http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=3373
Damn, that’s a real shame. Hopefully something will save them but it doesn’t look hopeful.
A pity, considering the great RPGs it once made.
Without Black Isle I doubt many of those great games would get great sequels anyway. But the licenses will probably end up on ebay, so meh.
TD’s said it about right.
Ouch.
Interplay published the great Freespace…
What I don’t get is their late tax payments. You NEVER pay the taxes late. If all else fails GET A BANK LOAN! The interest the bank will charge is less than the fees the government issues.
We lost another company. The gaming world is beginning to collapse.
damn, no fallout 3. Bastards!
There already wouldn’t be a Fallout 3, probably. However, due to them most likely losing the Fallout license, there’s a good chance another company will pick it up and produce it anyway. Might be a bit different, but maybe said company has some ex-Black Isle people. That’d be neat.
These guys were good. they have done the Best offical Star Trek games I’ve played.
Decent seires was nice, a but repetative. (Hey, Does any one think that Star Trek: Nemisis’s 2 seater ship (Scoripan) escape was a refernce to most first time Decent players)
Big Nutter
I agree that w/o Black Isle, Interplay didn’t have much else going for it.
Lets face it, Interplay has been dying the slow death for years, you can tell the end was coming when they shut down Black Isle which I’m certain was their most profitable studio. It’s sad to finally see a gaming institution go down under, but can any of us say we’re surprised by it?
Some of the older gamers will remember the “good old days” of Interplay, when they were producing hit after hit, but those days are long gone. I think most older gamers will agree with me that compared to “good old days” games have gotten generally crappier over the years, maybe we’re just getting too difficult to please or maybe developers have lost something in the rush to create bigger more profitable projects, or maybe it’s a mix of both, but in any case I find there’s just something missing with most games now a days. I like to blame the vastly diminishing difficulty level of most new games, while it might make the came more accessible to younger gamers, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I remember when I was much younger ranting and raving at my TV because the game was cheating and I’d lost (well back in those days the game DID cheat, but that’s besides the point). I find I haven’t really gotten a decent challenge in years, but I digress. Interplay has had it’s moments over the years: “Decent,” “FreeSpace,” “Baldur’s Gate,” “Icewind Dale,” “Planescape Torment,” “Fallout,” and who can forget the best Star Trek game ever made (and possibly the only good one ever made) “Star Trek 25th anniversary.” All of them was great at the time and most gamers will think back fondly at FreeSpace’s fantastic story line (one of the best ever written for a space fighter game), or Fallout wonderful originality, but lets fact it, when was the last time any of you played any of these games? Sure there have been spin offs on consol and other little things, but most of best games Interplay has ever done are between 4 and 15 years old. Thinking about it I honestly can’t think of a single good game Interplay has done in the last 3 years. Sure they’ve probably released something, but was it really good? Or even memorable? Probably not. This fact also should be enough to convince most people that the end was coming, sure some companies have managed to make remarkable comebacks, Atari basically came back from the dead, but such recoveries are more the exception than the rule. This even those who hoped for a miracle have to admit that having to shelve 2 games in the last year had to have been a major blow. Not just in terms of coding, but also in artwork, story, and score. Black Isle has always gone the extra mile when it comes to the quality of their background graphics and musical score so having to scrap those must have been costly.
Closing Black Isle studio was probably the single worst move Interplay could have made, sure those two shelved project probably but a huge whole in the studio’s profitability for the year, which at first glance probably made it an appealing target for corporate bean counters looking to save a buck, but such loses are only temporary. I think most of us would agree that a single good project by Black Isle would have made up for these loses, hell Fallout 3 was almost ready when the studio got the axe. By itself the game probably wouldn’t have saved interplay, but it might have let it stay afloat long enough to come up with a better solution, but we’ll never know now will we. My only hope is that the executive to came up with this brilliant plan gave himself a big fat bonus for “saving” the company, at least that way someone will game something good out of it.
All in all the closing of Interplay is a shame, one more great member of the old dynastic of gaming gone to join such other greats like Microprose that have fallen before it. I think most people will miss it more not because it was an institution, but because it almost certainly means the end to any hope we have of follow-ups to some of our beloved classics of gaming.
It could have been worse.
They could’ve made the games instead of just publishing them.
Excuse me for a minute.
BWA HA HA HA! :mwahaha: That’s for tearing apart all your licenses and being morons! You deserve everything you get, because the programmers and developers are going to find jobs elsewhere in the business, and the executives will be disgraced!
There, done.
I must say it sucks, but it could be good for the gaming world too? Who know what might happen?
Actually, with luck, they’ll sell off thier’ liscenses to more fitting people in response to this. 3DO did this when they went down (and as such, we’ll be seeing heroes of might and magic 5 as a result!). I’m particularly hoping that all the blackisle liscenses make it to former backisle employees, and that volition gets the freespace liscense back. Freespace2’s ending was too much of a cliffhanger. Must have FS3.