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FASA Dies
To0n writes: "Thought all you Mechwarrior fans would like to know. FASA, after 20 years of being in the role playing game business, has decided to close up shop. Instead of just stopping all the lines, FASA has decided to hand over the reigns to WizKids LLC and Ral Partha Enterprises. Offical press release is here. Sad to see them go, especially after the launch of two new systems, VOR and Crimson Skies."
Er, FASA used art from the Macross (and Dougram and Southern Cross), but it was certainly not "Macross in America." Battletech has a distinctly different flavor from Macross. In addition, there was apparently some confusion over who owned licenses to what a couple of years ago and FASA lost the rights to the artwork entirely. Nowadays you see people ripping off FASA instead (remember that "exo-armor" in Exo Squad that was a Battletech Madcat?).
I read the internet for the articles.
I've been reading these books since they came out and used to chat with Mike on GEnie, back in the good old days when there were some brains still at FASA. Some of those brains, also, hung out on GEnie. Somewhere I still have archives of thos messages. Good nostalgia there... I even collected overseas copies of the books so he could read the edit differences. Got a very cool autograph, too. Mike's a great guy and I hope they do pull BattleTech back together and bring Mike and some of the othe great writers back to do the fiction. The books were my intro to BattleTech.
I'm perplexed at the selling of FASA Interactive to Microsoft (guess what's going to be on the X-Box, go on, guess!) This should have infused them with significant cash, unless they did a SubLogic and cut their own throats.
I keep hoping Ralph Reed's old BattleMech will resurface. That was the best game, ever!
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Martin Blank dun said:
Pretty much thanks to Gygax, came very close to being sued into oblivion, eventually going out of business (pretty much after the whole Gygax fiasco they ended up folding).
AFAIK, there's only one or two properties of the former GDW even around--the creators of Dark Conspiracy ended up buying the rights back and as of late is being published by Dynasty Presentations (and in fact is about to go into Dark Conspiracy v2.5), and if memory serves there's still a company selling supplements for Traveller. (In direct relation to FASA going out of business--it appears the exact same thing is happening with Shadowrun and which ended up happening with Earthdawn--pretty much gamers and creators buying the rights, and keeping the game going.)
Of course, it's also slightly ironic that TSR itself ended up nearly going bankrupt, got bought out by WotC, and promptly went from being the sue-happiest RPG manufacturer on the planet (I remember when TSR would file cease-and-desists on folks for posting their own campaigns with their own created worlds, gods, etc.) to not only open-sourcing the game system but having supplements for a game using D&D rules published by White Wolf (!!!), of all companies. :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
As another Dinosaur (I started with the REAL original 3 little D&D books in app 1976) i have to take issue woith your ending.
There is nothing in the computer are ayet that coems anywhere close to the richness of experience and imaginationwe had playing pen and paper games. Frankly, i have yet to even see a game that can be called a Roleplay game on a comouter. Roleplay requires the interraction of personalities and computers have none.
Don't get me wrong, i enjoy Sims and adventure games (of which CRPGS are really just a resource-management oriented variant) but they aren't RPGs as we know them.
Bioware right now is trying to crteate a real on0line toold for playing true RPGs (D&D specific). We'll see how well it works.
Hero was also bought by Cybergames.
The FASA StarTrek:The RPG is most noteable for ist ship combat system, which was awesome and the only role-play oriented ship combat system I've v\ever seen or played.
Let me explain. Early on they had Star Trek, Battletech, and Renegade Legion. Then they wanted to add Shadowrun into the mix - and they dropped Star Trek. When they wanted to add Earthdawn, they dropped Renegade Legion. When they wanted Crimson Skies, they dropped Earthdawn. This worked fine until they also wanted Vor and Crucible...
(To be clear, I'm *really* going to miss FASA. It was a good company with a fun name. Sure, they'd gone downhill in recent years, but I was willing to forgive them if they'd just start publishing things again...)
Ok, so WhizKids will now have the Battletech system.
A question that's been knocking through my mind is,
How hard does WhizKids protect it's IP?
Are fan sites going to have to worry about being shut down,
or are will it be business as it has been (fans a bart of the process).
