f13.net

A Fallout MMOG is possibly in the works.

Here's where I'm coming from:

InterPlay is just about out of business. Their stock price has been right around .008 for a while now. A while back Herve Caen (CEO)  mentioned that he was shopping the idea of a Fallout MMOG to get funding to keep the company alive. Fallout and a few other IP (Earthworm Jim) are about all IPLY has left.

Recently the stock price has gone up to .027 (tripled) on no real news. The only recent development was they licensed some old IP to GameTap. Given the amount of debt IPLY has right now though that wouldn't/shouldn't be enough to trigger this kind of move.

Couple that with the news of the new BioWare studio and no news out of there about what their possible MMOG may be and something may be up.


** Not sure if this would be industry news or mmog news or even buried in other threads already so move the thread at will.

Here's the problem with Interplay making a Fallout MMOG and all the old Fallout devs thrown spread out across countless companies.



It'll suck. On the flipside, they may outsource the entire thing to a company that can write a good story, and we'll get a great tale weaved into a bad MMOG. Or they'll outsource it to an MMOG design group, and we'll get a shitty story and world surrounded by a solid dikumud clone. Or they'll do it in house, and ween from the tit of investors until they finally close shop. Nothing good can come of this unless they sell the license to, I don't know, fund an EWJ game.

Edit: I thought Interplay was all but shut down anyway. Weren't they auctioning all of their shit off recently?

It was just about over, hence the .008/share price. Last I heard they were down to about 2 employees Herve Caen and the PR/Investor Relations guy who's name escapes me at the moment. I'm not even sure if that guy is still there.

All IPLY had left was the Fallout License and a couple of old games. That's why I think Fallout has to have been licensed to account for the move up to .027/share.

I don't see any way that it will be internally developed. Every aspect of the game will be farmed out to someone.

Well, you can build entire dynasties on single licenses. There aren't many of them, but Fallout is definately one of them. Who knows, maybe the reason there's only 2 people left is so they can cash in, big time, on the remaining properties.

They'd be smarter to just make Fallout 3 imo and skip the MMORPG part.

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/album_cat.php?cat_id=3

They aren't smart.

edit if you only click one, make it this one - http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=129

Fallout 3 is in production at BethSoft.  Has been for a while now.

Correct but Interplay has held onto the IP for creating a MMOG based on Fallout.

OH OH I KNOW!!!!

Lets give the IP to Turbine. Im sure they wont screw it up.

How about SOE?

Grinding as a Fluffer ftw!

Hmm... stock price hit .04 today.

From .008 to .04 in less than a week and still no news. Another week like this and I'll break even on this pig... lol

Of course I'll make the same mistake I did last time and hold too long. Bought in at .21/share saw it rise to .56/share and rather than sell I got greedy and manage to ride it all the way back down to current levels. This stock was a great lesson in how NOT to invest in the market. Luckily it was only a small, rather meaningless amount.

Well shit, you could have owned the company for a goddamn Necco wafer. What was stopping you? Snack machine borken?

That would be awesome if you bought Interplay Delt.

It would be almost doable since it only has a market cap of around 1.2 mil. I'm sure I could get that much financing if I really tried. Only 3 problems ...

1. It's not for sale - Caen owns like 70+% so a hostile take over wouldn't be possible.
2. I would't want it and wouldn't know what to do with it if I had it.
3. It's not worth it.

#3 might be wrong...Their IP might be a good reason.  Looks like we get 3 more Fallout games at least.

The IP would need more money put in to make any money out of it.

No.....If you can sell the rights to Fallout Online for > 1.2 million. You just made money. Granted - if Caen owns 70% it's a pipe dream anyways.

Doh I should revise that... The market cap WAS 1.2million. Given the past week it's now up to 4mil.


Edit:  Should also add that they have considerable debt on the books due to various litigation. I'm guessing you would have to also assume the debt if you bought them out.

Thats what BethSoft is in the middle of doing.  The value of the Fallout MMOG IP will go up considerably if BethSoft makes a solid pass at Fallout 3.  I would imagine the 1.2 mil from BethSoft is whats going to hold interplay over until they can license the MMOG IP for some real money.

There go my dreams of saying, "Yea - I own Interplay."

