Company News Interplay snags up White Wolf's Exhalted rights

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Interplay

Yup, it's true, <a href="http://www.interplay.com">Interplay</a> has <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030508/deth009_1.html">just purchased</a> another <a href="http://www.white-wolf.com/">White Wolf</a> RPG license rights to develop a few games from. This time, the license is that of <A href="http://www.white-wolf.com/exalted/">Exalted</a>, a fantasy RPG setting.
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<blockquote>"White Wolf's entertainment properties include some of the most widely recognized role-playing adventures in the world," stated Jim Molitor, Vice President of Product Development for Interplay. "We recognize the enormous following of this franchise and look forward to bringing our gaming expertise to the 'Exalted' license. We have secured the newest offering from White Wolf, which does extremely well from a popularity standpoint. The premise and richness of the 'Exalted' property make it uniquely suited for translation onto the next-generation video game systems."
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"We are very happy to be partnering with Interplay again," stated Mike Tinney, President of White Wolf. "Interplay is a proven industry leader, and we are confident that they will create a gameplay experience that both novice gamers and hard-core fans will enjoy." Interplay and White Wolf teamed up in 2002 to bring the "Hunter: The Reckoning®" role-playing franchise to next generation consoles.</blockquote>
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Of course, a good question is why they're paying money to buy up licenses while at the same time, they're destroying the licenses for which they own the exclusive rights, like <a href="http://www.interplay.com/fallout">Fallout</a>.
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Of course, no word on what they actually plan to do with this license. Probably another console action fest like <a href="http://www.interplay.com/games/product.asp?gameid=324">Hunter: The Reckoning</a> rather than a full fledged CRPG. I hope I'm wrong, though.
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Spotted this on <a href="Http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</a>.

 

[ecliptic]

What exactly is the gist of the 'Exalted' setting?

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

hey

I have no idea.

Which pretty much shows how "popular" this setting is as presented by Interplay.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

 

[Ausir]

Hunter: the Reckoning was shit even in the PnP version, though.

 

[Vault Dweller]

No, unfortunately, you are not wrong, Saint. It's yet another desperate and stupid move that fits well into what Interplay has been doing lately - coming up with one stupid idea after another that nobody bothered to think through and justify, hoping that one of these ideas would pull them out of the hole anytime soon. Yep, keep'em coming, boys. Anytime now.

Here is my own take on the whole license acquisition business:

It's highly overrated. Of course BG sold well, some people say on account of being D&D and all. Now, I could be wrong, but I think it sold well due to pretty graphics, epic story, fast combat, and hype, publicity, and advertisement. Blizzard never relied on somebody else's properties and it did not stop them from making each game a financial success. Besides, if the rumors are true and Jefferson is BG3, this license business already bit them in the ass.

Anyway, the whole point of buying a license is to get recognition, attract already existing fans, and of course, save time and afforts on creating a new world from scratch. Now, I can see how Interplay needs to borrow someone else's idea 'cause originality and creativity are not their strongest points nowadays, but how many people do they hope to attract with the Exalted license? I mean, Troika's VtM license would attract not only VtM fans, but also all vampire fans from old-skool Dracula fans to Buffy the fucking slayer fans not to mention "Goths and fuckwits" as CCR so eloquently put it(I'm not sure about the Goths, but fuckwits represent a very sizeable target market ). The Exalted, on the other hand...well, remains a mystary setting for 90% of its target audience which kinda raises the question: what's the point of buying a license that nobody knows about?

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Is it really so hard to just spend a couple of months pounding out a new setting? I'm sure BIS are big boys by now and have ideas about how to make up a gameworld and ruleset. I was doing that for PnP when I was in high school.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, if Exalted is as Meltdown describes, a anime-fantasty type deal, it's not very creative in the first place. Those are a dime a dozen really, so why even bother licensing one?

Still, the thing that gets me is that they could probably make Fallout 3 with this money. Use the Jefferson engine, which they have. Never have even started on Fallout Enforcer, which is stupid extreme and will most likely cost them money. Then not license crap like this. With all that money and property, they should have had enough to make Fallout 3 which there is a lot of demand for! Foolish, foolish Interplay.

 

[triCritical]

What I wrote on the IPLY boards

Interplay needs money. Interplay spends more money.

History has shown that IPLY buying licenses has killed them in the past, IPLY did not learn history so they are doomed repeat it.

IPLY picks more obscure genre's. Probably would have been easier for IPLY to use developers brains and make SPECIAL work into new setting for cheaper and quicker. But IPLY is to stupid to realize that there developers have brains.

IPLY = corporate weenies.

IPLY is not very smart.