The Freedonian Air & Space Administration
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
For those looking for Whiz Kids, you can find them at http://www.mageknight.com.
The WK press release can be found at: http://www.mageknight.com/company_landing.htm?sid= 89&cid=4501
While it sucks that an old friend like FASA is going the way of the dodo, it's actually a Good Thing [TM] for the BattleTech and Shadowrun product lines. Additionally, it's a good thing for Ral Partha. As WK is FAR better funded than FASA "EVER" was.
FASA is going to settle out all their debts, finish up and publish their last project or two (including the much awaited Periphery Field Manual), and that's it. The novel contracts will stay with ROC until the end of the current BTech story arc. After which time, WK will probably begin shopping the line around to other publishing houses. Especially since ROC didn't exactly treat FASA very well.
Unofficially (so far), Mike Stackpole is being brought back into the fold here. So fans of his BattleTech series of books may see him actually finish out his post Clan Invasion story arc.
As to what form BattleTech and SR might take when they re-emerge under the WK imprimature, we don't have any clue right now. From a hardcore gamefan's POV, the best thing they could do is not really change the game, and simply make the supplements for the game better.
From a businessman's POV, BT's fanbase has been gradually shrinking over the last several years (though those who remain are usually VERY hardcore). This presents a barrier of sorts to the entry of new players. WK may (or may not) convert portions (or all) of BattleTech/SR over to a MageKnight format of game play. Which would probably simplify an already simple game.
As for FASA's MechForce fanclub and their Games Workshop-esque Marauder program (sanctioned event hosting). Both programs are probably going to be allowed to quietly die away (some disgruntled members of both organizations would say they already have). Later on, something like MechForce could be resurrected by WK or by someone willing to buy a license to run MechForce in North America.
As to FASA's licenses for VOR, Crucible, and Crimson Skies projects. Crimson Skies reverts to Microsoft. VOR and Crucible revert to their own holders. They may shop the properties around, or simply re-license them to WK under similar terms.
About the only REALLY messed up thing was that most of the EMPLOYEES weren't told till right before the announcement hit the net. And some of their freelancers actually found out about it before being alerted by FASA.
So it's not technically a bankruptcy. Basically, a major, important part of the FASA corporation is being melded into the WK corporation.
Additionally, for those hoping for the Unseen (the mechs that caused the lawsuit with Harmony Gold) to return. Don't bet on it. It'll probably be WK stance that licensing the images from Harmony Gold would simply be money ill-spent.
In short, this is a black cloud with a lot of silver in the lining.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Since then, I have not played as many games as I did at that time, but a general review of the main companies is in order.
Chaosium: Always a bit of a niche company, Chaosium has amazed me for years at how they hang in there. Exemplary source material and a loyal cult following (and labeling something a cult hit in the RPG industry is something) have kept it anf their lines (mainly Cthulu) alive.
FASA: Well, we all know they are closing, but at least they're trying to do it with some grace, instead of shutting down and leaving a lot of freelancers without their payments. However, Shadowrun and Battletech managed to stay a head above most of the other games on the market with remarkable source material and a system that didn't change every three books. Anyone who played Battletech 10 years ago would easily slip into the current rule set with only a few adjustments.
Game Designer's Workshop: I don't even see them on the shelves anymore. Does anyone know what happened to them after the Gygax Disaster?
Games Workshop: OK, not an RPG company per se, but still a major force in the gaming world. They've stopped selling to most of the stores out there, preferring to go the route of web sales and opening some of their own stores, in my mind, a bold but perhaps foolhardy move.
Iron Crown Enterprises: Makers of Rolemaster (aka Rollmaster and Chartmaster), they shut down in 1999 or 2000, although I didn't catch many details of it.
Palladium: As annoying as many find their character and combat system (a bastardization of the original D&D system), you can't argue with the sheer volume of source material with a storyline in the Rifts books that is just enough to keep fans coming back for more. Last I heard, they were doing fairly well, although they do so with a tack that is rather over-protective (like threatening lawsuits against anyone who makes an unauthorized character generator).
