Interview Brian Fargo interviewed by Rocket Beans TV and GameStar at Gamescom 2016

[Infinitron]

Love how the actually geeky girl is the one most informed on the game.

Wonder what those engine limitations could have been, would 3D have made implementation easier?

Also, I had forgotten that Ziets' role was so diminished. Cmcc mentions 5 core writters of which I only know his own work on Curst (which I missed due to falling down the well too soon); Adam Heine afaik didn't do much writing in PST and the single (Roguey?) review of the his novella was lukewarm (as is the Goodreads rating of it), not to mention that he's a weebaboo, and the other 3 people& I haven't actually heard much of, and a mellon words is a lot to put on unknown quality.

*

Spoiler

Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie (Writer)
Gavin's past projects include Diablo III, Horizon: Zero Dawn, & fiction for Blizzard Entertainment.
Leanne C. Taylor-Giles (Writer)
Leanne is a Scriptwriter at Ubisoft Montréal who joined the industry with the dream of someday working on the sequel to Planescape: Torment. She has a masters in branching dialogue systems and a tattoo of the symbol of torment which, so far, hasn't been all that bad, really.
Mark Yohalem (Writer)
Mark has written the stories & dialogue for a number of computer games, including: Primordia, Kohan II: King's of War, & Heroes of Newerth. He has also published two dozen short stories & a variety of articles on game design & narrative.

Leanne sounds quite driven which is a plus.

I guess it all comes down to how good that brainstorming session between Cmcc, Heine and ksaun was.

IIRC Roguey liked Adam's novella.

George Ziets' role isn't diminished - he's an area designer/quest designer, not a writer.

Also, how do you not know MRY

 

[throwaway]

Also, how do you not know MRY

Wasn't aware which one of those he was, haven't actually played Primordia so I guess it's moot anyway.

 

[vmar]

Brian seems so fucking nervous and twitchy in that interview.

 

[Bester]

Wonder what those engine limitations could have been, would 3D have made implementation easier?

I don't think he's referring to the 2d backgrounds, I think he's talking about current technology in general. And whatever he asked for, it most likely wasn't impossible to make, but more like would've taken too much of somebody's time, so that somebody said "it's impossible".

 

[Tom Selleck]

Brian seems so fucking nervous and twitchy in that interview.

 

[vmar]

It's a hell of a drug

 

[FeelTheRads]

Absolute nonsense. It doesn't matter that you have "J" open your journal on PC. On controller, you stick some round wheel UI that grants access to a bunch of screens. Not a problem. Then another wheel for all kinds of actions you can do in combat. Problem solved. This is exactly what they showed on gamescom.

It's a general example. I'm not playing this game nor watching footage until the final release is fully patched, so I can't comment on whether what they have so far suggests that the decision to port was made recently or early on. The point is that a console release imposes limits on your design that are much easier dealt with if you plan for them from the start. I'd expect any game that could potentially get a multiplatform release made by a decent company to do this on some level as it saves time and money and prevents unexpected problems down the line.

Ah, but inXile actually hates consoles which is why they release it just as an afterthought, that's why nobody except Fargo knew what they were doing until like 5 days ago.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Fargo seems jumpy and agitated in all the interviews so far. He struggles with the temptation to constantly look over his shoulder to see if Bubbles isn't behind him, busting down doors and tackling the security to get the interview slot.

 

[Roguey]

I think you are mistaking him with someone else.

It was Fargo's mismanagement that resulted in the French takeover.

Actually there is no citation for that part, only about:

http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/5/2/5613114/wasteland-2-fallout-brian-fargo

But by the end of the 1990s, Interplay was in trouble. Fargo identifies his own mistakes in the company's decline: He failed to make the jump from PC to the newly dominant consoles.

"Other publishers had that one product that blasted them through to the other side," he says. "With Take-Two it was GTA. With THQ it was wrestling — it got them through the other side for a while. With Activision it was Tony Hawk. You could pin it to one thing. We didn't have that one thing. The only one thing we had was Baldur's Gate, but the problem with Baldur's Gate [was] it was PC. You couldn't sell five million copies."

Quoting myself from the Codex news thread about this interview:

Agreed, I also hate his "Interplay could have survived if I had sold millions more with a console hit!" Shows what direction inXile's going to go in should Wasteland 2 and Torment prove hits. Can't survive with just modest PC sales, right?

Another Roguey Prediction comes to pass. Though he didn't even wait to see if Torment would be a hit before going full multi-platform.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I think you are mistaking him with someone else.

It was Fargo's mismanagement that resulted in the French takeover.

