What is happening at Black Isle?

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 11:16 am

This is quite a state of affairs. Why is it that companies like EA can release crap titles or sports titles that are all the same and make a huge profit and a company who produces innovative and stylish products are running into financial trouble.

When it came out, Deer Hunter 3 toppes the American best sellers chart. I think this tells you everything you need to know about the non-harcore audience

Stylish and innovative doesn't do very well, safe and sequel is the way to make money.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 11:27 am

Originally posted by Quitch:

Stylish and innovative doesn't do very well, safe and sequel is the way to make money.

How true, when it all comes down to it, if the stock of some fat cat goes up then everyone is pleased

Nice post BTW

Nippy · Post by **Nippy** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 2:33 pm

Originally posted by Mr Sleep:
I don't own the freespace series but i own Giants, sacrifice and the BG Series (all of the Black Isle games in fact) Giants was undoubtedly one of the funniest games ever. It had me ROTFLMAO on many occasions "TIMMY!" ROFL

Timmy ruled!

"You vicious bastard!"

or

Borjoyzee and Uncle of Timmy getting it on ALL NIGHT LONG!

(Sorry for the spammage)

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 2:37 pm

Off to planet Majorca!

Dont apologise it is what we are here for

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 4:41 pm

How true, when it all comes down to it, if the stock of some fat cat goes up then everyone is pleased

Nice post BTW

I seemed to lose some D's in there

Sorry, but I'm going to have to shoot myself by using rhyming as part of a post.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Tue Jul 31, 2001 4:51 pm

The PC game industry is in serious trouble right now. With the mass public, and media placing blame of all violent occurances on the Gaming industry (Computor namely) they have had defend themselves. Also, when you throw companies like EA and Microsoft in there, it gets even worse because the games they produce are hardly worth the money it took to make them! They are just like Sony in that case. All those companies only care about getting the game onto the shelves, and getting the cash into their pockets. Now, explain to me this, if the games they make suck ass (Which most from those companies do) and no one buys them, then where does all this money come from? Simple, it comes from the pockets of the companies, thus causeing them to go bankrupt. If they go bankrupt, then they cannot afford to pay for the games to create. And so begins a vicious cycle. If companies like Interplay go under, then the gaming industry will collase. Then what? Media pushes all morale outrages over to the next target, and then there goes another industry. I just hope that it doesn't resort to just EA and Microsoft being the prime game companies.

Nippy · Post by **Nippy** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 4:06 am

Aegis I agree with you completely. The thing that annoys me is that most games released by the big ones are FPS which everyone buys to see what it's like. The exception is B&W which IMHO sucked anyway because of the bugs! The spells for good gods were awful etc. Back to my original point, FPS always attract people to them and they mostly ignore the other good games released by some of the better publisher/developers.

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 6:08 am

Sorry Aegis, but I have to disagree.

With the mass public, and media placing blame of all violent occurances on the Gaming industry (Computor namely) they have had defend themselves

As happened to the music industry, and the movie industry. It didn't destroy them, and it didn't last.

The PC games market, isn't doing *that* badly. The success of well known brands is no different to any other industry. Just look at some of the crap the movie industry churns out.

As for your Microsoft bashing, as a publisher they have, and still are, backing up some excellent games. In actual fact, I struggle to think of any really poor ones. As a publisher they've been making good choices.

If anything, the biggest problem the PC industry faces is pirating. People swap pirate games with nary a thought towards the company. The scale of it simply isn't possible currently on the consoles. The worst part of computer piracy, is that almost everyone does it, even those who love PC games. They do it, because everyone else doe it.

That, is the main cause of the problems the PC industry has, and always has had.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 6:20 am

I never pirate games, i do use cracks because i can not be bothered to keep putting the CD in all the time. If someone has done i good job then they deserve paying for that job, so i pay them with my £35.

I did once own Hitman which was not technically legal, but i was not going to buy that gmae nayway, i also lost interest quickly because it was quite so buggy, i have never had any other illegal games, now where is that damn halo!

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 8:55 am

Quitch writes to Aegis:
As for your Microsoft bashing, as a publisher they have, and still are, backing up some excellent games. In actual fact, I struggle to think of any really poor ones. As a publisher they've been making good choices.

The problem as I see it with umbrella publishers like Microsoft, EA, Interplay, Infogrammes, and Ubi Soft is that the developers who formerly worked on their own choice of products, according to their own timetables, are now working doing the products that someone else defines, according to someone else's timetable. There's no denying that this provides a measure of security and work for the small development house. But there's also no denying that it presses creativity into narrower channels, defined by the bean counters of a few large corporations.

I've got nothing against bean counters, and contrary to what some people might think, I'm really not deadset against large corporations. But the advantage as I see it of small game development firms controlling their own product and access to the market is that you have more independent vantage points being exposed, in the end, to the public, even if these inevitably include (as they should) a sense of "what audiences will buy." When fewer bean counters are involved in those decisions--and when the bean counters are separate from the creative team, as is often the case in large corporations--then variety and creativity suffer.

