling particularly selfish today, and doesn't give a rat's ass about the spoiled whore. He's gonna go back to that little town he passed through an hour ago, and take some hostages, threatening to kill one every hour until the magic user that I saw staying at the local inn agrees to give up that box of magic toys his mule hauled into town."

About now Bob usually blinks wide. A good GM will figure out a lot of ways almost immediately to proceed, but GO WITH IT. A bad GM, much like an X-brick, will say, "I'm sorry, Dave. You can't do that right now."

So yeah. Killing kids FTW! Whether I actually ever kill one or not, I want to know I *CAN*.

-Wraith
 
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