Black Isle Studios Shuts Down Development 392
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.
This is terrible (Score:5, Interesting)
I lost many hours of my life playing through Planescape:Torment and all the other games delivered to us from Black Isle.
One wonders if Interplay have decided that money is no longer a desireable outcome of the game production money? Have they lost all inclination to produce new classics, as I'm sure Fallout 3 would have become?
Perhaps Interplay simply doesn't percieve a value in role-playing games like Fallout and Baldurs Gate and the likes on the consoles of the future. Games with writing are to be frowned upon in console-land, as you can't read text quite as nicely on a TV set. This falls nicely into my growing theory that consoles are causing the end of the brain era of gaming, and sending us back into pac-man twitch land.
A huge loss with death of Fallout (Score:5, Interesting)
Fallout 3 would have been amazing. I have no doubt about this. The only thing which could be better would be Fallout Online.
Re:A huge loss with death of Fallout (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The collective cry of Fallout fans (Score:1, Interesting)
Not Fallout but a promising alternative.
Re:And I just heard about it, too! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm dubious that it would be of much value.
The Fallout engine is actually of fairly little technical significance (well, I haven't worked on the code, but I don't see anything particularly outstanding or unheard of in it). In many ways, it's actually rather behind the times. This isn't trying to bash the authors -- it gets the job done that it was intended to do -- but just to say that it isn't quite the same as, say, the most recent Carmack engine, where the code is really beyond what other folks have been doing. The amazing thing about Fallout is the content. The artwork, design, story, dialog, free form play and neat character creation system are all top-notch, and are what make Fallout fun to play.
So, unless you simply want to play existing Fallout titles, I'm not sure that the engine does much good. The problem is that it's really *hard* to make all the levels and characters and graphics and dialog and audio associated with a Fallout game.
What about...? (Score:2, Interesting)
Console only... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yuioup
Re:Nasty (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that this is not the case (in particular). Game development houses tend to have awfully short lifetimes. They're often small. If developer Jones and Smith decide to move on to bigger and better things, there may not be much company left worth continuing with.
My guess is that you just notice when the good ones go out of business.
Try this. Dig out a bunch of old DOS games and try to locate the development houses that produced them. Some are still around -- id is still happily making games, for instance. A lot of them, however, are long, long gone.
Heartbreaking, but not unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)
Planescape: Torment is a great example of this. Torment to this day remains one of the best games I have ever had the pleasure of playing, and it stands as perhaps the deepest roleplaying experience and certainly the most powerful game that I have played. According to BIS's sales figures from a couple years back, Torment had sold around 300,000 copies. While no slouch in the sales department (it certainly got them in the black), it wasn't quite up to the sales standards set by Bioware with the Baldur's Gate saga (also a great series of games, but nowhere near as powerful as Torment).
From there, it was downhill. Project after project was cancelled (including Torn, which looked to be a sweet 3d CRPG with all the reactivity and depth of Torment but with a snazzy 3d engine and the Fallout SPECIAL system), until Black Isle was stuck with a sequel to Icewind Dale (using the aging 2d Infinity Engine of the original Baldur's Gate in the era of 3d Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind). Then there was Lionheart, which took some of the elements of the cancelled Torn and tried to turn it into a decent game. What happened was an Arcanum-esque RPG: a great concept (a historical fantasy game that infused magic in the time of the Crusades) but with poor execution and an even worse engine and interface.
I hate to say it, but it looked like BIS was going to shut down since Interplay got bought out by Titus Interactive several years back. They just don't have the sales numbers to appease high-level marketing execs, despite their innovation and depth. The one silver lining of this predicament is the fact that other companies can now have a crack at some of the talent that has graced BIS for years. This could bode well for the phoenix-like CRPG industry if dev houses utilize this influx of great minds. An RPG fanboy can only hope...
FUCK! (Score:5, Interesting)
BIS was by far my favorite studio. Fallout, Fallout II and Planescape: Torment were my three favorite games of all times. Does anyone remember the end of the original Fallout? That ending was one of the few endings that left an emotional impact upon me. The ending as simply amazing. As he is walking away to that song I felt my gut twist in a knot and left me choking. Ahh hell, I admit it, I was getting watery eyed as he was walking away from the vault with his head down to that old bluesy song. No game had ever done that to me before. To this day hearing that song twists my gut into a knot.