 

[Section8]

Molitor is a cool name for a big evil boss guy. Hopefully Interplay's Exalted game will have a villain called Molitor, and I also hope he shows up right at the start of the game and says something like "Haha! Even though chosen you are the one who defeat me must, I will let you go. haha. eeeeeeeeee! Must first you catch them all, Ward of Gorion"

 

[Vault Dweller]

"Haha! Even though chosen you are the one who defeat me must, I will let you go. haha. eeeeeeeeee! Must first you catch them all, Ward of Gorion"

I absolutely love it, especially the "ward of Gorion" part

 

[Spazmo]

Perhaps Jefferson is a White Wolf game? I think there's been talk of liscencing problems causing IPLY to not announce the damn thing.

 

[triCritical]

Perhaps Jefferson is a White Wolf game? I think there's been talk of liscencing problems causing IPLY to not announce the damn thing.

It might very well be when it is announced. But I am positively sure it started as a FR game.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

From what I can see, IPLY might not even have people INTERESTED in making the Fallout 3 PRG. Either that, or they're just a bunch of Goddamned yes men hoping to get a few scraps from Titus' table. IPLY's fuckheads are just dicks!!!

 

[Spazmo]

All of BIS would like to make FO3 (although only maybe JE and MCA want to make a good one, and MCA needs a little... guidance), but management won't let them. I suspect that if one were to ask BIS employees why they're still there, the #1 answer is, "I want to make FO3."

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm halfway betting they make a console action game out of this like this did with Hunter, though. After all, IPLY loves to chase trends like a retarded cat chases it's tail, and Hunter sold 184k units.. Of course, it's rather silly to sell the license rights for Hunter to Vivendi and then buy the rights to Exalted, but that's Interplay.

 

[Rayt]

Perhaps Jefferson is a White Wolf game? I think there's been talk of liscencing problems causing IPLY to not announce the damn thing.

But wouldn't that mean they have to change the whole gaming engine? Or is White Wolf also D20?

 

[triCritical]

But wouldn't that mean they have to change the whole gaming engine? Or is White Wolf also D20?

Depends how the engine works. It is possible to build an engine using module. So that you have a rendering engine, rules engine, etc... If you have sufficient firewalls between the components then only a small part of the overall engine needs to be changed.

 

[Rosh]

You mean interpreter instead of firewall. With a good scripting interpreter, you can do like LucasArts did with SCUMM and save yourself a LOT of programming by making an interpreter and just changing the data used by it.

 

[Spazmo]

And besides, I'm not sure of this AT ALL, but I think that there's a very slim chance of there maybe being a White Wolf d20 game or two. Don't take my word for it, though.

 

[triCritical]

You mean interpreter instead of firewall. With a good scripting interpreter, you can do like LucasArts did with SCUMM and save yourself a LOT of programming by making an interpreter and just changing the data used by it.

We are still in the stone age where I work. All our stuff is written in C, but I have been endlessely been trying to push for move to C++ and some of the interpretave languages like Python. I finally got us moving to a port to Linux.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

ou mean interpreter instead of firewall. With a good scripting interpreter, you can do like LucasArts did with SCUMM and save yourself a LOT of programming by making an interpreter and just changing the data used by it.

I think the term you're both looking for is object layers, the bounds between the objects for rendering, gamestate, sound, interface, etc. At least, that's what tri was talking about, having the codebase separated in to different objects so one could be developed and updated independently from the rest of the codebase.

Of course, you can do this with scripting, like Prelude to Darkness did with several elements of it's character system.

We are still in the stone age where I work. All our stuff is written in C, but I have been endlessely been trying to push for move to C++ and some of the interpretave languages like Python. I finally got us moving to a port to Linux..

C++ has a lot of steps back from C, including violating the very purpose of the language itself. I like the addition of classes, but the rest of C++ can go straight to hell.

 

[triCritical]

C++ has a lot of steps back from C, including violating the very purpose of the language itself. I like the addition of classes, but the rest of C++ can go straight to hell.

One of the things I enjoy about C++ is the Standard Template Library (STL) and templates in general. Two weeks ago I wanted create an algorithm using imaging technigues. I would have loved to have had things like the queue, stack, vector and map classes at my disposal. Instead I had to kind of recreate a half ass thing in C without the real power of classes and it my idea turned out not to even work. It was just a big a waste of time. As for templates, in one of my physics classes in graduate school I wrote a matrix class, that essentially worked of matrices, (didn't have access to the pre-built matrix class). Anyhow whenI got my job over 2 years ago, I translated it to see and recently incorporated into the software we are making. The problem is that someone needed a floating point version of it and now we have two of every function.

I admit C++ is fatter, slower and often times more difficult to read, but it can make your life easier. When optimazation and clean code is important I will always use C.

I think the term you're both looking for is object layers, the bounds between the objects for rendering, gamestate, sound, interface, etc. At least, that's what tri was talking about, having the codebase separated in to different objects so one could be developed and updated independently from the rest of the codebase.

Exactly, except it did not sound as good when I said it.

 

[Radisshu]

 

[sgc_meltdown]