No Mutants Allowed has tried to make this public for over three years now, when I was still working with them. This will give some closure, now that the discussions have to be focused on Bethesda's Fallout 3, and allowed us to give a salute to the people of Black Isle Studios, this was a labor of love to them.
There's no source, but if one takes a closer look in the files with the proper tools, one finds more models, scraps of files for a variety of purposes, even stuff from Baldurs Gate3: The Black Hound, the cancelled BIS game that Van Buren was using the engine.
Those were good times
"Bethesda's "refusal" to tell the public about game mechanics is a direct result of the Fallout fanbase (namely NMA) having this twisted sense of entitlement that you're showing so well"
False. A complete lie, actually, they never release info about their games until they are ready, it's something they always do, and this is no exception. for someone that attacks Fallout fans as hostile, stupid paranoids you really should be less paranoid yourself.
"I would have thought Slashdot to be a little more open minded and thoughtful than NMA."
Whenever you read something you disagree the others become close minded and dumb? That's not how things work, is it?
And I worked at NMA, it has times of too much hostility and not enough focus, but overall I don't get your surprise, it's really a place for fans, and fans of that series tend to have similar views everywhere, there's an history that molded us into the various views that are expressed here and on the fansites. Nothing really surprising about that...
First that's not an official announcement, but a SEC filling reporting the will by Interplay of raising at least 50 million (to 75 million) dollars from overseas investors to create a Fallout MORPG.
Interplay today is one person, Herve Caen, and a couple of lawyers and a webmaster that do the odd job here and there. They have millions in debts to companies like Warner Brothers and their former employees, which they aren't paying, so this is an attempt to raise some money from overseas investors just to stay alive (well, sort of "alive"...).
They don't have developers, they don't have staff, the last agreement they had with a MORPG company was with the developers of Ballerium, and they never paid them ( http://www.ballerium.com/community/showthread.php? s=d493aea59c78ace9f73bb3d50b12ec34&threadid=2645&h ighlight=interplay>Ballerium ), so the project was suspended, it is being restarted without Interplay involvement.
So this is not to be taken seriously, as you can see in the discussion from when the news was first released, this is just a financial move filled with vague promises and a few lies (Interplay had zero involvement with World of Warcraft, and in the filling they have the nerve to say they were involved in creating it...).
Nothing really substantial has come of this and there is no guarantee that it will ever be made.
More here
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3 3825
this is the original newsbit that was caught by gaming sites.
Actually the series had some of the best dialogue in sci-fi ever, he's known for that, Hill Street Blues, Murder She Wrote, Spider Man... in the last couple of years I've been gathering all the DVD's and that definitely has passed the test of time, with the CGI being the more dated aspect of the thing. It was revolutionary at the time, with the Star treck crew saying it was silly in one moment, and then two years later getting B5s FX team to work for them:)
Yeah he was a political radical and quite nuts, if I might add. He had moved on by the time he was invited to the states, although he continued to be a nationalist and an essentialist. His Treaty on the History of Religions is still one of the more fascinating books that anyone can read though, helps anyone that reads it to get new and thought provoking perspectives on religion , and the sacred in general.
Did I mention that, er, he was completely nuts though?
B5 is about the creation of a Leviathan, of speculation on future technology, on the role and forms of religion picking things from Mircea Eliade, and also a look into Wilsonian and Post WWII American Idealism, also dwelling on System/Community/Society views of organizing politics, a view on war in the world and social relations in America, the limitations and errors of men and women that abuse alcohol, do drugs, make mistakes, have doubts, and an attempt to question the times, while the wall had collapsed and everything seemed possible...... and all of this and much more wrapped up in glorious CGI space battles (in this it was a pioneer) and funny looking camp space aliens, great soundtrack, with the plus of some great scenes by Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, with a story arc that would put you on your toes week after week.
That's great television, a really wonderful series, but I have my doubts Straczynski can bring the magic back this time, another context, another time, we'll see.
Two games, with the second beeing one of the buggiest games on release ever. Remember Tactics was the most pre-ordered game in the Interplay store history,beat Baldurs Gate2 easilly, then word of mouth killed it, wich was really for the best, a rather week game.
