Company News RPGPOCALYPSE: Obsidian and inXile have been acquired by Microsoft

[tindrli]

i wonder if they would include wasteland in their next installment of windows .. something like minesweeper.. it would be great to see it. Windows 12 wasteland edition

 

[Riddler]

There is no excuse for letting dimwits touch the development of the sequel though.

Yup. But it's the nature of things - creatives getting pushed aside by suits and leeches once the money starts rolling in. Hollywood's pretty much the same story, where anything good usually withers and wanes once idiot executives get their mitts on it. IIRC James Cameron once had to go postal to prevent a junior exec from having his way with the Avatar script. Just goes to show you how unbalanced the leverage is in most industries between corporate and even superstar employees.

It's hard to see how Avatar's script could possibly be made worse though.

 

[Haba]

Reminder:

"corporate meddling" is the reason why X-Com has Geoscape and not just a string of tactical missions (like in Laser Squad).

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, it's bad except when it's not. I think everyone can agree it helps when the corporate meddlers actually care about the games involved and aren't just riding trends or what they think sells, though.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yeah, it's bad except when it's not. I think everyone can agree it helps when the corporate meddlers actually care about the games involved and aren't just riding trends or what they think sells, though.

So like once in a blue moon.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I totally agree, smaller, better quality games first, and scale up later.

Yeah, I watched that presentation, and Tim was quite diplomatic in a way he didn't mention Fargo, but thinking about it, Fargo must have been responsible for some degree.
I understand the original creators (Tim, Leonard, Jason and the others) wanted royalties, but on the other hand Interplay had all the rights. There is no excuse for letting dimwits touch the development of the sequel though.

I bet they could've worked out the money stuff if they'd been willing to stay, but the money was not the sticking point. They wanted creative control like they had with Fallout 1 and they weren't getting it.

From the way Tim and Leonard tell it, Fargo was generally supportive of them having creative control; when they appealed stuff to Fargo he'd side with them. But you can't go running to the CEO of a company with hundreds of employees every time you have a problem with the marketing people or the head of your division (fucking Feargus). Fargo even proposed giving Tim equal status to Feargus so that he'd have more independence within Black Isle, but it was kind of a split the baby down the middle solution that no one was happy with.

I get the impression that working on the original Fallout spoiled Tim, Leonard and Jason: they got to make their dream game at a AAA studio, with AAA money (Fargo gave them three years and three million dollars), but none of the usual AAA oversight/meddling. Outside of the core team, no one within the organization (except for Fargo) really cared about the game so they got a tremendous amount of freedom.

That's pretty unusual and it certainly was never going to happen again at Interplay, at least not for the guys who created Fallout. When you work for a publicly held company, corporate interference is inevitable. From our perspective, Fargo obviously should've given them near total autonomy, but then he'd have to explain the money going into this redundant second RPG division (a black box with no marketing forecasts) to his investors. It wouldn't have worked. Black Isle was successful within Interplay because Feargus is pushy, obnoxious, and extremely self-promotional so the division got enough of the resources it needed. He was born to be a corporate middle manager. Tim and Leonard seem like good guys; they would've been doomed.

Striking out on their own was the only way for them to get what they really wanted.

Yeah, it's bad except when it's not. I think everyone can agree it helps when the corporate meddlers actually care about the games involved and aren't just riding trends or what they think sells, though.

So like once in a blue moon.

This is one of the few things that makes me very cautiously optimistic about Microsoft buying Obsidian and inXile. Phil Spencer seems like a genuine RPG nerd. The guy talks about wanting to reboot Baldur's Gate, and while his appreciation for mid-period BioWare renders his taste somewhat suspect, the fact that he refers to the BioWare founders as the doctors speaks volumes.

From a tweet in January of 2014:

I'm a big Baldur's Gate fan. ME, Jade Empire etc. The doctors created a lot of great franchises.

The fact that he bought both Obsidian and inXile rather than one or the other also makes me suspect he has a genuine love for the genre.

 

[Latelistener]

Phil Spenser is not a nerd and he's definitely not your friend.

 

[Flou]

Phil Spenser is not a nerd and he's definitely not your friend.

He is not your friend, buddy?

 

[Beavery]

Reminder:

"corporate meddling" is the reason why X-Com has Geoscape and not just a string of tactical missions (like in Laser Squad).

The name of the beast was Sid Meier. Not the best example for what the average money leech wants in a game

 

[Creamy Muffin]

Excel RL. NOW!

"Columns of Excel" by Obsidian

Poslano sa mog EVA-L19 koristeći Tapatalk

 

[Prime Junta]

Excel RL. NOW!

"Columns of Excel" by Obsidian

Poslano sa mog EVA-L19 koristeći Tapatalk

Good one.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, it's bad except when it's not. I think everyone can agree it helps when the corporate meddlers actually care about the games involved and aren't just riding trends or what they think sells, though.

So like once in a blue moon.

Pretty much yeah. Honestly it is probably two separate issues. Occasionally a corporate producer can come up with ideas that vastly improve a game, but I think the main evil they are there to prevent is developers who just can't fucking produce a product without someone whipping them. Kickstarter era should have demonstrated to us that while we would like to believe devs are never at fault often they are, the only "major" name developer I can think of that came out of Kickstarter era smelling of roses was Larian.

 

[Country_Gravy]

I think Fargo saw this as a nice retirement. He can phone it in for a few years, he gets to be around game development, which he obviously loves. And then bail with a giant sack of cash.

He owned a game company. Doesn't "retirement" mean "sell"?