Actually there is no citation for that part, only about:

http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/5/2/5613114/wasteland-2-fallout-brian-fargo

But by the end of the 1990s, Interplay was in trouble. Fargo identifies his own mistakes in the company's decline: He failed to make the jump from PC to the newly dominant consoles.

"Other publishers had that one product that blasted them through to the other side," he says. "With Take-Two it was GTA. With THQ it was wrestling — it got them through the other side for a while. With Activision it was Tony Hawk. You could pin it to one thing. We didn't have that one thing. The only one thing we had was Baldur's Gate, but the problem with Baldur's Gate [was] it was PC. You couldn't sell five million copies."

Quoting myself from the Codex news thread about this interview:

Agreed, I also hate his "Interplay could have survived if I had sold millions more with a console hit!" Shows what direction inXile's going to go in should Wasteland 2 and Torment prove hits. Can't survive with just modest PC sales, right?

Another Roguey Prediction comes to pass. Though he didn't even wait to see if Torment would be a hit before going full multi-platform.

You do realize these are totally different situations you're comparing, right?

PC market was a complete and utter disaster in the days of late Interplay. Rapid advancement in hardware, combined with move to 3D graphics, and mess with middleware, created an environment where developing exclusively PC was extremely risky proposition. Half the time the games ended up being technologically outdated already on release, which killed them dead on the market and sunk a lot of companies in the process. PC was a Wild West, consoles were much more stable, mature market, and it's no accident that every major publishers used them as safe harbor just to stay in business.


And it's no accident that PC gaming is seeing resurgence, now that we have reliable APIs, digital distribution cut out the pesky retailers who wouldn't even consider putting experimental projects on the shelf , and hardware progress slowed to snail pace. PC market has finally reached maturity.

Interplay was a major publisher with resources to actually compete on the console market. InXile are small-sized developer. There's zero reason any PC developer like that would abandons their core audience and embark on some console adventure.

In short, you didn't accurately predict anything, accurate predictions require knowing what the fuck you are talking about.

 

[Roguey]

PC market was a complete and utter disaster in the days of late Interplay. Rapid advancement in hardware, combined with move to 3D graphics, and mess with middleware, created an environment where developing exclusively PC was extremely risky proposition. Half the time the games ended up being technologically outdated already on release, which killed them dead on the market and sunk a lot of companies in the process. PC was a Wild West, consoles were much more stable, mature market, and it's no accident that every major publishers used them as safe harbor just to stay in business.

The late 90s and early 00s produced a lot fantastic PC exclusive titles. "Technologically outdated?" No one gives a damn if it's a great game (for example, Deus Ex, which was a hit). "More stable, mature market?" The Xbox was released in 2001, that's when the great migration happened.

InXile are small-sized developer. There's zero reason any PC developer like that would abandons their core audience and embark on some console adventure.

In short, you didn't accurately predict anything, accurate predictions require knowing what the fuck you are talking about.

And yet that's what they're doing, moving to multi-platform releases. Bard's Tale 4 will likely be multi-platform on launch (and if not, the console port will definitely be coming). So will other future inxile games.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The late 90s and early 00s produced a lot fantastic PC exclusive titles.

Yes there were great PC exclusives, that doesn't change the fact that PC market itself was going down the toilet. Production costs and overheads were increasing exponentially, while sales were tanking. Do you think every major publisher abandoned the PC just on a whim? Jesus fucking Christ.

"Technologically outdated?" No one gives a damn if it's a great game

Pure and utter bullshit. At the speed the graphics were progressing in the 90s, being behind technologically was a massive detriment, especially with the market slowly starting the move to domination of 3D shooters. We've seen more progress in 1998-2004 than in the entire last decade. Every other hit game was making gigantic leap, causing a lot of titles who in the middle to die on arrival.

(for example, Deus Ex, which was a hit)

Just how daft are you? Yes it was a hit. It would be much bigger hit if the graphics weren't 5 years behind already on release.

"More stable, mature market?" The Xbox was released in 2001, that's when the great migration happened.

Lol no. You're clueless, stop wasting space on the internet with your useless opinions.

 

[Roguey]

Pure and utter bullshit. At the speed the graphics were progressing in the 90s, being behind technologically was a massive detriment, especially with the market slowly starting the move to domination of 3D shooters. We've seen more progress in 1998-2004 than in the entire last decade. Every other hit game was making gigantic leap, causing a lot of titles who in the middle to die on arrival.

Diablo 2 was fugly on release (uglier than the first game even) yet ultimately sold over ten million copies.

Starcraft from 1998 had one of the longest tails ever.

Just how daft are you? Yes it was a hit. It would be much bigger hit if the graphics weren't 5 years behind already on release.