Linky (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1057232/000117091806001092/presentation.htm)

Got this link from foh, tried a search and didn't see anything recent.

Interesting.

How the fuck could the dead dead dead Interplay get $75 MILLION?

Funny how SOE isnt listed among the competition.

They are hoping there are enough suckers in Europe to buy their stock.

Hedge funds are passing out cash like candy lately.

For $75M, this can't be anything other than a WoW Challenger. Frankly there aren't many solid IPs to make a MMO out of.  But this IP is better suited than most for the medium. And its not fantacy.  I question the wisdom of making a challenger, but if you have money to burn in a high risk venture I can't think of a better IP.

I see they used Bruce's chart....

I'm big fan of Fallout series and Wastelands universe but I don't see who can pull out good mmorpg out of it.

It's not a Fallout MMO if I can't equip my Red Ryder BB Gun.

I hope it's not going to be a WoW-clone, but given the budget and filing, every instinct is telling me it's going to be postapoc WoW. You'll start out as some piddly villager or ex-vault dude or wasteland wanderer (Level 1!) and go out whomping mutated rats and ornery brahmin until you can get your first armor and real weapons, then continue to wander the wasteland semirandomly, completing missions to go find waterchips or clear some farmer's fields of deathclaws. This will continue on up until you're running instanced missions to kill clones of The Master and Frank Horrigan.

I can easily see how this can and will be turned into a WoW-clone. However, Fallout, being an RPG, clearly has the roaming, levelling-up gameplay core that can be easily Dikufied. Never mind the fact that the rich story, characters and universe on top of a solid RPG system are what made Fallout awesome.

I weep on the inside.

I am torn. If they ever made it this would potentially rock. I'd especially love it if they found some way to use the Perks character system.

That said I have two fears:
1) It'll never happen, this is just BS in an attempt to get some money to get out of debt
2) If it does happen it'll suck worse than Dark and Light, Shadowbane and Star Wars Galaxies put together. I mean, they don't even have a programming team to my knowledge.

Which haven't been updated since July.


What fun would that be?

Yeah, I have a buddy who's the sterotypical Fallout fanboy, and his reaction to this news was "Yuck, it's just going to be another gay-ass MMO."

I'll pry the tin-foil hat back up off my face for long enough to say that Bioware do.  But I admit that , being Euro, I don't know what that SEC filing was for (though it seems to be H2 '06?): was it part of an invitation to tender, or part of a presentation to investors?  It looks terribly, terrtibly amateurish in production quality, btw: like it was done inhouse by a firm of two blokes :)

It's supposed to be a slide show (http://biz.yahoo.com/e/061130/iply.ob8-k.html) for prospective investors, it does look really awful, kids in grade school could come up with a better presentation.  Then there are all the omitted facts, dubious sources of information and unattributed statements.  If someone does invest I hope their first order of business is to demand that who ever is running the show now gets replaced.  I guess there was also an official press release a few weeks ago? (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061120/clm080.html?.v=33)

I'm wondering how Interplay makes any money at all.  (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=iply.ob)

I'd weep for the MMOG medium, but my tears would just serve as lubricant for the next time it wanted to skullfuck me.

Its not like theres any other charts and the more it gets used the more validation it gets.  Using numbers somebody else made up is more convincing than making them up yourself.

Those are some interesting revenue assumptions at the end there.

Predicting 1m box sales? A player base of around 670 000 players ($160m per year/12/$20 per month)? And those charts are the clearest form of:

1) Build Fallout MMOG
2) ...
3) Profit!

I think I've ever seen.

Why, I'd be a fool NOT to invest!

 - As for SirBruce's chart: it's a convenient source of publically available numbers.

Thank you for the early Christmas present, kind sir.

Just to agree - this is the state of the nation for me. I'm dry, i can't get wet no matter how shiney your screenshots, no matter how intricate your class/skill system, no matter how vast your environment. I've simply been used too many times - the majority not with my enjoyment as a priority. I am now a dry, withered, sandpaper like shell of my former optimistic plump moist trusting self. Ping me on Xbox live when you ship something new.

Not really. Most of his numbers have NEVER been publicly available, or verifiable. And people who use it show themselves to be money-hat craving twats too focused on WoW's monthly revenue to understand what kind of bottomless money hole they are about to happily shit their wodges of cash down.