R. Talsorian: Creators of my favorite game, Cyberpunk, as well as makers of a half dozen other games, RTG consists (technically) of one person, Mike Pondsmith, with his wife, Lisa, helping out. For those who haven't been to the website recently, Mike took a position in Redmond with the Great Satan (Microsoft). Work continues (slowly) on other books, but at least he's really working at keeping it alive. However, with RTG going from several full-time employees to a couple of part-timers (and perhaps some freelance work), I can only hope that Mike's persistence will be able to pay off.
Steve Jackson Games: Having come back after the Secret Service raid that nearly bankrupted them, SJG is probably about the most well-off company I can think of. Steve Jackson does not focus on one thing at a time, and long ago diversified into other businesses (he runs the Illuminati ISP, IIRC). SJG is probably the best-off company I can think of.
TSR: Once the pinnacle of the industry, bad press, bland game design, and real competition set in to knock the King from his throne. They were purchased by WotC a couple of years ago to escape the inevitable slide to disaster.
White Wolf: I loved Vampire, but could never get into Werewolf or Mage. In any case, WW expanded rapidly (too rapidly, I thought), and then sales growth tapered off. I still see their hardbound books everywhere, which are quite expensive to make, so I can only assume that they are making some kind of profit. Whether they can keep it going may be a different matter.
Wizards of the Coast: A few add-on books for D&D and a few other, unremarkable books for generic source material made up WotC's product line until Magic hit, and then started the explosion of the CCG industry. Years later (1999, I think), they sold out to Hasbro for $400 million. Nice turn of cash, considering where they were a mere nine years ago.
I know I'm forgetting some of them, but these are most of the major ones, and how I have seen them change in the last few years. The industry has been through slumps before, but seems to be coming out of the last one for now. It's not a pretty picture, but it never has been, really. Just a fact of some industries, I guess.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Before West End got bought out by Yeti, it pissed away all its money and went bankrupt. Chapter 7. When they shut the doors they left a lot of employees out in the cold, missing thousands of $ worth of salary and expenses. It was hardly an organized exit strategy, like the FASA/Wizkids thing.
I know, I was one of the WEGers at the time. I worked from home in LA, on the Herc & Xena RPG.
The owners of WEG were the worst kind of corporate scum. At the end they strung their people along for a while, getting work out of them knowing that soon they'd be cut loose, uncompensated.
Did you know that WEG also owned an Italian shoe importing business? The fantastically successful game company kept paying off debts that the failing shoe business racked up. Eventually the shoe vampire drained them dry, and that was the end. As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
As "The H&X RPG Guy" for 6 months, I have HUNDREDS OF PAGES of Herc & Xena RPG materials that were commissioned but never paid for by WEG. The books were never printed, the freelancers were never paid, but I have a huge amount of ready-to-go material. I have contacted my freelancers, and almost unanimously they are in favor of releasing the material for free to the web, so at least SOME fans can enjoy it. The only thing stopping me is the fear of a lawsuit. But does WEG have any claim to the stuff? The studio at least could gripe about it... I don't know what to do. Maybe this should be an Ask Slashdot.
>If you liked VOR, good news, the creator's contract stipulated that rights reverted back to him.
Ack. Vor stinks. I can say that with confidence, because I wrote a big chunk of one of the sourcebooks. My editor padded my stuff by about 1/3 to make up for his incorrect estimate of the needed page count, so my stuff isn't even reading like my stuff. Yuck.
FASA pays late too. I hope Wizkids is run better.
That should be "Nazis", not "Nazi's".
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Or do I remember reading that FASA (named after a fictional aeronautics company - mucho kudos to the person who can name it) was bought out by Microsoft. It may have been just the development end, but after they almost made themselves broke after overproducing the pod simulators and then having the lead developing firm go under, I was pretty sure it was the whole company.
In either event, it is a sad day for us all.
Information is the catalyst for revolution
As I was hanging around my favorite gaming store yesterday afternoon I heard some interesting news. It seems one of the heads of Wizkids and one of the heads of Fasa were related, more over fasa, when it acquired another company last year picked up a few debts. It's been discussed that this could be a way to drop the debt, and still keep some of the games "in the family" It'll be interesting to see what's next.
