You know, the proper developers for Fallout 3 are now all at Trokia games, right? You also know that because Black Isle is dead, the Fallout 3 Liscense can now be sold. Meaning that instead of getting DX:IW and Unreal 2, we will end up with the proper people doing the work. To top it off, graphics will be so amazing by the time they complete the game (Trokia us doing VtM:Bloodlines in order to train the staff on the Source engine so they can be adapt when it comes time to do Van Buren) that it will without doubt be the best game, ever.



(Please name it Van Buren, guys. It would make all the hardcore Fallout fans happy, and everyone else wouldn't get it anyhow. "Fallout 3, what the hell was Fallout 2?")

Posted by Framerate:

I've been in the games industry for some time now, and I have friends in games companies throughout the world. What seems to be happening is that the publishers are stuck in a loop. Most publishers treat external (and satellite) developers like dirt. They believe that they can achieve everything they need with internal development, when in reality internal development is no better (and in my opinion actually worse) than external. So when the profits aren't heading in the right direction, guess who's first to go. 2003 hasn't been as succesful as the publishers had hoped, so now their numbers aren't adding up.

Everyone knows that one's own work force is always the most proper route.

Your just being a jellous bitch.

it sounds like Interplay is hurting so bad that maybe this is for the best.. If they _had_ made FO3, I'm sure they would've pushed it through so quickly it'd make Temple of Elemental Evil look polished.

Instead, now we have the (slim) chance of another publisher picking up the title when Iplay goes kerplunk.

That's odd, because I buy every PC game I play (and some I never get the time to), but I have yet to buy a HaXBox game. And FO:BoS was going to be the first out of over 250 that I was going to buy, even after all the terrible reviews and whining, just to support the franchise... but not anymore. Long live alt.binaries.cd.image.xbox!

Wow, it's not every day I see someone who's proud of being an idiot.

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Run away! Run away!!!

i warez every game i have and i'm proud of it. i would rather be playing on console anyway, it a far superior platform. no more crashes or shint like that. i long for the end of PC gaming, when the good developers will move to console so i can

I had hundreds of pirated games on the Amiga. And when I heard that Cinemaware went down because of piracy I felt very guilty. Now this is happening again, only much worse, and console games making it even harder for the PC, and I am very mad at people who get their warez all day long and ruining all OUR games quality.... the funny thing is, which even I didnt say back in Amiga times, those people who get their MP3s, warez, etc say its their perfect right to do so, at least here in germany.

I thought the first time multiplayer was used, it required an internet connection from that point on, even for single player games.

Nope, Valve pointedly came out and said that an internet connection won't be needed for single player games (after the initial download of course).

95% textures, maybe models, and layouts...maybe.
Scripting and players were the biggest part of Fallout 1 and 2, and I can believe it taking over 50% of the man hours the total game needs. If only 5% of the game included the scripts and players, then FO3 would have been an empty wastland of robotic people and a linear story.

They probably had at least 5 months of development left, with another 3 to 4 of testing. Without some of the key developers that were there from the first 2, I wonder how the game would have really been.

sigh...I'm sure you're right. One can hope...

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Run away! Run away!!!

Who really wants to download gigabytes of data all at once? I bet more people have DVD drives then have fast internet connections, and even if not, DVD drives are getting quite cheap ($30-50 for a 16x).

Umm lots of people download gigabytes of data at once when they warez games, also when they leave their kazaa on all night to download gigs of mp3s. I'm pretty sure the dvd drive being more widely accepted than broadband isn't accurate. Most average PCs come with a CD-RW burner, it seems.

Keep in mind, dvd duplication costs are still way higher than cd-rom duplication, so its still cheaper to burn a bunch of cds per game than one dvd.

And no one is saying exclusively distribute games via the web.

You'll need a connection to download it (duh), but you won't need it to play the single player games. Got to love misinformed whining.

