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Company News BioWare Speaks: Why IPLY and BioWare Split

Jinxed

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If you haven't noticed, my posts are teeming with exaggeration, they're not to be taken too seriously to the point of addressing everything and providing examples.

And yeah, there's no hidden agenda as there is no money directly involved. Just some bonus golden rings that they can pick up at this stage, perhaps they can collect some more later on and get an extra life. We'll see.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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JanC said:
And what is wrong with Bioware getting their money for their work?

Absolutely nothing wrong with it, so why not be honest about it? NWN would have sold VOLUMES regardless of any single fuck up Interplay could have managed in terms of how it went to retail shelves. I think we can all agree on that. So, why not just say, "Hey, we were getting dicked around with our financial rights with Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2. So we decided to split before our super new cash cow Neverwinter Nights is released by the same company that's giving us the high hard one over previous titles' financial cuts."?
 

Volourn

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"NWN would have sold VOLUMES regardless of any single fuck up Interplay could have managed in terms of how it went to retail shelves."

No, we don't know that. You underestimate the role of a publisher. Just look at the fiasco that was IWD2 and how that was 'published' which probably cost it some sales.

Quite frankly, it seems it was obvious even then to BIO that Interplay was a sinking ship so left. Period.
 

MarFish

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Messages
266
Saint_Proverbius said:
JanC said:
And what is wrong with Bioware getting their money for their work?

Absolutely nothing wrong with it, so why not be honest about it? NWN would have sold VOLUMES regardless of any single fuck up Interplay could have managed in terms of how it went to retail shelves. I think we can all agree on that. So, why not just say, "Hey, we were getting dicked around with our financial rights with Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2. So we decided to split before our super new cash cow Neverwinter Nights is released by the same company that's giving us the high hard one over previous titles' financial cuts."?

No, we can not agree on that .

Look back at Atari's marketing campaign for NWN. No way IPLY could have done anything close to that when they were not even capable of paying for contractual milestones.

Look at Feargus excuses for IWD2 - in the end they were all based on "we had no cash".

Dumping a publisher is a damn risky gamble, you don't do it if it's absolutely necessary.
 

MarFish

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Let's also not forget IPLY's track record in bringing their games to the shelves. T.O.R.N., Jefferson, etc are not really supportive to the theory that IPLY would have managed to publish NWN - they weren't even able to many bring their own games to the shelves.

Saint, reading through your posts again I think you're right. Bioware is a bunch of greedy bastards, how dare they to leave a publisher that might have brought their game to the shelves for a better deal, guaranteed deal with Atari. Sure, Interplay tried to scam them and Paralax out of royalties, but that's not a good reason to dump them for cash.

Bah, in you hate for BioWare you are even starting to paint IPLY nice if it only serves the purpose of being able to say "See, Bioware is all about cash! How dare they!". You're so blinded by hatred now that you're starting to see things that are not there.

I'm not a huge fan of Bioware's games, but in this case I'm more than inclined to believe my fellow Canadians explainations than your weird "they just wanted more cash, the stability thing is just an excuse for the fans to look cool" theory.
 
Self-Ejected

dojoteef

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Volourn said:
"NWN would have sold VOLUMES regardless of any single fuck up Interplay could have managed in terms of how it went to retail shelves."

No, we don't know that. You underestimate the role of a publisher. Just look at the fiasco that was IWD2 and how that was 'published' which probably cost it some sales.

Quite frankly, it seems it was obvious even then to BIO that Interplay was a sinking ship so left. Period.

Holy shit, one of the rare times I completely agree with Volourn! :shock:

Let Saint live in his deluded little fantasy world because we all know that great games sell extremely well without the need of good publishing: heck, just look at Battlezone 2, System Shock 2, etc! Same with movies, tv shows (through advertising), books, music. Heck people use publishers just for the hell of giving part of their profits away... oh wait, hmmm... didn't Bioware move from one publisher to another. They should have self published! They would have made boatloads more, especially since publishing doesn't cost much of anything! Heck other independent companies should do the same thing, like id Software and Epic Games! ::end saracasm::

Saint honestly, how can you possibly justify such a fucked up point of view? Publishers make money because they risk money (through marketing campaigns in various countires, manufacturing, localizing for different languages, and though not in this case, fronting development costs, etc) on the expectation of a return on their investment, period. If you think Interplay could have done just as good of a job as Atari did with Interplay's financial problems then you need to take a look at some simple economics.
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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dojoteef said:
Holy shit, one of the rare times I completely agree with Volourn! :shock:

89200funny.gif
 

taks

Liturgist
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MarFish said:
Especially privately held Canadian companies.
that's my point, actually... most companies can't, private companies can.

taks
 

taks

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Jinxed said:
Chances are that this thing has been picked up by sites, like this one for example... DAC posted news about it too.
ooh, DAC too... now a thousand or so have read it...

taks
 

Saint_Proverbius

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MarFish said:
No, we can not agree on that.

