There's obviously something to be said for maintaining the freedom of self-ownership, but there are other kinds of freedoms that they get by having Microsoft's resources behind them.
There's only one true freedom - not having to answer to anyone. The rest is make-believe. All that stuff about being autonomous, it's bullshit and we both know it. Sure, it's good business for both Feargus and Fargo, a reward for the long game well played, but making RPGs was never about good business, was it?
Except that they
do have to answer to all sorts of people, up and down the line. The non-owners are working for the man no matter what. And the owners are constrained by the morale and competence of their employees, and hedged in by the expectations of their customer-investors. They are further constrained by what they can afford to buy in terms of intellectual property, tools, etc. Of course there are great games made for much less money, but they're (generally) not the same kind of game.
To analogize to law, a solo practitioner can take whatever case he wants
that is offered to him, but he also needs to worry about managing staff, paying bills, getting enough work to survive, etc. And most cases he wants may never be offered to him because he lacks the resources to take them on. A lawyer at a law firm is constrained in the work he can do, but he is less constrained by those structural challenges.
Unless you think that the games inXile and Obsidian have made are
exactly the games the owners wanted to make, you have to recognize that something was constraining their freedom of action. It may simply have been their own fears and doubts. But I would say other things were at play, too. I'm not sure they'll make exactly the games they want now, either -- but maybe it'll be closer. (Or maybe not. Who knows?)
Plus, the huge pile of money, the famous f-you kind of wealth, that the Obsidian owners now have entails its own kind of freedom.
