Assorted Fallout news roundup

WorstUsernameEver

WorstUsernameEver

But best title ever!
While most of the attention right now is rightly focused on the ongoing Wasteland 2 Kickstarter, there have been a few pieces of news related to Fallout.

New Vegas' project director J.E. Sawyer put on his blog the slides of a presentation he gave at GDC, focused on the "choice architecture" and narrative design in New Vegas, while also expanding and clarifying on some points.

Joystiq decided to dedicated their weekly WRPG-focused column to Fallout, which they call "the first modern RPG".

Finally, Chris Avellone confirmed with a now-deleted tweet that Obsidian didn't receive a bonus payment for Fallout: New Vegas due to missing the metacritic score that was asked of them by one point. Here's the story via Joystiq.
 
WorstUsernameEver said:
Obsidian didn't receive a royalty payment for Fallout: New Vegas due to missing the metacritic score that was asked of them by one point.
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No royalty for a game way better than FO3? I say! This is a downright fraud, gentlemen.

Commercial policies like these simply kill the creativity in gaming industry. God bless kickstarters, now.
 
ummm FUCK Bethesda.. Vat shit this if you want. That is how I feel and YES I am drunk. Fuck you Bethesda, along with EA for trying to ruin Bioware. You motherfuckers are dirty evil assholes and I hope your families starve. I'm going to wank it while I wait for Bit Torrent to finish ripping you a new asshole. Go Wasteland! I love you Brian Fargo... Yes this will be vatted. Ha ha!
 
What the fuck. There is a difference between one time bonus and royalties. Avellone specifically talks about bonus, as his tweet says in that joystiq article. Yet both retarded Joystiq, in that very same article, and now NMA, talks about it as if Bethesda deprived them of royalties ?
Come on guys.

And before the pile-on on Bethesda continues - I hate to be playing devil's advocate - nobody forced Obsidian to sign that contract, although they wanted to do it because
1)It is a fucking Fallout and
2)It gave them jobs and paid their salaries for two years

I fucking loath this metacritic practice and wish MC site would shut down now though. It is a shame the bonus was not depended on sales instead, which have been fantastic.
Sucks for Obsidian, for sure.

Joystiq:
Unfortunately for Obsidian, Fallout: New Vegas currently has a Metacritic average of 84, a single point below the average that would've earned the company royalties on its product.

Avellone, on next line:
Fallout: New Vegas was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't.
 
What's terrible is that they were deprived of royalties (I believe that Bethesda would give Obsidian a cut of the profits, which is what royalties generally are) because of reviews done by "professionals". Reviews that often failed to appreciate such things like a world reacting to your choices, a non-linear storyline with meaningful endings, loads of improvements in gameplay and brilliant writing. Reviews that seemingly wanted a carbon copy of Fallout 3 with different hats put on people.
 
Corrected just for clarification. Either way, nobody ever forces anyone to sign a contract, but generally speaking, if an independent developer of the size of Obsidian wants to work, they have to. The alternative is simply not signing a contract at all, because in this industry you won't manage to negotiate a better one unless you're in an extremely strong position, and that's not Obsidian's case.
 
I used to work in a small compagny and while Paul_cz said seems logical, the fact is that sometimes you have to agree to "unfair" deal because it's very difficult to do otherwise when you are too weak.
Yes it's business and he agreed, but it does not mean it's "right" especially with the money they bring back (and one of the main critic was the aging graphical engine).
 
egalor said:
WorstUsernameEver said:
Obsidian didn't receive a royalty payment for Fallout: New Vegas due to missing the metacritic score that was asked of them by one point.
Click to expand...

No royalty for a game way better than FO3? I say! This is a downright fraud, gentlemen.

Commercial policies like these simply kill the creativity in gaming industry. God bless kickstarters, now.
Click to expand...
You didn't know it worked like that? Now you do.

Keep buying mainstream crap and that's what you get. And yeah, FNV is, for all means and purposes, mainstream.

At least mainstream oriented. I won't settle for anything less than what I want. Everyone else does that, why shouldn't I?
 
Overwhelming common point of the reviews was bugginess I think, and bugginess should be noted in a review. There's a problem in that the press generally gave a pass to Bethesda for the same issues, but not mentioning them for Obsidian's title is hardly the right way to solve it. Two wrongs don't make a right and all that.
 
