Black Isle Studios Shuts Down Development

Zonk writes "RPGDot has a story up right now about the closing down of development at Black Isle Studios. The information comes from an unnamed Interplay source, who says 'Any time you see the [Black Isle] logo on a future product, know that no one who was associated with BIS actually worked on it', as well as a post by BIS employee Damien Foletto on the Interplay message boards, and a Blue's News story that adds: 'The non-announced [PC] title that the division was working on, Fallout 3 [aka Van Buren], has been 'shelved', to quote management.' BIS, you will be missed." Black Isle are particularly known for work on the Fallout series, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

Re:And, where the reason?

[Drakin]

Well, some of the reasons could be the following:

-Interplay has lost at least $20 million this year
-One of BIS forthcoming products was canned because of a legal mess with WotC
-thier 2 main consol releases, schedualed for the holidays were pushed back to January (one of them BIS produced), because of another legal issue (this time with a distrobuter)

In other words, they were hurting for money.

Several of the Fallout guys left long ago..

[Anonymous Coward]

Several of the Fallout guys left long ago, and are working in Troika Games [troikagames.com], the studio that released the brilliant Arcanum [troikagames.com], and is currently working on Vampire [slashdot.org]...

Black Isle is dead.
Long live Black Isle!

Re:And, where the reason?

[afidel]

Wizards of the Coast, the company that made a boatload off Magic: The Gathering and took their earnings and bought up valuable properties like TSR.

Black Isle been on the ropes for awhile

[DrMrLordX]

The only three "true" Black Isle titles were Fallout, Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment. All were great, of course, but the Baldur's Gate series and NWN were more Bioware titles really. And uh, they weren't of the same calibre either. Don't get me started on Lionheart. That sucked *)

Re:Nasty

[pixel_bc]

> Why is it the good companies go under,
> but the crap ones live on?

Good companies don't always make games that sell. Furthermore, third-party developers are becoming extinct -- the publishers have no need for them as they build their own in-house teams.

They've gone away by no fault of their own, save not being acquired three years ago.

Re:What about...?

[lunar_legacy]

Baldur's Gate series acually developed by Bioware [bioware.com]. Bioware's Infinity engine has been used for both Planescape and Icewind Dale series.

Re:Wow

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Yes I know that not all console games are perfect, but the extra testing they go through from the console maker as well as from the company making them help out a lot.

It's not necessarily the testing that helps the console games (although it DOES matter). Perhaps the most important thing is that console games are targetted for one specific hardware system. The problem with PCs is that there are too many combinations and hence harder to test. Everything might be fine on the test system but when you change the video card, the fog effect all of a sudden is messed up (because some old cards do it differently). Or the sound effects are lagging because some sound cards implement echoing differently. And so on. On a console, it either works or it doesn't. If it works on your test system, it likely works on every other console. Not only does this mean that there are less issues to worry about, it also means that your QA resources can be spent testing game flaws (instead of hardware bugs).

This is not to take away from your point. Yes, companies go with the patch mentality. BUT the fact that PCs are so diverse means that they will always have more bugs. Even when consoles have hard drives and internet patching capability, they will still be FAR better than the PCs (when it comes to bugs).

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:A huge loss with death of Fallout

[poulbailey]

> Looking Glass created the original Deus Ex under Warren Spector.

That's not true. Deus Ex was an Ion Storm Austin product too (and it was published by Eidos of Daikatana fame...).

> [...] Warren Spector also lead the development for Deus Ex 2 under Ion Storm and Eidos (of Daikatana fame).

No, he didn't. Harvey Smith was the lead on Invisible War.

Re:Nasty

[BlameFate]

Bad example. PoP: Sands of Time is a stunning game, it has some of the most polished gameplay I've come across, and jaw-droppingly good visuals.