Selling a million copies should be great enough, it would be the fault of people like Fargo for allowing their companies to grow so large that they need to join the "we need to sell millions or bust" bandwagon.

By the way, a reminder that Fargo now has that additional studio in New Orleans. How many more will he have before the end?

Lol no. You're clueless, stop wasting space on the internet with your useless opinions.

Bioware: Made some all right PC exclusives, jumped to the xbox with Knights of the Old Republic, never looked back.
Bethesda: Made some all right PC exclusives, ported Morrowind to the xbox, never looked back.
Ion Storm: Made Deus Ex, released a handicapped Deus Ex sequel for the xbox.

 

[Fairfax]

This version in which Interplay died because it was making a dying breed of outdated games, game development became too expensive and consoles took over is a more romantic narrative, but it's not why Interplay went down.
Interplay became insolvent despite having profitable divisions (such as Black Isle), and it happened because of bad management.
Examples:

Interplay Films - lasted at least 2 years, never produced a single film.
Run Like Hell (PS2/Xbox):

During its five-year run, the team went through two executive producers, three producers, three lead programmers and two lead artists. [...] In the end the game was scrapped by management again and restarted ten months before the release date. Thus, the game's actual programming was done in the space of ten months even though the game was in development for five years, which is one of the reasons that the story and characters seem fleshed out whereas the game play seems rushed and incomplete.

Stonekeep (Fargo was one of the producers):

The project started out with just two people, Peter Oliphant and Michael Quarles. It was intended to last only nine months and only supposed to cost $50K. However, because the initial stages of the game looked good it exceeded nine months, lasting a total of five years. Eventually there was a production crew of over 200 people, and costing a total of $5 million. The intro sequence was the most expensive part of the production, costing nearly half a million dollars to produce, which was ten times more than the initial budget for the entire project.

Stonekeep 2 - cancelled after 5 years of development.
Interplay Sports - failure that produced shitty sports games because they wanted to be the new EA.
D&D License - didn't pay the royalties properly, lost its most profitable and popular license. By far their biggest fuck-up, and perhaps unheard of in the industry.
Baldur's Gate III - 80% of development complete, all wasted because of the above.

Also, as the company was bleeding (still under Fargo), they decided cut their losses in the wrong places. TORN and Stonekeep 2 were cancelled, while projects such as Run Like Hell and Lionheart kept going.

 

[MRY]

Love how the actually geeky girl is the one most informed on the game.

Wonder what those engine limitations could have been, would 3D have made implementation easier?

Also, I had forgotten that Ziets' role was so diminished. Cmcc mentions 5 core writters of which I only know his own work on Curst (which I missed due to falling down the well too soon); Adam Heine afaik didn't do much writing in PST and the single (Roguey?) review of the his novella was lukewarm (as is the Goodreads rating of it), not to mention that he's a weebaboo, and the other 3 people& I haven't actually heard much of, and a mellon words is a lot to put on unknown quality.

*

Spoiler

Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie (Writer)
Gavin's past projects include Diablo III, Horizon: Zero Dawn, & fiction for Blizzard Entertainment.
Leanne C. Taylor-Giles (Writer)
Leanne is a Scriptwriter at Ubisoft Montréal who joined the industry with the dream of someday working on the sequel to Planescape: Torment. She has a masters in branching dialogue systems and a tattoo of the symbol of torment which, so far, hasn't been all that bad, really.
Mark Yohalem (Writer)
Mark has written the stories & dialogue for a number of computer games, including: Primordia, Kohan II: King's of War, & Heroes of Newerth. He has also published two dozen short stories & a variety of articles on game design & narrative.

Leanne sounds quite driven which is a plus.

I guess it all comes down to how good that brainstorming session between Cmcc, Heine and ksaun was.

IIRC Roguey liked Adam's novella.

George Ziets' role isn't diminished - he's an area designer/quest designer, not a writer.

Also, how do you not know MRY

It is typical of Colin's generosity that he would describe me as a core writer, but I'm not sure I deserve that credit. Most of my work is pretty peripheral, and while I'm proud of it, I'm not sure its absence would be noticed. I think I provided some decent editorial commentary along the way, but I'm not of the same stature as Colin, Gavin, Adam, and George.

Also, if you think George's role is minimal, you're crazy. Not only did he do amazing area design*, he also reviewed and edited (and wrote) vast amounts of dialogue. He is every bit as thoughtful a reviewer as you would expect if you've watched him in any interview -- attentive, careful, supportive, and brilliant.

