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Boycott Interplay! (only because it's impossible to say Fuck You politely)
Old news I know. If you don't play many games, you may as well just skip this part.
Interplay shuts down Black Isle Studios
After months of bad omens, the end has finally come for the veteran RPG developer.
It looks like role-playing gamers will have a boulder of coal stuffed in their holiday stockings this year, as GameSpot has received reliable reports that Interplay has shut down Black Isle Studios.
While nothing has been confirmed by official sources as of press time, Damien "Puuk" Foletto, a member of BIS' art department, broke the news on the Interplay forums late this afternoon. "Today was my last day at the (former) BIS, as it was for my whole team," he said. To date, Foletto's posts have been one of the most reliable sources of news on the development of Fallout 3 (aka Van Buren) including the departure of his former co-worker J.E. Sawyer.
Black Isle's closure is a sad end for the once-great developer. BIS had a hand in some of the most acclaimed PC RPGs of the late 1990s, including the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series. Recently, though, the studio fell on hard times. Its forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons title, code-named "Jefferson," was canned earlier this year, reportedly a casualty of a legal tangle with D&D rights-holders Wizards of the Coast. A host of top-quality talent has fled the studio, including legendary producer Feargus Urquhart.
However, it looks like the financial woes of BIS' parent Interplay finally did the developer in. Interplay has lost over $20 million so far this year. Its two main holiday releases, the console RPGs Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (which was developed by BIS), were pushed back to next January as a result of another legal dispute, this time with distributor VU Games. Interplay's refocusing on console games may have also been a factor in the decision to shutter its more PC-centric subsidiary.
Regardless of the reasons, the closure of BIS will hit many gamers hard. Foletto's final post seemed particularly depressing. "I don't know where I'll end up," he said, "but [people should] know that we were all avid gamers and wanted to make the PC games that not only we wanted to play, but also the fans."
"Being a member of the team I can tell you what they were thinking. The new head honcho doesn't like PC games and has even stated that in the past. Its pretty obvious he was responsible for the death of BIS. There was alot of bad feelings between BIS and the rest of the company since BIS actually produced titles on a regular basis instead of <censored> around like everyone else. It was all politics.
So now they have bet the future of the company on 2 unproven projects. Fallout BOS2 (the first hasn't shipped and everyone knows its going to tank) and a console game based on the Exalted license. So instead of supporting the team working on Fallout 3 which has a proven record and was FAR along in development, they rest the future on the unknown.
You can be sure Interplay will sell the Fallout license to someone else. They've made short-sighted quick money decisions in the past (Hunter license is an example). They figure they can sell it off for a quick buck and save all the development money while losing any long term profit. Brilliant.
They will survive for awhile since Vivendi is stupid enough to keep giving them money. Also when BGDA2 ships that will give them a big stack of money so they will screw around all next year on these dead end titles until the money finally dries up and they go under. They might survive until the end of next year if they don't lose all of development. No one trusts them now so everyone still there is actively searching for jobs."
last modified Dec 29, 2003 at 18:09
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