Let's consider some examples. Richard Garriott had a long string of hits on his hands in the RPG, action, and multiplayer genres when he sold Origin Systems to EA. The big guns then moved Garriott's attention elsewhere, in exchange for several benefits that included a lot more capital for development. This, Garriott figured, was very good, because he was (and remains) a techno-junkie, who got the bug around 1990, and always wants his games to be on the cutting edge of technology to increase the player's sensory experience.

EA, however, has one main interest: income. So while Garriott was working on administrative concerns, their own installed executives took control of Ultima VIII development. Garriott subsequently claimed that he had "lost control of the development process," which is simply another way of saying that while he was looking elsewhere, EA had done things he didn't like. Yes, he would have kept the the action orientation--he really lost interest in more strategic RPGs a long time ago, no big news there--but he would have made gameplay a lot easier and more sensible. The game enjoyed relatively poor sales.

Ultima IX did involve Garriott, but there was a major loss of focus during the project. Under pressure from EA to produce a big hit, the development team was fired several times. The final product was released over the protestations of Garriott and Origin Systems (their internal memos were leaked almost immediately after the game's release, and have a sense of "here's to disaster in the making"). It was a shambles: braindead AI, visually beautiful but horribly buggy, a series of puzzles unrelated to roleplaying, completely linear, a story that several times made absolutely no sense--panned almost universely. Even EA gave up on it within a month or so of release, declaring that the final patch had been issued. Of course, all the fault was placed on Garriott's shoulders, and he departed from EA. The company directed the remaining OS staff to work on Ultima Online II which frankly looked pretty good. Then, the bean counters suddenly decided they wanted to invest in console games--and all the work done on UO II was chucked, along with the team.

There's another company with a very fine record in strategy games: Frog City. They were the folks that did Imperialism and Imperialism II, both addictive products. About a year ago they sent me a pre-alpha of a product called Pantheon. I'm at a loss to describe this imaginative game in just a simple phrase. How about "a third person, 3D isometric nonlinear RTS/RPG/strategy hybrid that contains over 30 collectible resources and hundreds of monster types, researchable technologies, quests, god-created magical items, spells, and statistics?" You're one of twelve Olympian gods, and play against AI-driven Olympian opponents while trying to build the military, economic and industrial might of your worshippers. You can also perform quests for other gods (up to three out of a field of eight or so) that forge alliances. Of course, so can your opponents--sometimes even competing with you for the same deific favors.

The thing's really deep, and as you can guess, I was very impressed: roughly 45% of the coding has been done over a couple of years. Frog City needed financial investment, however, to finish the rest, since they wanted this to be a main project, not something put together afterhours, with an hour stolen here and there from other done deals.

They pitched it at one company--SSI (it no longer matters whether it's named or not; the company has ceased to exist), a venerable firm with a great record, that had recently been taken over. The VP who heard their pitch listened attentively, then asked, "Are you doing a console version?" When it was pointed out that strategy games haven't worked on the console market, and that a lot of time would be spent simultaneously coding a console product, the VP waved them off and walked away. (He has, by the way, a bad record of blowing off good product and going for the ones that follow the latest buzzphrases: in this case, "console versions." The man, who will remain anonymous, is now working for EA.)

Frog City approached another big publisher, where, for a change, everybody in the company loved Pantheon--except the chief accountant. He said no game based on Greco-Roman myths has ever sold, and nothing would budge him from this position. One of the company's chief internal producers (with a long string of successes) even said he would commit in writing to work with Frog City on making Pantheon a reality that *would* sell; but the accountant wouldn't budge.

The good news is that after producing a really low end, unambitious title (Trade Wars, which is due to release in a few months) for another firm--a deal they had to take, to remain solvent--Frog City finally got some funds for Pantheon. But the point is that, as the above examples show, an excellent, innovative product from a company with a proven track record of hits simply couldn't get the funding for more than two years to produce a very good game. They were prevented by corporate incompetence in one major case, and by a blinkered financial view in the other.

The corporations have the money, and they have the connections to the retail chains sewn up. If you want to work, you work either for them or through them, but in either case, there's a great deal of product shaping which is done entirely by corporate decision-making. I'm not saying it isn't savvy or benign, but all too often it results in incompetent or completely financially driven decisions which adversely affect product.

[ 08-01-2001: Message edited by: fable ]

Darkpoet · Post by **Darkpoet** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 9:00 am

Thanks Fable, you have a way with words.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 9:15 am

Whoever said greco-roman based games don't sell don't know crap. Just look at the Quest for Glory games! Those are some of my favorite games, and all of them have a distinct greco-roman feel to them. Then their was Ceasar, and Ceasar 2. Both the Roman version of SimCity, and ti sold like Wildfire! How about Zeus? That game sold rather well as well, albeit not as well af earlier sims, but it did alright. Guess what! That Greco-Roman stuff, derived from Greek, so it's basically Greco-Roman. Another you say? How about Age of Empires, and it's expansion? Both dealt with the Greek/Roman eras!