They didn`t picked it up because of Herve asking unbelievable ammounts of money, with FO:BOS costing almost twice of the BGDA2 costs according to Fergus, and selling less than 20000 copies, therefore the market value of the franchise droped significantly since December, only Herve doesn`t see that. Yet it was almost sold last month, but Herve screwed the deal yet again at the last minute.
Yet again the "rabid" fans warned Interplay that FO:BOS was a bad idea, but since they were a "minority of rabid hardcore fans" they didn`t listened. Too bad for them. My point that the franchise was comercially viable, and important to a diversification process, with Baldurs Gate3: the Black Hound as the pivotal release to relaunch the PCRPG success of Interplay, and Fallout3 to pick up the critical and long term success (Vivendi loves Fallout, they are rubbing their hands with the prospect of getting it for free or on a sale target price scale, since it remained selling through the years), allowing other licenses to thrive in order to keep them less vulnerable of the end of the D&D milkcow. Herve chose a diferent path, and plummeted Interplay into the surreal situation where it stands now.
So again don`t blame the fans, and don`t underestimate the capability of a Fallout3 be profitable, try instead to find the causes of the current situation starting in this article http://burgerbill.livejournal.com/2004/06/03/
it`s quite revealing.
And on overhype, remember there wouldn`t be Baldurs Gate, that was set up to be a Warcraft clone on the inicial project of Bioware, if it wasn`t for Interplay wanting to make a new RPG after Fallout turning out to be profitable. So Fallout had more in keeping the PCRPGs afloat than what is usually perceived.
No wonder you`re anonymous, because most things you are saying aren`t. The weak license had 5 diferent companies trying to get it since january. With the oem figures it reached over 630000 copies. The fans are demanding people, but they kept interest in games that are 6 and 7 years old, like the Jagged Alliance or the Starcraft communities,and thats not a bad start for a sequel to be released.
It may be time to rest Fo3 and move on, but not because you say so, that`s another story. By the way i have enough material on FO3 to say it was building up to be a good Fallout game and a great RPG, not beeing released was a shame, and many devs loosing their work and the fans seeing their hopes beeing sent to the pits of Interplay mismanegement was the real tragedy.
If you want to finger someone finger Herve Caen and crew and leave Fallout fans alone.
They were shut down by the labor state departement, after all what they`ve done to their employees they deserved it:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_61000 19.html
Update: there are still people working there, although many things were moved and no development of games exists, since the staff was told to get unemployemnet as the best choice.
And a good article from Gamespot
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_60999 57.html
Interplay closed doors yesterday and told everyone to look for unemployement
http://www.nma-fallout.com/
http://www.gamertalk.biz/viewtopic.php?t=1821&star t=20
Interplay failed three times to pay the employees. Forgot for about two months to tell them they weren`t covered by medical, dental and insurance plans anymore, then restarted paying for those plans then stoped again. They stoped paying rent and the owner of their rented space went to litigation. They stoped paying Atari for the D&D rights for eletronic gaming media,wich meant they lost the right to sell most of their backcatalogue, and Vivendi refuses to pay them anything else on Baldurs Gate: Darl Alliance3 until that`s settled, wich doesn`t seem likely. The crappy fallout game for consoles was an expensive sales failure. After Fallout3 they had already canceled two projects, and were working in just one, that was having some troubles because of yet again legal troubles.
So they told the devs and artists to go pick their personal belongings, while removing things during the long weekend. They are saying to the employees to go and ask for unemployement, in a bid to see if they won`t have to pay them what they owe.
They had 1.2 million dollars in the bank late December, and no one knows what happened to that. The CEO told everyone last week he needed 3 million to pay salaries, rent and taxes, since they also owe money to the irs.