Don't get me wrong, I love games today, but I have had none that made really knocked my socks off. War Craft III has great game play an all, but I have never felt any emotion while playing that game other then annoyance at the bastard over battle net you managed to raise an army and level his hero to 10 in five minutes. Fallout and Torment had an emotional effect like a good book. Nothing in these past couple of years has effected me like that.
I know I sat drooling over the prospect of Fallout III. I simply loved that entire setting. If anything, I was always supremely disappointed that BIS never ran with the title. I would loved to have seen a Fallout FPS or MMORPG.
On that note, does anyone know who the rights to the Fallout title goes to? The studio might be dead, but I would be surprised if someone picked up the rights and a few of the original creators and intend to run with it.
Let Interplay know (Score:5, Interesting)
pr@interplay.com
The email I just fired off:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Let me open by saying I've been a long time supporter of Interplay, going back to the days of the old Star Trek adventures in the early 90's, and some of my favorite games of all time have been on the Interplay label. With that said, the news that Black Isle Studios has been shut down in order to pursue a console market which myself and many fans of Black Isle's titles have no interest in, I'm afraid that that relationship will be coming to an end. Interplay has demonstrated that they have no interest in me as a dedicated PC gamer, and as such, I can only assume that Interplay is no longer interested in my business.
While I'm normally not a believer in boycotts, the dissolution of one of the most talented group of developers in the industry in a misguided pursuit of the bottom line is more than I can ignore, and since it seems money is the only thing Interplay is listening to these days, I will be voting with my wallet. Perhaps those involved in the decision to cut Black Isle will comprehend the mistake they've made when the fans that have been so loyal to them move on.
Regards,
[Name witheld for Slashdot]
Think before you judge (Score:5, Interesting)
Interplay has had some terrible legal problems preventing them from releasing a next-generation 3D Baldur's Gate-type game--a game 2 years in development shelved for good because of Wizards of the Coast, or whoever owns the AD&D license this week.
Fallout 2 was reportedly to be based on the same graphic engine, but after management got excited about the >1 million unit sales of the plotless, worthless, mindless action game, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and because of a number of PC failures, their management apparently became increasingly dissilusioned disillusioned with PC games.
Perhaps it never occurred to them that Dark Alliance sold because of Baldur's Gate's fine name (which it blemishes), and that Fallout: Tactics may have sold because of Fallout's pristinely good name (which it not only blemishes, but it drags through an ocean of shit in its disrespect for the founding masterpieces of the series).
Interplay has been focusing on low-quality, quick-to-develop games for their less cerebral fans, and apparently the strategy hasn't worked (hint hint Ionstorm/Deus Ex 2).
I am not happy about Interplay's woes, and some of the biggest causes were legal and not necessarily management related, but if you look at Interplay's financial statement, you would be surprised that they aren't declaring bankruptcy right now--no, that will come in mid/late 2004 when they cannot get a line of credit after defaulting on previous loans and being unable to give any clear indication of a light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope that the Fallout licence is sold to a company that has some of the original design geniuses behind it, such as Obsidian Entertainment [obsidianent.com] or Troika Games [troikagames.com]
Anyone who believes Interplay's management enjoys laying people off before Christmas needs to seriously consider the concept of "hearing both sides of the story."
Never blame on malice that which you can blame on incompetance (and America's legal system)!
What can change the nature of a man? (Score:2, Interesting)
I fully agree with you on Planescape: Torment being the greatest RPG of all time. There was a reason why Torment's storyline was so good though; the three primary writers had degrees in Philosophy, Psychology, and English respectively. You don't see that kind of talent together very often. In fact, almost every other RPG feels just like a fancy hack-and-slash game compared to Torment. The sheer depth of detail and imagination prevalent in Torment is simply staggering.
However, there is a catch. In order to play Torment properly you have to read a lot, be very thorough, and try to do it in one short go. There isn't a whole lot of combat in Torment, mostly lots of dialog and description. It's fantastically written, and can easily stand up against most fantasy novels. Getting past the initial shock of reading pages of text is difficult.
Also, in order to keep all the events fresh in your mind, it's good to play it as quickly as possible. I recently played through it again and I finished it in less then a week, which was pretty impressive considering I had midterms at the time. If you take to long, however, you can loose the focus of the story and that's an absolute killer for Torment.