There's a good article on the development of the title at gamespot, here [gamespot.com]. And after Jordan Mechner saw the demo to approve the game (he owns the rights to the PoP name) he told the all-new deveelopment team "Guys, what I've just seen has reawakened the joy of making video games to me." So, yeah, good point but you couldn't have picked a more inappropriate example.

Re:Nasty

[calethix]

Don't forget about Sierra's reillustrated line. They only did it with their earliest games (e.g. King's Quest 1, Space Quest 1, Hero's Quest 1 and a few others).

They basically took some of their old adventure games done with ega graphics only and updated them to full 256 color vga and better sound. The story was exactly the same but sometimes with a few extras and minor changes.

I can't think of any games off the top of my head that have been remakes quite at that level.

Re:rights to it are with 3 different companies ?

[shione]

Sure thing. Bits and pieces of the System Shock franchise went to Irrational Games (ex-Looking Glass developers and ans who helped bring the game to light [cdmag.com]), Ion Storm (ex-Looking Glass employees including their executive producer Warren Spector)and EA [iwanttoworkatea.com](the publishers of SS)

EA aquired the IP rights to System Shock when they purchased Origin Systems.

Re:Nasty

[the Man in Black]

To be fair, Fallout is itself a remake of Wasteland [bsc.edu], itself an excellent game.

Re:Questions....

[Clover_Kicker]

Have you played any of those games? Pick up FO or PS:T in a bargain bin for $10, you might change your expectations of how a game entertains you.

Attribution

[Anonymous Coward]

The quote about Fallout 3 is actually from Blue's News.

Blue's News [bluesnews.com]

Re:Questions....

[PainKilleR-CE]

"Wowa... hold on a second boys, that plot has people having an emotional reaction. Can we dumb this down a little?"

Which is more or less what Interplay did, and why we've got Fallout Tactics and the coming Fallout BoS and even BoS 2 starting development.

Re:Nasty

[samsmithnz]

You're right, as all Game Development is so new and groundbreaking, it seems that all gaming projects make mistakes. There are good articles in the features section of GamaSutra.com. Check it Out.

Re:Nasty

[InThane]

It's more of a spiritual successor than a remake. While they shared the same geographic region and the post-apocolyptic environment, the stories are pretty different.

Re:Sad news, sequels, and Planescape Torment remak

[bnavarro]

City of Doors [city-of-doors.com] is a good starting point. I belive that they are creating a Planescape Campaign setting, with customized hak packs. It doesn't look like they are recreating Torment, but you might be able to capitalize on what they have already built to help you out with remaking Torment. Good luck.

Re:Nasty

[Lathan]

Epic, New World Computing, SirTECH, Origin Systems, Westwood

The first two are still in business, thanks to Unreal and Might & Magic respectively. I think SirTECH (makers of Wizardry) went out just recently, while Origin and Westwood have been absorbed by Electronic Arts.

Re:Interplay wants to make money, not games

[Xzorxur]

I just wanted to jump in and clear this up some. Interplay management had been ignoring our project since the start. I'm not sure why, maybe because they wanted to focus on console. Maybe they didn't like how we were slightly independent from the rest of the company. They knew what project we were working on, but not much more than that. Were we driven to work long and hard? Yes, but not because Interplay was pushing us. We were kickin ass because those of us on the project were there because we beleived in our project and our ability as a team to finish our project.

Not all of Black Isle let go

[yar]

http://pub17.ezboard.com/fseankreynoldsboardsfrm1. showMessage?topicID=1458.topic

From Sean K. Reynolds (Lead Designer, Fallout3) board:
"Hmmm, this person's info isn't totally accurate. Yes, there were some layoffs. I was not one of them, nor are several other people in the list. They may be drawing this from the group of people who went to lunch together yesterday, which included those who have been laid off and those who haven't.

Anyway, nothing new to say. I don't know why the company is doing this or what their plans are. I'm hoping to find out today.

Thanks for your concern, though. From what I can tell, most of those who were laid have already found some leads in other companies."