Look back at Atari's marketing campaign for NWN. No way IPLY could have done anything close to that when they were not even capable of paying for contractual milestones.

Most of the marketting was done by BioWare and Interplay. Atari only had it for a year or so prior to it's release. By that time, the hype engine was already in full swing - by BioWare.

Look at Feargus excuses for IWD2 - in the end they were all based on "we had no cash".

The game development was funded by BioWare. IWD2's development was funded by Interplay, and went way over the five month development time it was expected to take when the project was started.

Dumping a publisher is a damn risky gamble, you don't do it if it's absolutely necessary.

And a huge reason would be if said publisher doesn't pay you, right?

IWD2 and NWN are two totally different beasts here. IWD2 lacks the important copy protection that NWN has, which is that whole key driven thing to play the multiplayer. A delay in the European release like IWD2 had wouldn't have cost it nearly as much. There might have been a few lost sales, but not many given the differences in the type of game.

A lot of Feargus's excuses on IWD2 were a little off the mark too. IWD2 was only HOTLY ANTICIPATED by a handful of people on the Interplay forums. Outside of that, most people were looking forward to NWN and didn't give a rip about IWD2. It was destined to bomb just because the world had already moved on to something newer - NWN. You could go to any general gaming site and look up the threads on the news postings about IWD2 and most of them had zero comments. NWN, despite having a whirlwind of media regurgitations, always had comments on whatever BioWare did with the game. Not too many people cared about IWD2.

Sure, Interplay tried to scam them and Paralax out of royalties, but that's not a good reason to dump them for cash.

Are you an idiot? If you do three jobs for someone, and they're not paying you for the first two, and you know that third job is going to bring in massive cash, are you going to want to do that one with those people when you can do it for someone that's actually likely to pay you?

Bah, in you hate for BioWare you are even starting to paint IPLY nice if it only serves the purpose of being able to say "See, Bioware is all about cash! How dare they!". You're so blinded by hatred now that you're starting to see things that are not there.

Now you're just mouth stuffing. I think I even said there's nothing wrong with getting the money you're supposed to get for a job, but you should be honest about that. Hell, Interplay probably would have made enough on the pre-orders of NWN to fund the publishing of the game in Europe.

Furthermore, I've never painted Interplay as nice. Note the fact I've mentioned in every single post that they didn't pay BioWare for the Baldur's Gate games BioWare made for them. How exactly is that painting them as nice? Hmm?
 
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dojoteef

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I love how Saint conveniently glosses over my post; was it too much to tackle. ;)
 

Volourn

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I still like to know where that BIO dev even implied that the dumping of Interplay didn't have to do with money. I thought he was quite frank about it.

Of course, we should point out, that this is simply a dev and NOT the BIO CEOs so he probably doens't know all the facts either. Though he might. Who knows.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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dojoteef said:
I love how Saint conveniently glosses over my post; was it too much to tackle. ;)

Because you didn't say anything MarFish didn't say.

Then again, you want a simple statement that sums up what I've been saying, here it is:

If you're not going to get paid by a publisher anyway, are you going to give two shits if they get it on all the shelves when expected?
 

Sol Invictus

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I thought he pretty clearly implied the whole 'they didnt pay us so we ditched them' part even though he tried to talk around it in the beginning of his post. If they stayed with Interplay 5 things would have happened:

1) Interplay would have fucked up the release by releasing it first in the United States and months later elsewhere.
2) Interplay wouldn't have been able to maintain the cd-key server and the character vaults. It would have likely left it to GameSpy, which at the time (even worse than it is now) had horrible support for such things. See: Sacrifice.
3) NWN wouldn't have lasted long. Interplay would have run out of money to maintain the cd-key servers and such and the game would have gone to the dogs/warezers.
4) Bioware wouldn't have gotten paid for any of the international sales, and Interplay would have taken a much larger cut than they deserved, with most of the funds pouring into Herve's wallet instead of the company's.
5) Bioware would have been closed or many of its employees fired because they would have taken a huge loss on their personal investment in NWN.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Exitium said:
2) Interplay wouldn't have been able to maintain the cd-key server and the character vaults. [

OR it would have been BioWare that maintained it, which they do now and have since NWN was released.

4) Bioware wouldn't have gotten paid for any of the international sales, and Interplay would have taken a much larger cut than they deserved, with most of the funds pouring into Herve's wallet instead of the company's.

They'd have gone to Titus during that time, and I doubt Interplay would have coughed up all the money from the North American sales either.

5) Bioware would have been closed or many of its employees fired because they would have taken a huge loss on their personal investment in NWN.

I doubt it would have come to closure. If they really hit the skids, someone would buy them. Interplay would have dicked them for all they could get away with, though. No question about that.
 

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