Sig: "Examine the road over which the fault has passed"
I much more enjoyed the RTG offerings (cp2020, bubblegum crisis, CyberGeneration REvolution 2 was the pinnacle of real roleplaying in a cybertechy world, instead of guns guns guns guns... very good stuff cg/2)...
Will be interesting to see what happens to fasa's licenses.. the company was really run off shadowrun and battletech.
Battletech would be the only reason to really buy the company for. That title has a lifespan. books, toys, movies, games, cartoons, etc.
guess its in wizzkids house now....
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
no sig for you
Actually I knew that the shoe store killed West End, and I have a friend who wrote a good bit of the Star Wars stuff, and never got compensated for it. I have another friend who finished his project for Blood Shadows but since his wife was leaving to work for TSR they canned his project. Yes they are the worst kind of scum, too bad I liked their games.
As for the free release, I don't know what your terms were in licence, ask some lawer, of course that would cost you too. Good luck
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Atlas Games : A small games company which has the distinction of being the fourth organization to own the Ars Magica property (following WotC, which followed White Wolf, which followed Lion Rampant). For my money, Ars Magica is the best roleplaying game ever written: it has the best background for any game I've ever seen, and the guts to say "screw game balance, we're making the mages kick ass."
One, the game and plot-line have always revolved around each other.
Two, nobody said anyone HAD to use anything more than the basic Level1 materials (the stuff in the boxed set) when playing a game. It's always been up to the GM to determine the complexity and allowed rules in the game.
Also, the "good guy - bad guy" dichotomy was merely a plot device (since it's hard to have a good protagonist/antagonist story without the antagonist). As to a set house being the universal badguy, those who actually read the entire series of books saw how this was definitely NOT true.
BattleTech is NOT reality. It never has been. If you're looking for reality, you need to look someplace OTHER than the mecha game genre. As to the star-empire based on a monarchy system, while it's fairly ludicrous, at least SOME effort was taken to explain HOW it came about. And if you can get your hands on the House Source Books (quite out of print, head over to Gamer's Union and look if you're interested.
See the first couple sentences of my post.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In particular, the span of time between the first Mechwarrior and MWII was unbelievable. I've liked the other MWs, and even MechCommander (with all its faults), but I've never had the game I've always wanted from them. I wanted depth, role playing, and something other than "this time your in your mech and...". What about the people? What about the world around you? Is everything a fucking target, or what? At least in MW you could choose what planet you went to and sell mechs... the merest hint of a wider universe against which the game was played. In the newer stuff? Nothing.
And the Clans suck. Mostly. Deus ex Machina for the Inner Sphere stalemate. Nice try. What next? Aliens?
In the end, it doesn't matter to most of us who played, I think. Regretfully, I have no time for games anymore.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Gee, and I thought that I was the only one who played that. I sat down with a friend and wrote some psycho Scheme code (I was in high school, didn't know the good details of the language) to generate characters and everything.
Was pretty cool, and incredibly detailled and intense.
Fun game, but I recalled it not having a ship-ship combat, but they had a few unrelated ones that they recommend you take a look at.
Or, if I'm misreading you, you thought it was cool that it was all up to the GM and to be role played. Either way, it was pretty cool and caught the flavor of Star Trek.
Boy, oh boy, I sometimes feel like a brontosaurus surrounded by cute little mammals -- I just know something's wrong...
(...please indulge an old man (39 years) in his reverie...)
I met my wife while playing RuneQuest back in 1980. My character was an intelligent shaman duck with a geas to destroy reptiles. This cute girl comes into the room, and I'm introduced as "the guy playing a duck".
So I said "Quack."
We got married in '81. And I'm still quacking up the cute girl...
The problem is time. Once we started having kids in the late 1980s, I just didn't have time to run a role-playing game anymore. Job, kids, and other hobbies impinged. The last game I "gave up" was Star Fleet Battles. SFB just took too much time to play...
I will miss FASA, more because it represents my youth than because I played its games much.
And in spite of the changes, the state of gaming is good.
Today, my family games on the computer, even the 5yo. My eldest daughter is 11, and she's quite good at games like Pharoah and Age of Kings; my 10yo (b-day today!) daughter is into scenario design. We play AoK, Heroes of Might & Magic, and some others. No shooters, other than the Heretic-Hexen series. Having been shot at, I don't find much joy in pointing guns and fragging people -- but that's a matter of taste, and not some moral judgement.
