Interplay closer to bankruptcy

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 11:58 am

Interplay Close To Bankruptcy
4:08 AM - Andrew Burnes - 17 Comments
It's more than likely that Bethesda will reclaim the Fallout MMO rights seeing how Interplay ended 2008 with nothing to their name, and only seven staff on the payroll:

According to the filing, Interplay ended 2008 with a cash balance of USD 0 and a deficit of approximately USD 2.4 million. The publisher is actively seeking financing or income, without which it will be forced to liquidate assets, sell the company or face bankruptcy.
\"We continue to seek external sources of funding,\" Interplay said, \"including but not limited to, incurring debt, the selling of assets or securities, licensing of certain product rights in selected territories, selected distribution agreements, and/or other strategic transactions sufficient to provide short-term funding, and achieve our long-term strategic objectives.\"

The report indicated that Interplay currently has only one project undergoing internal development, an MMO with the codename \"Project: V13,\" believed to be the Fallout MMO first announced one year ago. Interplay has four other projects in early design stages, but without any cash in its coffers, it is unable to fund development.

The filing also revealed Interplay's head count at the end of 2008, which included only seven employees - four in game development, and three in \"finance, general and administrative\" positions

Dakatsu · Post by **Dakatsu** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 12:25 pm

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 12:39 pm

Mind posting a link to the original?

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 12:42 pm

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/46236 ... Bankruptcy

Sapphire Wolf · Post by **Sapphire Wolf** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 1:04 pm

That's totally bogus, man.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 2:04 pm

Can they make D4 before they collapse?

DarkHorse · Post by **DarkHorse** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 2:48 pm

Making a game before you go under is really unpleasant for the end-user.

And no, they can't make anything with a dev team of four.

Top Wop · Post by **Top Wop** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 2:54 pm

So much for my hope that Interplay stocks would soar.

Zantor · Post by **Zantor** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:09 pm

Either they pull themselves out of the hole again and have money to do stuff, or they go under and Descent becomes abandonware.

AlphaDoG · Post by **AlphaDoG** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:23 pm

Descent is already abandonware.

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:52 pm

I abandoned it after PXO went down.

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:02 pm

Spidey wrote:I abandoned it after PXO went down.

So IOW you just came back recently just to drive nails into the community coffin ??

That's what we have noticed you attempting to do since your mysterious return, when you swore you would never come back

your so cute there buttercup

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 7:01 pm

Arrrgh.

DarkHorse · Post by **DarkHorse** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:22 pm

Buying shares in Interplay was never a wise thing to do, even before the economy tanked. As I said in April last year, they had a lot to redeem themselves for.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 9:30 am

They could buy the UT3 engine, make 15 levels worth of SM, use the f(*king vehicle tools ALREADY built into the UT3 editor for the pyro and robots. Then call it a day. Morons! Edit: How many other engines and editors are out there with the same tools!?!? No excuse. Edit2: Someone took insurance on their stock and sunk the company. Edit 3: Aarrgh

Bonzer · Post by **Bonzer** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:01 pm

What about this? Did the Masthead partnership fall through?

http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=26

Half of me hopes Interplay sticks around to develop D4, but the other half hopes somebody with the money to see the project through will just buy the Descent IP and have done with it.

xezzy · Post by **xezzy** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:33 pm

They first have to make fallout mmo. Initially they have planed 75m$ for it, but instead they have 2m$ debt (in 2007, dunno whats now, they may have some $ now).
Thats kinda lost, I wish them luck tho. Why would you want descent to be abandonware anyway?

And, from the latest news: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=23225

Shame.

Zantor · Post by **Zantor** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 2:27 pm

xezzy wrote:Why would you want descent to be abandonware anyway?

If Descent were abandonware, more could be done to improve it, particularly D3, which is fraught with bugs.

----------------
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Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 3:58 pm

I knew they wernt ganna make it because there trying to make games base off of the ones that didn't make enough or that bearly got them by.

+ look at games now u don't see any descent clones if there is some plez tell me but I haven't seen any hell its like space flight sims I haven't seen any good ones since freelancer. Well there was one I was playing that was some what neet just can't rember the name.

Just times r changing its all about the FPS and MMOs the good old stuff is dieing off like the flight sims and so on. Just seems like there's no origonal ideas any more.

Just my view on the way things r going

Zantor · Post by **Zantor** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:36 pm

Warlock:

The only Descent clone I know of is Forsaken. It's nearly identical in terms of physics and gameplay, but it doesn't have the same atmosphere or graphic design.

If you are looking for more than a Descent clone but any space sim in general I recommend Freespace 2. It has a very alive community and there is constant work on mods, bringing old mods up to date, and other activities. (I myself am an active member of both the Descent and Freespace communities.)

