Quote:Interplay shuts down Black Isle Studios


After months of bad omens, the end has finally come for the veteran RPG developer.

It looks like role-playing gamers will have a boulder of coal stuffed in their holiday stockings this year, as GameSpot has received reliable reports that Interplay has shut down Black Isle Studios.



While nothing has been confirmed by official sources as of press time, Damien "Puuk" Foletto, a member of BIS' art department, broke the news on the Interplay forums late this afternoon. "Today was my last day at the (former) BIS, as it was for my whole team," he said. To date, Foletto's posts have been one of the most reliable sources of news on the development of Fallout 3 (aka Van Buren) including the departure of his former co-worker J.E. Sawyer.

Black Isle's closure is a sad end for the once-great developer. BIS had a hand in some of the most acclaimed PC RPGs of the late 1990s, including the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series. Recently, though, the studio fell on hard times. Its forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons title, code-named "Jefferson," was canned earlier this year, reportedly a casualty of a legal tangle with D&D rights-holders Wizards of the Coast. A host of top-quality talent has fled the studio, including legendary producer Feargus Urqhart.

However, it looks like the financial woes of BIS' parent Interplay finally did the developer in. Interplay has lost over $20 million so far this year. Its two main holiday releases, the console RPGs Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (which was developed by BIS), were pushed back to next January as a result of another legal dispute, this time with distributor VU Games. Interplay's refocusing on console games may have also been a factor in the decision to shutter its more PC-centric subsidiary.

Regardless of the reasons, the closure of BIS will hit many gamers hard. Foletto's final post seemed particularly depressing. "I don't know where I'll end up," he said, "but [people should] know that we were all avid gamers and wanted to make the PC games that not only we wanted to play, but also the fans."

Quote:"Being a member of the team I can tell you what they were thinking. The new head honcho doesn't like PC games and has even stated that in the past. Its pretty obvious he was responsible for the death of BIS. There was alot of bad feelings between BIS and the rest of the company since BIS actually produced titles on a regular basis instead of dicking around like everyone else. It was all politics.

So now they have bet the future of the company on 2 unproven projects. Fallout BOS2 (the first hasn't shipped and everyone knows its going to tank) and a console game based on the Exalted license. So instead of supporting the team working on Fallout 3 which has a proven record and was FAR along in development, they rest the future on the unknown.

You can be sure Interplay will sell the Fallout license to someone else. They've made short-sighted quick money decisions in the past (Hunter license is an example). They figure they can sell it off for a quick buck and save all the development money while losing any long term profit. Brilliant.

They will survive for awhile since Vivendi is stupid enough to keep giving them money. Also when BGDA2 ships that will give them a big stack of money so they will screw around all next year on these dead end titles until the money finally dries up and they go under. They might survive until the end of next year if they don't lose all of development. No one trusts them now so everyone still there is actively searching for jobs."

Quote:December 16, 2003 - "Black Isle Studios is dead." So says a source formerly employed by the developer. We've already brought you the initial details based on a post on the Interplay forum, but we've now confirmed that Black Isle now exists only as a brand under the Interplay umbrella. Digital Mayhem, the other development division within Interplay, has also "been dissolved and combined under Interplay Production," according to our source.

The dissolution was prompted by an apparent political "ass-kissing battle" within the separate divisions of Interplay. Black Isle Studios' director quit in frustration, leaving Black Isle unofficially under the management of Digital Mayhem's director. Citing disharmony with the new management, Black Isle Studios appealed to Interplay to adopt a more hands-off approach.

Interplay agreed and the team continued work on Baldur's Gate 3. The title was cancelled after management failed to retain the license for the D&D system, so Black Isle decided to focus development exclusively on Fallout 3. The design was finished, the engine was written, and the work on the maps had begun when Interplay asked for a playable demo of the game.

By Black Isle's account, the demo as delivered was 95% done, including all game functionality but only one finished demo level. (Work on the rest of the levels was approximately halfway complete; all that remained to be done was to populate and script the maps.) The next day Interplay began laying off people at Digital Mayhem. Since the Fallout demo was so polished, employees at Black Isle felt (relatively) secure.

Two weeks later, all but two members of the Fallout team were laid off and the project was cancelled. Interplay apparently believed the game could not be finished by 2004. Interestingly, the two members of the team not laid off were those who were previously working for the head of Digital Mayhem on a separate console title prior to moving to Black Isle Studios.

The financial outlook for Interplay is still a bit grim. Millions of dollars in debt with less than a million in the bank, Interplay's decision to cancel the nearly complete (by Black Isle's estimation) Fallout 3 was followed by a green light for the console games Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 (a sequel for a game that hasn't even shipped yet) and Exalted (which doesn't yet have an engine).

Interplay still owns the Black Isle Studios brand and employees were told, "Interplay will continue to produce titles. If we feel that a title is worth of the Black Isle Studios' name then it will be released under that brand." Though you may still see new games with Black Isle on the box, given the closing of the studio, no such titles will have actually been developed by Black Isle. Ditto for Digital Mayhem. At this point, Interplay also still owns the Fallout franchise but, given the company's financial outlook, it's doubtful they'll maintain it if prospective buyers start calling.

We'll bring you more details as they surface.