[QUOTE=Just Some Guy]
I have to go on memory here since my old game magazines are boxed, but this is the pit.
There wasn’t really any advanced promotion. Id at that point was publishing through Apogee who was a shareware game publisher They had a minor hit with the Commander Keen games but no one really promoted shareware games at that point.
My point was that Mr. Miskatonic’s broad statements about people complaining about change was completely irrelevant in the context of the examples given. No one complained about those like Fallout 3 because they weren’t even remotely comparable situations.
[/QUOTE]
Right. Nobody complained about the change in formats for Wolfenstein because video games at the time were a fringe hobby without a muture media/advertising organ. Not because the situations aren’t comparable. They’re entirely comparable: Wolfenstein underwent a dramatic change of game genre, and was massively successful as a result, delivering a game that surpassed its predecessor in every conceivable way. The only difference between the two examples is that we now have a shitload of gaming media out there, and the internet to provide an outlet to everyone who wants to whine about what the gaming media is telling them. Had these things existed back when Wolfenstein 3D came out, you would no doubt have seen exactly the same sort of whinging in the months leading up to its release. It had nothing to do with Wolfenstein 3D somehow “not being a sequel” to Wolfenstein, a claim which is absurd on its face.
Why not? Or rather, why is that less likely now, then it would have been if Bethesda had never picked up the license? If the original creators of the game couldn’t make it sell well enough to keep their company alive, why would any other company take a risk on trying to do better with exactly the same formula?
[QUOTE=Miller]
Why not? Or rather, why is that less likely now, then it would have been if Bethesda had never picked up the license? If the original creators of the game couldn’t make it sell well enough to keep their company alive, why would any other company take a risk on trying to do better with exactly the same formula?
[/QUOTE]
Ummm you are aware you’re just making shit up now aren’t you? Black Isle folded because of infighting between Interplay and them followed by a massive departure of the staff to form Troika Games Interplay simply dissolved Black Isle. You could argue that Troika proved that a spiritual successor of Fallout (i.e. Arcanum) might not sell very well…but then again you could argue that Arcanum was a bug filled poorly balanced mess and not the core gameplay that was similar to Fallout that was its downfall.
[QUOTE=Darkhold]
Ummm you are aware you’re just making shit up now aren’t you? Black Isle folded because of infighting between Interplay and them followed by a massive departure of the staff to form Troika Games Interplay simply dissolved Black Isle. You could argue that Troika proved that a spiritual successor of Fallout (i.e. Arcanum) might not sell very well…but then again you could argue that Arcanum was a bug filled poorly balanced mess and not the core gameplay that was similar to Fallout that was its downfall.
[/QUOTE]
Just to clarify a little bit Interplay didn’t dissolve Black Isle immediately after the exodus to form Troika but it probably is why they were the first to get the axe when Interplay started having its own financial troubles. Who the hell knows how a publisher of several very successful games managed to run its own business into the ground is anyone’s guess but it certainly didn’t have a thing to do with Fallout 2’s sales figures.