JustKneller
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Tim Cain is one of the ones I feel bad for. He's a smart guy and does good work, but he was stuck in a poorly run company.
Tim Cain revealed the details of Fallout 3: Van Buren cancellation as part of his ongoing YouTube series focused on video game development.
"In the middle of 2003, an unnamed Interplay vice president asked him to play the Van Buren prototype, saying: “I don’t think they can get it done, so I’m just going to cancel it. But if you look over it and give me an estimate there’s a chance I wouldn’t cancel it.”
Cain said he played the prototype for two hours and asked the development team a number of questions before delivering his verdict to the vice president.
“I said, ‘I’m convinced in 18 months you could have a really good game shipped.’ And he said, ‘huh, could it be done any faster?’ And I was like, 'oh, shoot, I’ve said too long.' I said, ‘well, even if you did a death march crunch I don’t think you could do it faster than 12, and then you’d be shipping something that was unbalanced and buggy, and the team would be destroyed. So I don’t recommend that.’
“And he said, ‘ok, thanks.’ As we walked out he basically explained any answer over six months was going to result in him having to cancel it, meaning the answer I just gave got the game canceled. But he was going to cancel it anyway. He thought it couldn’t be done in six months, and I just confirmed that to him.”
According to Cain, the cancelation of Van Buren was, ultimately, about money; Interplay’s dire financial situation meant it simply did not have enough cash to fund more than six months of further development. But fans have always questioned Interplay and then majority owner Titus Interactive management, and the controversial decision to shift focus away from PC games to console games.
Interplay went on to close down Black Isle Studios and cut its entire staff. The company released console spin-off Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel in 2004 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2, but it was not enough. That same year, Interplay announced a licensing deal with The Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda for future Fallout games, and in 2007, Interplay sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda outright."
Fallout Creator Tim Cain Reveals Involvement in Cancelation of Original Fallout 3 - IGN
Fallout creator Tim Cain has for the first time revealed his role in the cancelation of Interplay’s Van Buren, the codename for what was intended to be the original Fallout 3.www.ign.com
I hope they don't close. I have a lot of games i got for free and never had an opportunity to playI've noticed a few previous partners are leaving Epic Games (or, at least, changing their deals).
1)
Gearbox founder says Epic Games Store hopes were “misplaced or overly optimistic”
Pitchford’s prediction that Steam could be “a dying store” have not come to pass.arstechnica.com
2)
Remedy is leaving Epic in the dark place to self-publish Control 2 through a 'strategic cooperation agreement' with Annapurna
Annapurna also gains the rights for bringing the Remedyverse to movies and television.www.pcgamer.com
All of this comes after a bit from 2 weeks ago when Tim Sweeney admitted exclusive deals hadn't worked for Epic.
Many of Epic's exclusivity deals were 'not good investments,' says Tim Sweeney, but the free games program 'has been just magical'
The most cost-effective way to get new users on the Epic Games Store has been the free games, not the exclusives.www.pcgamer.com
I'll leap to your defense by mentioning that the quality bar at Bethesda has been set really low (especially since Fallout 4 and 76), so it could very well be the best of Bethesda's games.I protest, by saying something unpopular, but Starfield is actually a good game. I'd argue it may the the best of Bethesda's games (now dodge, Cahir!).
Is it really all bad news, though?
Color me crazy, but I don't think it's the worst thing in the world for the video game industry to be pushed towards a consumer-driven model. Frankly, I wish more industries were like this. Basically, my take on this is that massive blockbuster games with sloppy game design masked by lizard brain stimulation tactics appealing to the lowest common denominator are likely no longer sustainable. Studios will shrink (likely back to pre-2000 proportions) and the most viable projects are those focusing on the deep cuts. So, games will be more niche and more targeted to a specific portion of a smaller market share. In short, studios will need to do something more specific, and do it well. I mean, it sucks for them to have their bubble burst, but so it goes. Then again, maybe I'm being too optimistic.
I think I might have mentioned this before, but I had a conversation some time back with a friend of mine who had a background in organic chemistry and biology. Regarding another industry, we talked about how biological organisms, even on the cellular level eventually develop an equilibrium in terms of growth or expansion because if something (from a cell to the population of an organism) gets too big, then it would exceed a critical mass and collapse. Humans are different, though. We don't optimize for equilibrium, just continued growth, but that's not really feasible. So, stuff like this happens.
"Humans are different, though. We don't optimize for equilibrium, just continued growth, but that's not really feasible. So, stuff like this happens."
You just described free market capitalism, it is quite literally exactly that - an equilibrium created over time when supply and demand have met. Just because we are in an situation where these forces are still in movement doesn't mean they won't meet. And they do already today, but it's in a state of constant flux of course, as is all economy and nature. Nothing is ever a perfect equilibrium ad infinitum.