Indeed. I thought the first time multiplayer was used, it required an internet connection from that point on, even for single player games. All fine and dandy if my internet connection is up. Not fine and dandy if it goes down for some reason. If that's not true, good deal.

Anyway, agree with the rest. The 5% left sounds like a difficult 5%.

it's the idea of needing an internet connection to play a single-player game

You'll need a connection to download it (duh), but you won't need it to play the single player games. Got to love misinformed whining.

Also, I don't buy the "it was 95% complete!@" Okay... the engine was 95% complete, but only half of the levels and scripting was complete... you know, the part we call "the game" as opposed to the core engine that you build a game on. And this was only the DEMO. Nevermind that they have to do play testing and redesign for what works and what doesn't (or just release it to the masses, who cares about play testing?) Oh, and claiming the engine was 95% complete... those in software engineering know that it takes 50% of your time to get 90% done, and another 50% of your time to get the last 10% done. (ie, it's easy to think you only have a little bit left to do, when its actually going to take quite a bit of work to complete it).

The excerpt seems to imply that the two employees who didn't get canned got special treatment. I don't see what's wrong about that, if they had recommenders from their last project that they did excellent work, I don't see why it wouldn't be a good idea to try to keep those guys if you could only keep a few of them.

Savage was available for purchase online, which a few people did. The downside was that they had to charge the same price as a regular store-bought box, despite there not being a box. This was due to them not wanting to anger the publisher by undercutting the price. If a developer were to sell their game for cheaper, I think it'd catch on.

My problem with Steam isn't the downloading, it's the idea of needing an internet connection to play a single-player game. Just give me an ISO download and I'll be happy.

first post, after a year of daily readership.

I hate the multiple CDs that are routinely packaged in games, when one DVD would perfectly suffice. I'm still waiting for my Diablo II & LOD v1.10 Platinum Edition to arrive in the mail on a single beautiful golden shiny printed DVD. Or Baldur's Gate 2/ToB etc. Who really wants to download gigabytes of data all at once? I bet more people have DVD drives then have fast internet connections, and even if not, DVD drives are getting quite cheap ($30-50 for a 16x). If game companies started releasing their wonderfully bloated games on DVD, people would buy drives to keep up just like they do video cards...

Run away! Run away!!!

Hell, look at the outcry over Steam.

IMO the outcry over Steam was the fact that it was something to fix something that wasn't broke (WON). Also the fact it was incredibly buggy and prevented people from getting their CS/DOD on.

Lots of people on these forums and others (myself included) said they would purchase games over Steam to avoid having to deal with going to buy a stupid cd, when you can just download a game overnight as soon as its released.

Hell look at all the people running cd image apps instead of having to swap cds all the time. Hard drive space is incredibly cheap now and game sizes have pretty much leveled off around the gig to 1.5 gig range. Plus most manuals that come with games are worthless.

EDIT: Fixed missing closed quote

This comment was edited on Dec 17, 09:13.

Yea, blame warez.

Maybe your monkey brain doesn't realize that PC game sales are dropping like crazy. Its way easier to pirate PC games than console games, so more developers are going towards console games, inaddition to the fact console games have a greater market.

Don't try to pull that I download warez to try the game out bullshit either, thats what game demos and sites like metacritic are for.

Interplay will be gone soon enough.

This is what's really going on. It's not that they're purposely making decisions that make no sense - it's that they're getting rid of things in a desparate attempt to stay afloat, and one that they know will not work anyway. I guess they figure it's best to toss things aside to try and stay afloat longer than it is to press ahead full steam and have the company go down in one fell swoop.

Someone remind me again why having a publisher is a "good thing"...?

• Because self-publishing doesn't work
• Because developers have to eat and publishers pay advances
• Because developers make good game creators/designers and not-so-good distributors
• Because that's how the market works

And as for the idea of self publishing over the Internet - that's been tried many many times. People don't want that. They want to go to a store and buy a game on a CD. Hell, look at the outcry over Steam.

I'll warez you!

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Love,
Mayor Dan

ExcessDan