farewell black isle studios farewell

[Jason Manley]

the bad news comes courtesy of bluesnews.com

Black Isle, Fallout 3 Dead [December 08, 2003, 9:32 pm EST] - 23 Comments
More bad news at Black Isle Studios, where lead designer J.E. Sawyer resigned just last month (story), as Farewell, but not goodbye on the Interplay Entertainment Forums (thanks Nels Nelson) is a post from Damien "Puuk" Foletto that indicates that the studio is now shut down, referring to today as his "last day at the (former) BIS." This follows suit with a note sent along by designer John Deiley:
Today marks the end of an era. Black Isle Studios is no more. In yet another sweeping layoff of employees, Interplay has officially let go the last of it's Black Isle employees (save two that I know of) and dissolved the division. Also, the non-announced title that the division was working on, Fallout 3, has been "shelved" to quote management.






working at BIS back in the heyday numbered as the best days of my career to date. painting with kevin puddnhead llewellyn, justin sweet, vance kovacs, andrew jones, chris amaral, john dickenson, chris applehans and being around all the other great people helped me to get where I am today. there were many fine people there back then and even yesterday. this news made me sad.


to those who were let go...i wish you all the best.


jason manley

[DragonGX]

Noooooooo. :mad:

[Rusty Red Robot]

My hat goes off to the people of BIS. Sad to see such a fantastic studio dissolved.

[DragonGX]

Originally posted by Rusty Red Robot
My hat goes off to the people of BIS. Sad to see such a fantastic studio dissolved.


Exactly.

[mud]

This is a very sad day :(

Fallout 1 & 2 are the only games I have really enjoyed playing...
I've been waiting for Fallout 3 forever...

[Mr. Teatime]

that sucks man. black isle studios rocks (or rocked?)

:(

[jelanen]

:(

[R_M]

How could it go so wrong? Is the industry in really so bad a state?

I rember reading somewhere that it is expected that the viedogames industry will surpass the movie industry. I don't know if it is true, but with games selling as much as they are, how can BIS be closing?

Did they go bankrupt or what?

[nacho]

fallout2 is my favourite game ever and i was so excited about fallout3....

this sucks. :(

[.cfb]

How could it go so wrong? Is the industry in really so bad a state?

I rember reading somewhere that it is expected that the viedogames industry will surpass the movie industry. I don't know if it is true, but with games selling as much as they are, how can BIS be closing?

Did they go bankrupt or what?


Exactly: The Video Game industry. That means consoles, XBoxs' (God forbid), GBAs etcetera. Computer games (although IMHO far superior) are on a steady decline, or so it would seem. A greater volume are being produced, but they practically all suck, so nobody buys them. But console gamers, who buy video games, don't seem to be as discriminatory, and buy, for the most part, what a PC Gamer would avoid. Or so it seems.

The PC Gaming industry goes into a slump every few years (and the new wave of consoles sells well), but when the console sales peter off, the computer once again reigns king.

----

IN OTHER NEWS: THIS SUCKS MAJOR ASS. F2 WAS LIKE, THE BEST GAME evar (next to BG:2 that is (although they are both Black Isle games :))). Sad.

[davi]

sad news indeed..

[davi]

i blame it on xbox

[JoshuaTheJames]

Thats IT davi!

You're gettin an Xbox for Christmas!!!!

-Joshua










:rolleyes: :evilbat: :bash: :insertsantasmiley:

[davi]

:wtf:

[al-x]

Sucks... I loved the fallout games, actually fallout 2 is the game next to Starcraft that I've spend most time playing. I even started playing it again this summer....

I will mourn this loss

[davi]

sounds like a good time to gather up a mod team for an already made next gen rpg and turn it into a 'fallout' styled game.

NWN, Dungeon Siege...

[Nimrod]

Fallout inspired mod - Let's do it!

It almost doesn't seem real that I won't get to play Fallout 3 ever....... at least not Black Isle's Fallout 3...

booo i blame it on xbox too :( :( :(

[Travis_Bourbeau]

for 60 bucks id rather have a book with artwork from these artist vs the game ! really bad news when things like this happen especially around the holidays

[Fipse]

I don´t know whom to blame but Fallout 1 and 2 have been my alltime favourites for quite a long time ... Hope someone will pick up the idea and make a good Fallout 3. I´d buy it.

Thanks Black Isle for this and some other great games ...

fipse

[K-10]

And my day started off so well:(

Cheers to all the unemployed talents behind the Fallout series :beer:
I was so looking forward to the 3rd installment

Think I'll get some beer for real

[bRyaN]

Terrible news...

THe folks at BIS are talents individuals....they no doubt will find somewhere to work..

if those guys read these boards good luck..