As a family, we play strategy or RPG games over the home LAN. Right now, my wife and I are in Hell, trying to put Diablo down for good (or until the expansion kit ;) ) I'm waiting on Arcanum, which sounds like it might be an interesting family RPG game.
Maybe we're not going extinct -- perhaps we're just evolving...
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
I'm sorry for my blatent use of emoticons but I can't help but cry every time I think about when Fasa died in Disneys The Lion King(TM). And the the little lion cub.. I forget his name, I'm bad with names.. he sees him in the clouds and he talks to him, and that is SAD..
wait, I'm thinking of Mufasa.. sorry
FASA was sliding more visibly since the days they lost their Star Trek license. Granted, they had some powerful pieces like ShadowRun, but their overall holdings were slipping.
What downsizing does mean for Wizards is that they've got bosses who felt it better to separate the haves from the have nots. The Owners seem to be doing quite well, regardless of how the workers, artists, and authors are fairing... and such is the nature of today's copyright; that an artist can drown while the distributor can lucritively exploit their work.
I was big into shadowrun and battletech as a teenager (early 90s), and so one spring break a friend of mine wanted to go visit Chicago - under the guise of seeing some colleges he didn't really want to attend. Three of us ended up going - and since I had called ahead and somehow gotten Lou Prosperi on the phone (creator of earthdawn, great guy) - we were invited to come in and tour the building.
It was in a not-so-hot area of town, on the third floor of a large warehouse building, but once you were inside you forgot all of that. Original artwork from all of their diffrent books decorated the walls - one end of the hallway had a Shadorwun banner/logo that had to be 8 feet wide if it was an inch... Lou took us into the lounge/game-room where they spent a couple of hours everyday testing their own products and the competitions'... One wall was a series of shelves filled with more game books then you can count - it was amazing.
Lou told us about their daily routine, and then showed us promotional materials (including a proof he brought straight from the art department for an upcomming ad in Dragon magazine) for the upcomming game Earthdawn, and we immediatly fell in love.
Anyway, FASA for me meant good, detailed worlds with enough behind-the-scenes action going on, or at least hinted at, that you never got bored, and had plenty of material to use when GMing. In their later years the quality slacked off a bit in the artwork (or at least the on-staff artists changed and weren't in my style anymore) and the quality of the books - for me this death knell came much earlier, in '95 or '96 (I can't remember which) when it was anounced that Tom Dowd - one of the creators of Shadowrun and the maintainer of the game world/senior editor for all Shadorun products, left to work at FASA interactive. The new guy on staff had good ideas, but they didn't mesh with the way the game world had originally been presented - Tom had the Touch, this guy didn't...
As I got further and further away from gaming in general and more focused on my career, I would look back on my gaming time as educational - I expanded my creativety, my social skills, and my problem solving ability. I'm slowly selling my game books collection on ebay, and now this... brings back memories I tell ya. It is a semi-sad day in the gaming world.
The Fredonian Air and Space Association is no more (yes, thats what fasa stood for, a reference to a old marx brothers movie)! At least battletech and Shadowrun will live on.
man is machine
I noticed a few people saying that BattleTech was a blatant ripoff of some Jap Anime things. Nope. It was an original idea of its creators, but the artwork for most of the original mechs was licensed from the people who made Macross. When Harmony Gold bought the rights to make a Macross show in the US, they theatened to put FASA out of business in endless court proceedings, despite the fact that FASA did have a legal right to use the artwork. Lacking the money to fight the case, they just gave it up. May be a couple things not quite right in my version of it, but this is the general feel of it. FASA was royally screwed over by Harmony Gold. Pyro
A wise man knows his weaknesses. A fool learns of his clumsiness when juggling knives.
It seems to me this is the trend in RPG now, TSR/Wizards/Ha$borg, West End bought by Yeti, Pinnacle being sold to Cybergames and then being bought back.
More money behind the games may do some good for the quality of the products made, but it may make it hard for new game ideas to make it into the industry.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
I see l33t sed syntax is considered "lame"...
It should be "reins", not "reigns".
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"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"