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 10:02 pm

Yeah I got all of thoes. Just seems like nothing newish I ment like there's no new space combad sims in dev and so on

Gekko71 · Post by **Gekko71** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:17 am

Descent's bset hope now is someone else picking up the IP and running with it IMHO. But Interplay will have to be a death's door before this happens ( I always believed the relative success of Fallout 3 would ensure they get funding. My mistake

)

I remember reading somewhere that the Descent series only sold 500,000 units all up (that's for D 1-3). Is this figure correct? If it is correct, where did the info come from? The reason I ask is that with so few sales, it would be difficult for any game company to justify investing in D4.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:33 am

D1/2 combined sold over 500,00 copies and D3 sold 54,000 copies. I got these numbers from one of the developers. FS2 only sold 25,000 copies.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:13 am

But they sold 900,000 units of, awesome.

TOR_LordRaven · Post by **TOR_LordRaven** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 9:54 am

DarkHorse wrote:Buying shares in Interplay was never a wise thing to do, even before the economy tanked. As I said in April last year, they had a lot to redeem themselves for.

Depends on how much you spend and how much you can afford to lose.

A friend of mine bought some last year at 5 cents per share, then sold them when it hit 20 cents.

Seemed like a pretty wise decision to me!

xezzy · Post by **xezzy** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:09 am

or just lucky

Seriously, I think there are some space combat sims out there developed or in development, for example eternal silence mod for hl2. Havent checked it tho (but it won some game of the year prices on moddb). But i think the market is pretty big, eve, x3, a lot of freespace mods, ive heard about russian game called zavtra vojna or something like that. So we, descent fans, are in worse position! Ha!

Zantor wrote:
xezzy wrote:Why would you want descent to be abandonware anyway?
If Descent were abandonware, more could be done to improve it [...]

Aw, if you say so. Didnt know about that.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:34 pm

Both mods (Rebirth and XL) have taken the D1/2 engine about as far as it will go. They are antiquated. There is a lot of new content but it's just bling.

the source has been released for both 1&2 so you have all you need. get to it.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 3:44 pm

If I wanted to buy the Descent rights, how big of a loan would I need. And where is such info posted?

Gekko71 · Post by **Gekko71** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:26 am

They wouldn't post a 'for sale' sign or advertise, you would need to go to them with a direct offer. As for what the rights are worth, who knows? Essentially whatever price you succesfully negotiate, that's it's value.

If you DID want to buy the rights seriously, then now would be a good time to make your offer. Granted Descent was one of Interplay's better projects, but right now they're staring down the barrel. Fallout is their number one project and they're about to lose the license unless they can come up with funding. They're two mill in the hole, so offer $750k and go up to $850k - they may well bite.

On the flipside, you then have to build & sell the game though to get your money back, and even if you license an old engine like Doom3, it will stil cost you about another $250k on top. (That's before you build the game!) Do your numbers very carefully before you proceed, because I doubt you'd sell more than 20,000 copies of D4. If the total dev. budget is around 2 million (and IMO that's doing it CHEAP!!) you'd still need to sell 40,000 copies at $50 each just to break even... How likely that is given the age of the game and the engine you're building it on, I can't comment on.

...

...Still, these aren't the *worst* set of numbers I've seen by a long shot... especially if Doom3 enters the public domain.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:12 am

I know I can put down 100K no prob but I'd need support from a local game company my friend owns. Of course I'd need a killer proposal to make any of this happen and a back up plan... On the other hand if the initial proposal was good enough I might not have to put in a cent. Meh... or i could read a book...

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:14 am

If you're not willing to lose your investment, then I wouldn't bother.

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:00 am

Zantor wrote:Warlock:

The only Descent clone I know of is Forsaken.

that's because it used the Miner Code/engine

Gekko71 · Post by **Gekko71** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:12 am

CDN_Merlin wrote:If you're not willing to lose your investment, then I wouldn't bother.

x2. Anyone can speculate, but without an insane desire to see it happen, it just wont't work.

If you really need to ask whether to do it, then the answer is - no you shouldn't.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 11:17 am

You're right. But I'm unsure only because it's done poorly... And I'm not into making games or anything. But I would love Descent 4 to have some specific features, that might help it cross the line into sucess.

xezzy · Post by **xezzy** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:12 pm

You dont need descent IP to make 6dof game o.0

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:57 pm

xezzy wrote:You dont need descent IP to make 6dof game o.0

Pshhhhh... what ever. your face!

DarkHorse · Post by **DarkHorse** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 1:57 am

How insightful.

Interplay closer to bankruptcy

Interplay closer to bankruptcy

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