[cybercyst]

HOLY CRAP....their stuff is great too...I was just thinking of sending them a portfolio/business card, to let them know who I was. I love Icewind Dale II...*sniff* :(

[killing.people]

thank you black isle studios for what you have given to video games.:arcfreak:

[wassermelone]

Goddamnit!
Interplay has continually proved themselves to be idiots lately (last couple years). Why get rid of the GOOD developers?


On another note: Those who trash talk the XBox are just buying into the fashionable "lets hate Microsoft" subculture and are missing out on a good system... not to mention some excelent games.

-toasty =(

[PencilPunx]

The Fallout series are the only games I have never uninstalled from my computer. In fact, I started up Fallout 2 again over the weekend. Hopefully if it has as many followers as indicated here, Fallout 3 will be resurrected somewhere.

Oh, and I also agree with Toaster. I have a Gamecube, PS2, Xbox, Nintendo Master System and Gameboy Advance, so I can say, without bias, that I spend much more time on the Xbox.

[Nimrod]

I don't hate the xbox, but consoles are the only things developers want to make games for right now - a game recruiter came and talked to our dev class the other day and told us the biggest market (at least for programmers) is for consoles.... After all, why make something for the PC that wont work on 75% of peoples systems and will not work the way you test it on 100% of them, when you know that it will work same time every time for the console? PC's used to have the multiplayer advantage, but not so anymore :0

so Interplay is just one of many publishers that is dumping its PC developers and focusing on the next big console hit....

On a sidenote, I didnt like the xbox at first (ironically) because of the dearth of good games, although now it seems to be picking up... unfortunately there are still not enough that arent on PC or PS2 that would justify me buying one. The only ones I can really think of are Steel battallion and MechAssault, and steel battallion is cost prohibitive for an entirely different reason :D maybe when Fable comes out I'll give in :)

Sorry for all the ranting, but I didn't want the mistaken impression i'm some sort of M$ hating PC elite poseur - I'm on WinXP right now :)

[Diablo™]

awww shit.

[.cfb]

Well, I don't consider myself to be a PC loving console-hating poseur either, but...

...the next gen consoles ruined gaming.

Let me explain:

Through observation, I've deduced that "console gamers" generally tend to be the ones that have short attention spans and think that Halo had "the best plot ever." For these reasons, a port of games like the Fallout, Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate working. It just isn't possible. Most "console gamers" that I know (that measnt the ones that don't game on their PC) would just skip 75% of the dialouge in those games. Of course, when characters start into some Shakespearean (or Mellvillish) speach, I tend to skip some of it (like the death speech in BG2). But, you get the picture.

Neverwinter Nights would work, I beleive, because it is an online game in the vein of Everquest: Kill monsters, Gain XP, kill bigger monsters, gain more xp.

The console gamers that I know own games like Need for Speed and Resident Evil. The PC gamers I know own games like Fallout and BG.

These are generalizations, but you get the idea.

[Android]

Black isle was my first game industry job,

all things must come to an end

[DragonGX]

Originally posted by Android
Black isle was my first game industry job,

all things must come to an end

What did you work on while you were there?

[davi]

i blame it on the xbox because the made video gaming corporate for america... i remebers eeing like a single nintendo game advertisement on tv....

now i see like 30 xbox ads a day, 3 or 4 gamecube ads, 3 or 4 ps2 ads, about 20 n-gage ads... it's driving me nuts. Now there are video game award shows and video game tv shows...

i liked the old days where you had to get game pro and nintendo power to find out stuff.

would this have happened without the xbox.... not sure, but i know for a fact the xbox pushed it along at rapid speed.

crap what really pisses me off is when they advertise a game for a system that is a mutli system game.
like it will show a game and then have the xbox or ps2 logo at the end....and never show the other systems? that's false adveritsing..

</bitchyrant>


anyways yeah... i almost forgot the same creators of black isle did fallout....

if a compnay like black isle falls apart, do they keep legal rights of the name? Could an Independent team put out fallout 3? or maybe just change it to 'Fallout Reborn"?

[wassermelone]

Well if Interplay had just been Black Isle's publisher... but they were their owner as well. Interplay undoubtably owns all the rights to Fallout. God damn them...
There was a time when Interplay was respectable and down to earth... Then they got all over corporate and screwed over Bioware for a while (thankfully they were at the end of their contract and got out while they still could)... made Shiny make that godawful Enter the Matrix, and now have closed down Black Isle. I hope they burn in hell.

Sorry I was just a huge fan of all three of the companies...

-toasty =(

[Faaaccceee!!!!!!]

Well....Myself and Ribking are still working at "InterPlay", as are a few other lurkers around here. We got hired on to BIS for a project that got canned, then got thrown on to Baldur Gate: Dark Allaince 2, and then onto Fallout 3. Those of us left now have our new assignments. It hurts to see all those people go, there were alot of good and talented people that will be missed.