Anyway, enough of one rant, on to the next.

The reason I do not support Microsoft is because of their track record. They have produced all of three games that I liked, namely AoE, AoE 2, and MechWarrior 4. Aside from that, the rest of their games are just crap. All of their programs have been known to be incredably glitchy, and buggy, and the games are no exception. Their prime concern is also where is the next pay check coming from, not the game quality. The same goes with EA, which I'll admit, does some good sports games. The problem with that is that Sports are only a small part of the gaming industry. So, they compensate by releasing more games, that are ****. They don't make the quality, they make the ****.

Thats were the small developers are different. Companies like Microprose, Blizzard (kind've) and Black Isle. They don't have the money to pump games out every month, so they have to rely on making quality games. (Blizzards only real flop has been D2). And what happens to them? They get respected, and they win the awards. But then, big companies like EA and Microsoft smell success, and they buy em out, or take em over. Guess what happens then? They expect those bought out companies to produce the small quality games every month! And that oviously cannot be done.

Anyway, there are my two rants for right now. enjoy!

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 9:48 am

Originally posted by Darkpoet:
Thanks Fable, you have a way with words.

I did go a bit overboard, huh?

Darkpoet · Post by **Darkpoet** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 9:50 am

Originally posted by fable:
I did go a bit overboard, huh?

Um

of course not. I was very informative.

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 9:52 am

Originally posted by Aegis:
Whoever said greco-roman based games don't sell don't know crap. Just look at the Quest for Glory games! Those are some of my favorite games, and all of them have a distinct greco-roman feel to them. Then their was Ceasar, and Ceasar 2. Both the Roman version of SimCity, and ti sold like Wildfire! How about Zeus?

I suspect the bean counter would say that the Caesar series was built on Roman fact, rather than myth, and the Quest for Glory series (which I dearly loved) actually did its worst sales in the fifth game, the one with the Roman myth setting. Of course, it also didn't have the old QfG team behind it, since they were assigned to another project, but people like this particular person aren't interested in details that contradict their theories.

You understand, I'm not trying to defend his viewpoint. I'm just explaining where he came from.

Drakron Du´Dark · Post by **Drakron Du´Dark** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 10:04 am

But EA did more that what you are saying tp Origin....

Cris Roberts that was behind WC series was put in a very dificult situation...

When WC IV was released it was way over bugect and EA decided that he (Cris Roberts) had to go...
But you cannot fired someone like him so, they made his live insided Origin a living hell (like holding the christams bonus) until he leave.
Now you seen that WC: P storie does not make much sense ....why?
Because the script was changed many times in order to keep it under budgect, but at the expense of the storie.
So Origin lost the Crusader series, WC series and Ultima series (UO will not last long) and those were were Origin was making money.
Bullfrog had the ax from EA high up, wait for UO to start to lose most of the subscrivers and I think Origin will also get the AX.
EA is a monster that I honestely hope it goes under so the creative people can move to better places.
Fortunate, there is Sierra.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 10:25 am

I think the big companies are the real problems here.

@Fable: I know what your saying about the QfG series, but keep in mind, not many games are as successful when it comes to a fifth sequel. The fact that it didn't have the same staff helps as well. But all of them did have a real roman feel to it.

Drakron Du´Dark · Post by **Drakron Du´Dark** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 10:30 am

QfG5 was the last...

Its say just that in the Read.me file.

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 12:03 pm

Companies like Microprose, Blizzard (kind've) and Black Isle. They don't have the money to pump games out every month, so they have to rely on making quality games. (Blizzards only real flop has been D2).

I think, as we've already seen, that quality is not what sells game. If it did, Looking Glass would still be with us, as they were one of the most innovative developers around. However they did not have the backing.

D2? You mean Diablo II? If you're talking flop in terms of sales, then you've got the wrong sales figures I can assure you.

I think people need to leave their dream worlds, and face the reality. Computer games *are* business. It's all very well and good making a very new, daring and exciting game, but if it doesn't sell, it's not worth jack.

This isn't the bedroom hobby anymore.

Garriot got where he is by aiming small, amassing an extremly loyal fan base, and then showing companies that his games could sell. He had business sense as well as a flair for games.

Nippy · Post by **Nippy** » Wed Aug 01, 2001 12:21 pm

I might be a bit contradictary of my earlier arguments but to be honest I've only just thought about this.

Remember that innovation does not equal better games. Just because a company comes up with a massive new premise does not mean that it is good.

Take for example Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

This game (which I believe was released by EA) was not innovative, it did nothing new but what it did do was top the sales charts in the UK for about 4 months. 4 months for a game where you have to sit in a chair and do nothing except scratch your head a bit.

I am not saying that innovation is bad, I am saying thay staying safe is exactly that safe. Remember you only write about how good a game is, these folks have to think about families and their wellbeing. By all means discuss but bear a thought about how much time and money goes into games today.