Money holes like Interplay and a Fallout MMOG.

Verifiability is less important to me than validity. I consider the metric useless. That's my primary argument when I talk people out of referencing them, particularly the pods that pull out their calculators and multiply 7.5mil by $14.99.

But that's why companies have experts, either internally or hired. It's the experience that drives the numbers. Referencing history is just a place you start. As an example, the Fallout guys now have a development budget far in excess of people who know better. Who's the winner there?

Oh, and just read through the SEC slide show (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1057232/000117091806001092/presentation.htm). I have a "huh?" on two parts:

Blizzard isn't? SOE wasn't? OSI wasn't? EA? Mythic?

Who? Thought they all went to Red 5?

They aren't if you don't list them as a competitor!

That just goes to mean you can't prove him wrong either, if you link to publically available numbers he has missed, in his next update he will just use the figures you linked to (he might even credit you for the link).  He's got a fool proof system and as long as he continues to update a couple of times a year, he will continue to be listed as a source.

Just because you can't prove him wrong, does not mean he is right.

Yes, but like I said above: it's a source for people who don't know better. And there's a lot of money behind those people who don't know better.

But then, that's why you've got other people out there who do know better, to counterbalance things in the right places at the right times.

Smart companies don't go with just one source, particularly for the dev budgets of these games. And not-smart companies deserve what they don't get as a result.

Blizzard isn't? SOE wasn't? OSI wasn't? EA? Mythic?

[[/quote]

In this context, pure play means directly investable. To invest in Blizzard, one has to buy Vivendi and all the other assorted businesses. To invest in SOE, one has to buy Sony. To invest in Origin/EA Mythic....

NCSoft is a pure play, but it isn't western, hence that particular qualification.

The sentence is accurate.

People who use him as a source, especially a sole source should all get AIDS and leave me their money. They are that fucking stupid.

People of AIDS likely won't have any money to leave you.  Plus you'll have a few decades to wait for it.  Use ebola instead.

I never said he was right, this discussion happens any time a news item uses him as a source.  Why don't we just get used to the fact he's going to be used as a source because he's the only one quoting figures.

I personally think he pulls some of them out of his Woodcock ass.

Perhaps, but unless someone else sets up a system that measures MMOG active user numbers and shows something different, he is the authority by default.

"Pure play" as in only does MMOGs. So that leaves out Blizzard, SOE, and EA and companies like Mythic (pre-Borging) and Turbine were never/aren't public.

Unless they hired somebody recently none of the executives and directors at Interplay are from Blizzard or Vivendi so its unclear who they are referring to.

I like how the math of this thread works:
Fallout Licence + Dying company that sacked all its development talent = Economics discussion.

Popular license or not, if you've none of the original talent and possibly nobody actually employed to make it I can't help but think "vaporware".

Not that I'm talking about the BethSoft project.

They already got the $75 million right? So it doesn't matter if they fail. They get a paycheck for the next 3 years and if it works out moneyhats for everyone. If it doesn't the investors get screwed not whoever is running Interplay.

No. They are filing for a public offering of stock on some European exchange. They filed an 8K which included that presentation on November 30, 2006.

Oh, I get it now. Thanks. Perhaps what Trippy said also applies, but I think yours' is the more accurate given the context, as you note.

He's not measuring anything. He's reporting data other people give him. It's actually impossible to measure MMOGs nowadays without someone on the inside giving the data out publicly or privately. Or without making it up.

Most of this stuff has become State Secret(tm) outside of the occasional PR and investor-relations package. It has to because the numbers don't add up. SL has 1.5mil "citizens" but only 30k paying. Habbo Hotel has 66 million accounts. Add the 50 million of Maplestory and by that number alone, WoW is as irrelevant as, say, Shadowbane was to WoW itself. Obviously that's not a value to be directly compared, any more than flat monthly subscribers is (because neither Habbo nor Maplestory nor just about any game coming in from the East has one).

The entire system his chart shows is old school, applicable to folks who only want to talk about the genre that way. That makes them either incredible confident and rich, or just stupid. Relying on the numbers alone doesn't do that. It's the fact they're build upon a metric steadily declining in relevance.