Good luck for the devs and artists, no matter how good many of them are in the context of the gaming industry in CA things aren`t good for getting jobs, i hope they get what they are intitled from Iplay and find better jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
No Mutants Allowed has tried to make this public for over three years now, when I was still working with them. This will give some closure, now that the discussions have to be focused on Bethesda's Fallout 3, and allowed us to give a salute to the people of Black Isle Studios, this was a labor of love to them. There's no source, but if one takes a closer look in the files with the proper tools, one finds more models, scraps of files for a variety of purposes, even stuff from Baldurs Gate3: The Black Hound, the cancelled BIS game that Van Buren was using the engine. Those were good times
"Bethesda's "refusal" to tell the public about game mechanics is a direct result of the Fallout fanbase (namely NMA) having this twisted sense of entitlement that you're showing so well" False. A complete lie, actually, they never release info about their games until they are ready, it's something they always do, and this is no exception. for someone that attacks Fallout fans as hostile, stupid paranoids you really should be less paranoid yourself.
"I would have thought Slashdot to be a little more open minded and thoughtful than NMA." Whenever you read something you disagree the others become close minded and dumb? That's not how things work, is it? And I worked at NMA, it has times of too much hostility and not enough focus, but overall I don't get your surprise, it's really a place for fans, and fans of that series tend to have similar views everywhere, there's an history that molded us into the various views that are expressed here and on the fansites. Nothing really surprising about that...
Couldn't agree more, good post.
First that's not an official announcement, but a SEC filling reporting the will by Interplay of raising at least 50 million (to 75 million) dollars from overseas investors to create a Fallout MORPG. Interplay today is one person, Herve Caen, and a couple of lawyers and a webmaster that do the odd job here and there. They have millions in debts to companies like Warner Brothers and their former employees, which they aren't paying, so this is an attempt to raise some money from overseas investors just to stay alive (well, sort of "alive"...). They don't have developers, they don't have staff, the last agreement they had with a MORPG company was with the developers of Ballerium, and they never paid them ( http://www.ballerium.com/community/showthread.php? s=d493aea59c78ace9f73bb3d50b12ec34&threadid=2645&h ighlight=interplay>Ballerium ), so the project was suspended, it is being restarted without Interplay involvement.
So this is not to be taken seriously, as you can see in the discussion from when the news was first released, this is just a financial move filled with vague promises and a few lies (Interplay had zero involvement with World of Warcraft, and in the filling they have the nerve to say they were involved in creating it...).
Nothing really substantial has come of this and there is no guarantee that it will ever be made.
More here
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3 3825
this is the original newsbit that was caught by gaming sites.
Actually the series had some of the best dialogue in sci-fi ever, he's known for that, Hill Street Blues, Murder She Wrote, Spider Man... in the last couple of years I've been gathering all the DVD's and that definitely has passed the test of time, with the CGI being the more dated aspect of the thing. It was revolutionary at the time, with the Star treck crew saying it was silly in one moment, and then two years later getting B5s FX team to work for them :)
Geez that is a bit too off topic isn't it?...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade
Yeah he was a political radical and quite nuts, if I might add. He had moved on by the time he was invited to the states, although he continued to be a nationalist and an essentialist. His Treaty on the History of Religions is still one of the more fascinating books that anyone can read though, helps anyone that reads it to get new and thought provoking perspectives on religion , and the sacred in general.
Did I mention that, er, he was completely nuts though?
B5 is about the creation of a Leviathan, of speculation on future technology, on the role and forms of religion picking things from Mircea Eliade, and also a look into Wilsonian and Post WWII American Idealism, also dwelling on System/Community/Society views of organizing politics, a view on war in the world and social relations in America, the limitations and errors of men and women that abuse alcohol, do drugs, make mistakes, have doubts, and an attempt to question the times, while the wall had collapsed and everything seemed possible... ... and all of this and much more wrapped up in glorious CGI space battles (in this it was a pioneer) and funny looking camp space aliens, great soundtrack, with the plus of some great scenes by Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, with a story arc that would put you on your toes week after week.
That's great television, a really wonderful series, but I have my doubts Straczynski can bring the magic back this time, another context, another time, we'll see.
Are you sure?