Sad news, sequels, and Planescape Torment remake? (Score:1, Interesting)
I do find a bit ironic (Alanic?) that a lot of people praise BIS for their innovation and bitch and moan about the lack of originality in games nowadays, but at the same time, what are they at the same time mourning the loss of? Fallout...TRHEE. I'm sure it would have been a good game, I would have bought it, but all the same it was a sequel to a pretty thoroughly exploited name they were working on.
OT: I have been thinking about remaking Planescape:Torment using the Neverwinter Nights engine. Does anyone know if such a project is currently underway? Googling for it brings up some pages that look interesting, but they are in Italian and Polish respectively...
Think I could get away with it copyrightwise? For instance, the original music is available from Interplay homepage as MP3, sounds even better than before. I would of course credit all the artists, give links to their current works as a free ad, and thank Interplay, but I realise the copyright holders quite likely would not allow it anyway as that would be setting a bad precedent. What I mean is, if the project ever gets off the ground, would they go to the trouble to shut me down or sue me? I would of course have the module available free for download. I doubt many would play it, so would I be a big enough target for them to concern themselves?
I haven't bought NWN yet, but might do it just to do a P:T remake for fun. Is it possible to remake the engine to do the unique things in P:T, for instance the immortality of the Nameless One, or the fact that he can change classes back and forth on the fly (not multiclass)?
Re:Bummer (Score:3, Interesting)
Nostalgia is cute and all but Black Isle hasn't made a great game in a long time. I won't miss it at all. I will, on the other hand, continue to watch Bioware and Troika. Don't get caught up in the brand names, follow the actual creators.
Re:A huge loss with death of Fallout (Score:3, Interesting)
Never say never.
Ever heard of the "Theif" series by Looking Glass? Ion Storm is working on Theif 3 right now. Other companies CAN take over, and if the 'major players' all go to one company, its likely they may just do that.
There is even a stories of Ion Storm picking up System Shock 3 (which would be -amazing-).
Re:Nasty (Score:4, Interesting)
On a slightly related note, has there been a good business project management set-up in relation to the development of games? From everything I've seen and read about, the development seems so hodge-podge, it's remarkable any games succeed.
Your two statements are both complementary and contradictory. There are two facets to the game industry - independent developers, and developers either under contract to a publisher or owned by one. Independent developers are often the ones credited with being "innovative" (though in my experience in the industry, they're no more or less innovative than developers under contract or the publishers themselves), but they also often float along without direction, developing games when they feel like it based on an arbitrary set of criteria. Occasionally, great games come out of this sort of model. More often, you end up with complete garbage - the kinds of games that get 15-50% reviews in PC Gamer Magazine, which seems to be the bulk of their reviews these days... (and generally, those are deserved scores.)
So indie developing is haphazard, yes. But Black Isle wasn't an indie developer; they were presumably doled out projects, and given set deadlines and guidelines by Interplay. Apparently, they didn't take too well to this, as they lost $20 million this year alone. Well, that's not very fair - I suppose they had some licensing issues, and there could be other reasons for their losing money, but there's this whole "blame the publisher" thing going on out there that I don't think is very fair either. This is a business, and Black Isle wasn't making money for the business right now. If they were an indie that burned through that kind of cash they'd be just as out of business right now.
Anyway, publisher-sponsored development is not at all haphazard. Yes, many publishers stick with established franchises and genres, but all of them have a certain percentage of development set aside for new games. That percentage varies per publisher. New games at publishers like these are guided along by experienced veterans of the process - which doesn't guarantee success, but it at least (generally) guarantees a certain level of competence and polish to a new game from a large publisher. (Pikmin and Animal Crossing are two examples of this on the console side - Rise of Nations and MS Train Simulator would be examples on the PC side.)
PC and console game development is a bit different in that console game development is almost all publisher sponsored, contracted, or owned. That is honestly one of the reasons why the console game industry is in better shape than the PC game industry, and I will never for a second believe anyone that says there are fewer innovative games on consoles than on PC. Anyone who says that does not know anything about the console game industry or the games available today. (Don't mistake what's on the best-seller lists for the entire catalog of what's out there - consumers determine best-seller lists, but publishers know it's in their best long-term interests to develop new franchises even if they don't succeed short-term.)
Re:Nasty (Score:4, Interesting)
Now we have countless B5 mods for various games, and a group of (mostly) Russians are working on a freeware B5 space combat sim. [firstones.com]