Will Interplay ever be resurrected again?

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When I grew up, Interplay was one of the companies I saw the most of, since they made some of my favorite games for both the Amiga and later on, the PC. They've always meant quality and fun gaming for me, so I wasn't all too happy when they filed bankruptcy and moved back to a small office in the middle of nowhere with a couple of licenses.

Among these licenses is the right to produce a Fallout MMORPG, which unfortunately probably won't be made in many years, unless a developer wants to try it without having any money on their hands.

Currently, Interplay's website is their old logo, with 4 links. One of them being financial aid.

I just hope that some day, some friendly rich folk will get nostalgic and fire this old titan up amongst the best, so it can continue producing the games we all love, for gamers, by gamers.

Does anyone share my optimism?

 

eh.....no!

Interplay was managed by one of the most incompetent persons ever. Canning black isle, which at the time was producing fallout III and BG III was a choice that lead to the demise of interplay.

I say good riddance.

 

The road went downhill in around 2000, yes. But it was an awesome company before that and while it was very stupid to lay off BIS, I am sure they just tried to get on top again, moneywise.

 

Maybe that is what they were thinking, but they made the stupidest marketing decisions ever. BG3 was almost complete and about to make it to beta but hadn't been even announced and got canned so that Interplay could extend the D&D console licence - not very smart considering neither Dark Alliance game had stellar sales. And Fallout 3 got cancelled for pretty much similar reasons - Interplay moved all resources to the console division to speed up Brotherhood of Steel, and then decided that FO3 wasn't proceeding quickly and cancelled it.

Basically almost every decision Interplay has made in the 5 years before they went down under was stupid, and I am not saying this in hindsight - it was clear even as the stupidities piled up. Interplay was a true innovator in several respects but that was 10 years ago.

 

Interplay was marked by stupid decisions. The same kind that Atari is making, sometimes. They decided to ignore the feelings of customers, the voice of reason, whatever it was that they were ignoring (everything apart from a narrow vision of a marketing guy, I guess), they gambled, they lost. They lost by persisting in that error instead of seeing on their eyes and reforming their ways. So RIP. And the Interplay that went down wasn't the same Interplay as before.

 

I like te idea of "By Gamers, For Gamers", but it sounds like the suits ruined it...

 

Interplay is hated for good reason - personally I like them dead, and am hoping that Herve Caen ends up out in the streets or something.

Oh, and if a Fallout MMORPG is ever made I think the gaming community will have cause to riot in the streets. Fallout as a MMO is the most retarded idea EVAR!

 

MMORPG`s is a retarded idea in general.

 

MMO's make lot's of money though and that's all anyone cares about.

 

I personally blame the suits for their inability to see that rpg's aren't instant income, but rather gradual income built up overtime as more people slowly buy the game. 'Atari' is why Troika failed, they dont even deserve the Atari name, and so is Activision...and as for Interplay, well...it was their own fault. Who in their right mind cancels two nearly complete games? It's retarded, moronic. Good riddance I say.

 

Aye, people with MBAs and lots of ideas how to make money, but little experience or consideration for the field or product they're dealing with usually ruin things.

I remember when Electronic Arts was a tiny little start-up of actual game designers from the days of M.U.L.E. and Archon...now look at it. Even successful (which is seeming to start to falter with the sagging of their cash cow sport franchises) I still consider it 'ruined'.

But enough being cynical and reminiscent of "things were better back..." Let us take a few other moments on this day of rememberence (besides the obvious) to pause and think of what good we got from old gaming firms that have now passed on.

Apogee, Epic Megagames, Interplay, GoD, Black Isle, Troika.

Even 'successful' firms that just got too big for their own good and 'lost sight' - Atari, Activision, EA...

And now let's go out and find some NEW fresh and tiny game developers with bold new fun for us!!

 

Ah yes, good old Apogee, I'm still playing their Commander Keen

 

Linky

Guess I felt it in the air Thanks for the heads up, Chevalier.

 

Fallout Online?

Heh. Think I'll give that one a miss, yes indeed.

The reverse can be true as well; almost immediately after Sierra spent a couple million relocating several development teams (housing compensation, relocation bonuses, etc) it...cancelled the games they were working on and axed the dev teams.

Oops.

 

As far as I know, companies rarely come back, and if they do, they are often not the same.

The best example I can think of is "Tele 5"an old TV channel I used to watch during my childhood. It had all the cartoons I loved, original gameshows and other things I loved. I would watch it every morning before Kindergarten. But alas, it was turned into a sportschannel because of a feud between some influential people.

10 years later (2002) it came back. But no, there's no cartoons. Instead they just show Big Brother and such things. I found out that the name was bought, and although the same head of the channel was in charge as was back then, it was not the same.

So even if Interplay came back, in whatever form, it might not be what you were wishing for.

 

You want a good company: Blizzard. Why? Because they have the 'screw the release date' attitude and release the game 'when it's done'. Warcraft put them on the map. Warcraft II and Diablo were huge successes financially. Starcraft earned them the reputation as kings of real-time strategy and only when they were on the very top and had cemented that position with Diablo II and Warcraft III did they make their MMO, which - by the way - is currently the best MMO on the market (at least sales wise).

I know of few other companies that can old a torch to Blizzard. Perhaps Sid Meier (Civilization, duh), Creative Assembly (Total War series), Bethesda (Elder Scrolls) and Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto). I guess Valve (Half-life) is up there too since they seem to be following Blizzard's production techniques, but they have so few products.

Interplay rode the coat-tails of Black Isle and Brian Fargo (creator of the Fallout universe) then they dumped them because they made a stupid decision to invest in the console market. They thought they could pull off a Rockstar Games move and transfer Baldur's Gate and Fallout onto the console market via an action medium. When your best product is an RPG with an engaging storyline why the hell make an action game with little to no storyline on a completely different system? Makes no damn sense. Rockstar ported over Grand Theft Auto, a racing 3rd person shooter, onto the console market. Gee, what plays well on consoles? Racing games... and third person games. Brilliant.

Interplay took something that wasn't broken and tried to fix it. They got greedy, saw what (some) other companies were doing (with completely different genres of games) and tried to do the same themselves. It didn't work. Then they killed the one thing that WAS working for them - Black Isle.