re: #111 WindUpBird

Avellone was the guy behind Torment! I have a lot of confidence in him!

Great game, but I still lack confidence.

And I loved Fallout 2, but when Fallout 2 was originally released it was broooken, there were so many bugs that my giant-brained friends with infinite patience for RPGs gave up on it until it was massively patched.

True. This is also true of nearly all games that came before it, and all games thereafter. But FO2 did seem to have more then the average amount when released. I missed all that, as I played it first from the bargain bin.

Also, Boyarsky was heavily involved in Bloodlines (Oh wiki I love you so) which had all kinds of problems. Still a great game! But a great game with many flaws.

Troika failed, IMO, due to a lack of “adult supervision”, as they say in the silicon valley.

What they excelled at in creativity and hard core RPG sensibilities, they severely lacked in business sense and contract negotiation.

Arcanum was an insanely creative and original conception, but they fucked up by giving Sierra the rights to the title just to have the “privilege” of getting it published. They also fucked up by being stuck in a contract that would not allow them to release patches beyond a certain point.

Bloodlines… clusterfuck. Great concept and play, but insanely buggy. They tied themselves into a contract with a strict release deadline, and strict contractual pay, as well as sticking themselves with an unpolished Source engine. Same with ToEE (minus the Source engine).

They had the chops to make great RPGs, they just didn’t have the “adult supervision” required to make their mark.

I think the world of gaming has changed too much for a game that resembles the original Fallouts to really work for a mainstream market, too much money at stake… and need to appeal to too many people…

This is why we can’t have nice things. The appeal to the lowest common denominator brings the whole gaming market down, RPGs especially.