Yea, but the game definitive wasn't the buggy mess which some websites made it to be. Yeah, looking at the unofficial patch, there is a shitload of stuff which was fixed, but nothing which would make it impossible to play the game.

Same with Alpha Protocol- had shitty animations, some clipping errors and stuff like that, but in all my 9 playthroughs I didn't noticed any serious bugs.
 
The quests were easy to break and the game was crash/lag prone on consoles. That's stuff that is really easy to notice, compared to, say, the shooting being unresponsive in Fallout 3.
 
Fallout: New Vegas became unplayable(for me at least) after 50 hours or so on the PS3. It used to crash every 30 minutes. But funny thing is that Skyrim also had the same problems on the PS3. The game(Skyrim) also had some weird texture problem on the 360 if you ever decided to install it to the HDD. Funny how Bethesda manages to get away with these stuff.
 
It's because of all the objects being moved around while you play. Savegame gets cluttered with lots of shit, which makes the game run worse after hours of playing. Noticed this too, quite often. Mainly when I started a new character and realized how smooth the game runs then... Though, keep in mind this is already since Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind... Installing and deinstalling lots of mods all the time probably won't help either.
 
Lexx said:
Though, keep in mind this is already since Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind... Installing and deinstalling lots of mods all the time probably won't help either.
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It also happens in Skyrim. It's called bethesda's "all new engine"!
 
they spend a huge part of their focus on marketing. Obviously they get away with it. Once you reach a certain point you can sell people turd in a jar as the holy grail. And they might buy it. And even defend it from criticism regardless how well explained the criticism is. If the adds are good enough. One can say about Bethesda what ever he wants. But their marketing and the people working there know their job.

I wish they would show the same skill when making RPGs. Like with writing, choices and consequences etc. Then they could easily make games that could really have the same quality like F1.

We have a class dedicated to advertising and such. And its unbelievable how ... some rather simple tricks work on the mind of the people.
 
Tagaziel said:
What's terrible is that they were deprived of royalties (I believe that Bethesda would give Obsidian a cut of the profits, which is what royalties generally are) because of reviews done by "professionals". Reviews that often failed to appreciate such things like a world reacting to your choices, a non-linear storyline with meaningful endings, loads of improvements in gameplay and brilliant writing. Reviews that seemingly wanted a carbon copy of Fallout 3 with different hats put on people.
Click to expand...

The common Jobber where the ones bitching about the endings and not being handheld. But you go read all those reviews that knock the game, they go on and on about the shitty engine(the one they fail to mention in reviews of Oblivion, FO3, Oblivion 2: Skyrim).

sure New Vegas was a better game but apparently "Obsidian are bunch of lazy bastards cuz they didn't fix the shitty engine they had to work with.":roll:(yes i've heard this)

EDIT: lol at the dummy that edited my post.
 
NV has sold 5 million copies. If that means less than a fucking metacritic score, then I don't see how anyone could want to work in this industry.

In any other field of work, selling 5 million units of ANYTHING would be cause for a bonus. Not so in the corporate game development world...

All it takes is to make a hollow shell of a game like Fallout 3, and then bribe as many reviewers as you can.
 
Ehw, can we stop with this "brib as many reviewers as you can"-stuff? I have a hard time with taking this serious.
 
Lexx said:
Ehw, can we stop with this "brib as many reviewers as you can"-stuff? I have a hard time with taking this serious.
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It's a conspiracy "man"

It was all like part of their plan "not" to "pay" Obsidian dude!
 
WorstUsernameEver said:
Corrected just for clarification. Either way, nobody ever forces anyone to sign a contract, but generally speaking, if an independent developer of the size of Obsidian wants to work, they have to. The alternative is simply not signing a contract at all, because in this industry you won't manage to negotiate a better one unless you're in an extremely strong position, and that's not Obsidian's case.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction, also I assume it should say "with now deleted tweet", not tweeted. /Grammar nazi

As for contracts, well Obsidian was always in a shitty position..with LucasArts (11 months for KOTOR2), with Sega (canceled Aliens, shitty AP support), with Bethesda (18 months to make huge-ass game, shitty MC dependend bonus clause).
This industry is indeed shit if you do not have money and have to act as work-for-hire.
Which is why I sometimes think it would be best if someone like Valve bought Obsidian.

Or hell, Zenimax. They support making of Dishonored after all.
 
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