(* One thing that was fascinating for me about this project was realizing that area design, which I had always assumed to be a subordinate position to writing, is actually where much of the creative energy comes from. The area designs are not just the skeleton but the DNA of the writing. The writers' job is to grow that DNA into an organic whole, but the clever concepts around which dialogues are built in many cases come from the area design. The only thing that would cause George's influence to seem minimal would be his modesty.)

Anyway, the acrimony over TTON is a little like watching two good friends of yours have a bitter falling out. I'm not trying (at the moment) to weigh in on that business, but I didn't want to let this pass without comment.

 

[Bester]

"Technologically outdated?" No one gives a damn if it's a great game (for example, Deus Ex, which was a hit).

Just how daft are you? Yes it was a hit. It would be much bigger hit if the graphics weren't 5 years behind already on release.

First of all, those graphics were great. My PC would overheat every 20 minutes and reboot just from rendering the game.
And second, there weren't any casuls on the market yet. Nobody gave a fuck, it wasn't like "wow dude, holy fuck dem graphics in Crysis 3, YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT". It wasn't like that at the time. People played games because they were good, not for graphics.

 

[Infinitron]

Now that's silly. For as long as gaming has existed there have been graphics whores. The Bard's Tale overtook Wizardry in large part because of its superior graphics.

 

[Bester]

Maybe if leaps were made, sure. But otherwise? For example, I enjoyed Half Life's top graphics at the time, but then I got Drakan, which objectively didn't look as good

And it didn't exactly diminish my pleasure of the game, or anyone else's, or impede the game's sales.

It's same as saying that anyone who doesn't like watching mute films is a Michael Bay braindead fan or a graphics whore. As soon as the media expands to include color or sound or things like that, it goes to the next level. But there was no new level Deus Ex could attain at the time.

During the 00's, a new generation of players who care more about the graphics than anything else appeared, and it didn't exist before. The people you call "graphics whores" who played BT would gladly play any good game today, with any graphics whatsoever.

 

[Roguey]

One of the selling points of Unreal was its amazing graphics (I never bothered with it, the enemies at the beginning are too spongey and I imagine that never changes). And one of the complaints leveled at Deus Ex on release was that it didn't look nearly good as the namesake of its engine.

 

[l3loodAngel]

One of the selling points of Unreal was its amazing graphics (I never bothered with it, the enemies at the beginning are too spongey and I imagine that never changes). And one of the complaints leveled at Deus Ex on release was that it didn't look nearly good as the namesake of its engine.

In most RPGs graphics are close to being useless. Sure it has to be pretty enough, but looks it is far from the most important aspect unless it aims for popamole audience. But then other aspects may drag the sales down if it draws audience from other genres, like: "complicated stuff man". I believe that not many people would have complained if Wasteland 2 would have looked like FO:BOS.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Ah, but inXile actually hates consoles which is why they release it just as an afterthought, that's why nobody except Fargo knew they were doing until like 5 days ago.

Apparently they hate them so much that they want to get rid of every single one in their possession.

https://www.facebook.com/Torment.in...507144764814/1390089167673270/?type=3&theater

 

[Grauken]

that looks incredibly retarded

 

[Roguey]

In most RPGs graphics are close to being useless. Sure it has to be pretty enough, but looks it is far from the most important aspect unless it aims for popamole audience. But then other aspects may drag the sales down if it draws audience from other genres, like: "complicated stuff man". I believe that not many people would have complained if Wasteland 2 would have looked like FO:BOS.

Feargus Urquhart has been a proponent of good graphics in RPGs for a long time. Interviews from 2001:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131477/interview_with_black_isle_studios_.php

As a game developer you have to take into account that the press wants to see new bells and whistles even as they are telling you that game play is all that matters. If you don't have eye candy or some "hooks" that can be communicated very quickly, they have a habit of losing interest very quickly. And while the consumers will also say that they don't care about graphics, if your screenshots don't blow them away then there is less of a chance they will type in the website that is listed on the ad.

http://web.archive.org/web/20011107213105/http://rpgvault.ign.com/features/interviews/bispt2.shtml

The most significant thing about the evolution of the CRPG genre is that it has been getting closer to the use of more up to date technology than in years past. I think this has really helped broaden the group of people who are interested in playing them. Most CRPG players will say that that they don't need the most modern graphics - they just want gameplay. However, when an RPG is delivered that is not more visually stunning than other games that may have come out in the last six months, then the game can be received fairly lukewarmly.

Lot of gold in that one by the way.