Two games, with the second beeing one of the buggiest games on release ever. Remember Tactics was the most pre-ordered game in the Interplay store history,beat Baldurs Gate2 easilly, then word of mouth killed it, wich was really for the best, a rather week game. They didn`t picked it up because of Herve asking unbelievable ammounts of money, with FO:BOS costing almost twice of the BGDA2 costs according to Fergus, and selling less than 20000 copies, therefore the market value of the franchise droped significantly since December, only Herve doesn`t see that. Yet it was almost sold last month, but Herve screwed the deal yet again at the last minute. Yet again the "rabid" fans warned Interplay that FO:BOS was a bad idea, but since they were a "minority of rabid hardcore fans" they didn`t listened. Too bad for them. My point that the franchise was comercially viable, and important to a diversification process, with Baldurs Gate3: the Black Hound as the pivotal release to relaunch the PCRPG success of Interplay, and Fallout3 to pick up the critical and long term success (Vivendi loves Fallout, they are rubbing their hands with the prospect of getting it for free or on a sale target price scale, since it remained selling through the years), allowing other licenses to thrive in order to keep them less vulnerable of the end of the D&D milkcow. Herve chose a diferent path, and plummeted Interplay into the surreal situation where it stands now. So again don`t blame the fans, and don`t underestimate the capability of a Fallout3 be profitable, try instead to find the causes of the current situation starting in this article http://burgerbill.livejournal.com/2004/06/03/ it`s quite revealing. And on overhype, remember there wouldn`t be Baldurs Gate, that was set up to be a Warcraft clone on the inicial project of Bioware, if it wasn`t for Interplay wanting to make a new RPG after Fallout turning out to be profitable. So Fallout had more in keeping the PCRPGs afloat than what is usually perceived.
No wonder you`re anonymous, because most things you are saying aren`t. The weak license had 5 diferent companies trying to get it since january. With the oem figures it reached over 630000 copies. The fans are demanding people, but they kept interest in games that are 6 and 7 years old, like the Jagged Alliance or the Starcraft communities,and thats not a bad start for a sequel to be released. It may be time to rest Fo3 and move on, but not because you say so, that`s another story. By the way i have enough material on FO3 to say it was building up to be a good Fallout game and a great RPG, not beeing released was a shame, and many devs loosing their work and the fans seeing their hopes beeing sent to the pits of Interplay mismanegement was the real tragedy. If you want to finger someone finger Herve Caen and crew and leave Fallout fans alone.
They were shut down by the labor state departement, after all what they`ve done to their employees they deserved it: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_61000 19.html
Update: there are still people working there, although many things were moved and no development of games exists, since the staff was told to get unemployemnet as the best choice. And a good article from Gamespot http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_60999 57.html
Interplay closed doors yesterday and told everyone to look for unemployement http://www.nma-fallout.com/ http://www.gamertalk.biz/viewtopic.php?t=1821&star t=20
eheheheheh Ok Dark Alliance* wait it`s still SCO and partners...
Interplay failed three times to pay the employees. Forgot for about two months to tell them they weren`t covered by medical, dental and insurance plans anymore, then restarted paying for those plans then stoped again.
They stoped paying rent and the owner of their rented space went to litigation. They stoped paying Atari for the D&D rights for eletronic gaming media,wich meant they lost the right to sell most of their backcatalogue, and Vivendi refuses to pay them anything else on Baldurs Gate: Darl Alliance3 until that`s settled, wich doesn`t seem likely. The crappy fallout game for consoles was an expensive sales failure. After Fallout3 they had already canceled two projects, and were working in just one, that was having some troubles because of yet again legal troubles.
So they told the devs and artists to go pick their personal belongings, while removing things during the long weekend. They are saying to the employees to go and ask for unemployement, in a bid to see if they won`t have to pay them what they owe.
They had 1.2 million dollars in the bank late December, and no one knows what happened to that.
The CEO told everyone last week he needed 3 million to pay salaries, rent and taxes, since they also owe money to the irs.
Good luck for the devs and artists, no matter how good many of them are in the context of the gaming industry in CA things aren`t good for getting jobs, i hope they get what they are intitled from Iplay and find better jobs.