Following on from my preview, Eurogamer lobs up my interview with Pete Hines. I finally ask the “Why the hell do Fallout when it just buys you trouble. Make your own world and you dodge it all” question. To which Pete replies…
It’s like, if George Lucas died tomorrow – God willing, he doesn’t – and you’re a film director. And you’ve grown up making big epic films – maybe you’re Peter Jackson. And he finishes whatever his big next film is. And someone asks him, “what do you want to do next?” And he says, “I always wanted to make a big space movie. A big epic movie full of action.” And they ask, “do you want to do generic space movie that you make up yourself, or do you want to do Star Wars.”
And he continues. Other topics include response to criticism, the internal dialogue at Bethesda and mild swearing at Ken Levine.
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@Brother None
I’ve read enough of your News and forum posts in my time to know NMAs angle on Fallout 3 and how flexible to discussion you guys are on the matter, and protestations of personal innocence regarding what your team do hardly qualifies as grounds for acceptability in your moderators conduct.
If you buy the rights to an IP there’s little obligation to reference/employ those who worked upon it previously, and not doing so is hardly a crime, even in gaming circles.
Perhaps it’s a translation thing, but you seem caught up on this word ‘love’. It’s perfectly natural in the professional world if not preferable to do things that not only make you money, but are also things you enjoy and have a passion for.
If a man is acquitted of a crime, as Altman was, is it fair and reasonable to still label him a criminal and assume those who work with him are by association?
OK, when someone says something that is contrary to their actions we usually label them a hypocrite. We don’t start justifying their actions and ignoring their words in order to construct a strawman to feebly knock around some dumb argument that nobody wanted to start. Brother None said, hey, Hines is either a hypocrite or a liar. You said, hey businesses need to make money, blah, blah, irrelevant.
Then, you start in on the ad hominems. You don’t have any argument, you’re not interested in a discussion, you’re interested in “winning” some debate that only you’re participating in.
I think much of the paucity of post-apoc RPGs is due to the relatively few RPGs that are released. Not to mention the roots of RPGs in the D&D franchise and the domination of the MMORPG market by various fantasy settings. It’s not just post-apoc that gets a short-thrift anyway – hopefully Alpha Protocol gets a few companies to think outside the grand sc-fi/high fantasy box a little.
@Mactbone
Let’s be clear on this, Brother none is saying that Hines is a hypocrite about purporting a ‘love for the fallout franchise’ because it’s a business decision and business decisions aren’t made out of a passion for the subject only financial gain and I’m calling BS on that statement, because in my experience as a working designer you don’t invest immense amounts of your time and your (companies) money into anything unless you collectively have a passion for it. If you personally work to live and that’s your choice, good for you, but there are plenty of people out there who live for their work. Consider the RPS guys, they churn out articles left right and centre for various magazines and websites, sure it’s a job and they get paid for them, but it clearly a career and subject for which they have a passion for. It’s not quite the same as clocking in an 9 and simply flipping burgers down at MikeyDs for 7 hours 5 days a week.
Apologies for the Ad hominems, but I was responding to AndrewCs post. The sad truth is that speaking out of line on NMA, which should be a place of honest discussion about the fallout series often does result in childish scapegoating by certain admins, when your viewpoints don’t tie in with their’s and it’s why the site has become a target for ridicule in broader gaming circles.
Anyhows change subject, you making an interesting point in your last paragraph, and I have my take on it. I’d say the lack of development of recent Post-apoc RPGs has a lot more to do with the general shift by games towards towards 3D engines and the inherent problems associated with asset creation, environmental replication and player containment, Post-apoc environments bring.
In a fantasy or science fiction game as developers you have free reign to define the game world in terms of it’s extents, the look and feel of the environments and the assets/items, and players readily accept those decisions without question. With Post Apoc you dealing with an altered version of a reality people are familiar with, and naturally this poses all sorts of problems in terms of defining your game world, (Why can’t I walk/drive to the next town?, this place looks nothing like Vegas!!!, Where’s the Starbucks on 5th?), and it’s not something any 3D game yet has successfully overcome. Take GTAIV for example, now Rockstar have done a bang up job in aping New York, but they rely upon humour in order to mask the lack of diversity they are able to apply to their game world in terms of advertyising billboards etc etc. There’s no Coke and Pepsi in GTA IV, there’s sprunk and sprunk alone. Replicating reality is a challenging task, replicating a broken down shattered post apoc reality is a challenging task 10.
I want a Canticle of Lebowitz RPG…