If the current CRPGs can continue to evolve and not just stagnate as they did in the early '90s with the Gold Box games, then I don't see why they can't continue to do well. This is in some ways connected to BioWare's and Black Isle's continued use of the BioWare Infinity Engine. While the engine might have another four or five games in it, I think that doing that many more games with it could really help to shrink the number of people interested in CRPGs and turn it into a smaller niche - much like what I think happened in the early '90s. However, if all of us making CRPGs right now continue to keep in touch with technology and the how modern games are made, I don't think we'll see another low point in the cycle - or at least not as low as it was in the early '90s.

He's right, RPGs didn't die. They just turned into something a lot of people here hate.

Pipe dreams:

Eventually, I would like to see most CRPGs progress to being 3D. I don't think this is necessary because everyone will have GeForce 8s in his or her computer, but rather I believe that 3D will eventually let us make more believable and changing worlds in CRPGs. A 3D engine gives a game more ability to change the world and the looks of the characters in the world without the gobs and gobs of CD space that a 2D game requires to do the same things. We are often restricted in 2D games by the amount of hard drive and CD space that we have to take up - which restricts us from doing more of the world changing and creature variety that we would like.

Beyond the next few years, I think that many CRPG developers are going to have to figure out how to model increasingly complex and realistic worlds. At some level, each game we create should have more complex NPC interaction than the last one. At some point it might be interesting to see if we could model a world in a way like PopTop did in Tropico. If we could give the populace groups of needs, wants, and desires then we could see the world play itself out in a very realistic fashion.

Well, Black Isle loves to make CRPGs pretty much in every form that they exist in. I would love to see us expand in to the online world with a massive multiplayer game, but that is really going to be up the finances of Titus and Interplay, and whether everyone in Black Isle wants to take that shot. As for console, we are looking at a lot of different possibilities right now. There are people in the division that think it would be cool for us to do PS2, GameCube, and Advanced GameBoy titles. Each of us plays all types of games, so it's possible that we might be pretty good at making games for those other platforms as well.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Pure and utter bullshit. At the speed the graphics were progressing in the 90s, being behind technologically was a massive detriment, especially with the market slowly starting the move to domination of 3D shooters. We've seen more progress in 1998-2004 than in the entire last decade. Every other hit game was making gigantic leap, causing a lot of titles who in the middle to die on arrival.

Diablo 2 was fugly on release (uglier than the first game even) yet ultimately sold over ten million copies.

Starcraft from 1998 had one of the longest tails ever.

Bitch please. You're listing bunch of exceptions as if that somehow makes a point. Those are just that - exceptions. Mass market at large is driven by graphics more than anything else.

Selling a million copies should be great enough, it would be the fault of people like Fargo for allowing their companies to grow so large that they need to join the "we need to sell millions or bust" bandwagon.

It's their our fault for being so successful? Because guess what, that's how companies end up growing large. Late 90s market was very volatile, do I have to list out the reasons for you again, or are you incapable of comprehending that drawing comparisons between late 90s PC market, and 2016 PC market is pointless, because they were two completely different environments? Why the fuck do you think mid-sized developers died out, and only resurfaced 15 years later when digital distribution is a thing? Because reliance on brick-and-mortar retailers forced companies to chase those multi-million hits. You can't carve out a niche if you can't get the product to your audience.

Bioware: Made some all right PC exclusives, jumped to the xbox with Knights of the Old Republic, never looked back.
Bethesda: Made some all right PC exclusives, ported Morrowind to the xbox, never looked back.
Ion Storm: Made Deus Ex, released a handicapped Deus Ex sequel for the xbox.

And? The shift to consoles started to happen much earlier. Once again you turn out too retarded to figure out that listing bunch of examples that are exception, doesn't describe market situation in its entirety.

Interplay became insolvent despite having profitable divisions

Having profitable divisions doesn't mean company as a whole can't be struggling. Complicated, I know.

Stonekeep 2 - cancelled after 5 years of development.
Interplay Sports - failure that produced shitty sports games because they wanted to be the new EA.
D&D License - didn't pay the royalties properly, lost its most profitable and popular license. By far their biggest fuck-up, and perhaps unheard of in the industry.
Baldur's Gate III - 80% of development complete, all wasted because of the above.

That doesn't prove anything. Every major publishers cancels projects.

 

[Gentle Player]

One of the selling points of Unreal was its amazing graphics (I never bothered with it, the enemies at the beginning are too spongey and I imagine that never changes). And one of the complaints leveled at Deus Ex on release was that it didn't look nearly good as the namesake of its engine.

I'll never understand this view on Unreal. Yes, it was beautiful and to this day still remains one of the best looking first person games; and a lot of people bought it and praised it solely for that reason. But regardless of the aesthetic, it was still a very good game to play. There's nothing inherently wrong with fewer but stronger and more complex enemies. Indeed many RPGs could improve by following that principle - isn't that what Torment is attempting?