Interview Feargus chats with GameSpot

[Odysseus]

Agreements not to compete are governed by State law. If your agreement partially does not meet State requirements, a judge can choose to enforce it in only in part or not at all at his discretion. If your agreement is troubling to you, by all means have an attorney check it out- he might tell you it's garbage! Wouldn't surprise me if I'play tried to screw over youse guys, assuming you would never investigate whether or not the non-compete clause is legitimate. I'd do it myself but I am just a third year law student, not an attorney yet, and I think giving formal legal advice is an ethics violation

Best of luck, man!


Odysseus

 

[Sabotai]

Do non-compete agreements hold up in court?

Obsidian does compete with Interplay. It's not so much a non-compete agreement, methinks, but more a non-disclosure agreement.

 

[MrBrown]

Something I picked up from the interview...

GS: Titles like Morrowind and the upcoming Jade Empire are blurring the line between action and role-playing titles. Do you expect to see more and more action and shooter elements incorporated into RPGs?

FU: Yes and no. I think at some point the game becomes something else and is no longer an RPG. There is still a lot to be said for making RPGs that don't require the player to have reactions tuned by the latest FPS. In the end, RPGs are based off of character development systems that have a certain amount of numbers, and those numbers control the play of the game to a greater or lesser degree. When action is added then the numbers become less important, which means at some point the character development system becomes less important and the game starts feeling less like an RPG.

Just remember to add something for the player to do! It's a game afterall, and if combat is decided almost solely by numbers, it'll be very boring for the player. I think a bunch of RPGs have had this exact problem, where the developers have went with a 'traditional' PnP like system and it resulted in bland, repetive combat, where the player has very little choice.

Personally, I think there's 2 good ways to do combat in RPGs: tactical, party-based where the player's skills are tested in managing a whole party against a group of enemies, or action-based where the player's skills come up in reflexes and/or quick choice making. Of course, if you go too much either way, the game will become more of a tactical game / FPS / Tekken or something, but I think RPGs were sort of a mix between various basic gaming styles in the 1st place.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Feargie, if you ever, ever, EVAR make anything like Morrowind, please put in a nice variety of monsters. Cliff Racers can become just a bit too much after a while.

I have to agree with him there though. Some games are just click - click - click and eventually you start thinking "Okay, what is it exactly that I'm doing here". That's why games like Fallout which break-down the gameplay into constant user-choices are fun!

 

[DemonKing]

Feargus--NO DICE! It's not like Interplay could even afford to sue you now anyways. We just want to hear you say "FOBOS SUCKS!"

Actually it seems that Interplay would rather lay off a whole division than *not* have lawyers.

They seem to have been involved in quite a few lawsuits over the last couple of years.

 

[Spazmo]

They lose them all, though.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The lawyers are the only ones at Interplay who have job security, given the suing, negotiations with NASDAQ, and so on.

 

[Seven]

I'm a retard - you all know this.

Can I put this in a sig. LOL. You should know that people in these parts like to use you in their sigs, but then again you did promise to say stupid things for us to quote, so... :D