Ive been thinking if gamesas creates a fallout mmo they will be hindered by,

1. 12% royalties to bethesda (every month they will have to give bethesda 12% of thier profits from fallout mmo just to be able to have the right to continue the game)
2. will not be allowed to sell any products related to fallout, (they dont own the ip)
3. will not be able to sign a movie deal (they dont own the ip)
4. will not be able to sign novel deals.
5. will not be able to sell many of the things nescesary to keep a mmo going to its full potential.


I suggest gamesas creates an mmo similiar to fallout but not the same name, different enough for them to be able to own all the rights to it, but close enough so the feel of a post apocalyptic game is kept. They wont be hindered by any legalities to bethesda this way will be able to sign the deals to advertise for thier mmo through potentially novels and movies. Besides who cares what it is called? If its a good game that has the same ideas as fallout then why the hell would they want to sacrifice so much of thier profits and freedom just so it could be called fallout mmo. The only way naming it fallout and paying the royalties would make sense is if bethesda helped finance and create the mmo.

What do you think doesnt it make more sense to create a mmo in a post apocalyptic nuclear america maybe call it Nuclear Fallout mmo something to get around bethesdas ip.


ALSO I WILL NOT PLAY FALLOUT MMO if they sell items ingame out of game like if gamesas sells ingame items on thier own website or through thier own employees. I understand expansions (even though i dont link them either). Ill pay the monthly fee but once an mmo starts selling ingame money out of game, or ingame items in anyway outside of game, (unless through contest or nonprofit event), I will probably not play the game. If the mmo is free I understand selling ingame items for money, but if the mmo is a paymonthly deal thats it, they shouldnt sell ingame items to benefit wealthier players.

1. 12% royalties to bethesda (every month they will have to give bethesda 12% of thier profits from fallout mmo just to be able to have the right to continue the game)

I didn't know that. I don't think they should have made that deal, but then again perhaps they didn't have a choice at the time. However Bethesda has the rights to make three games, after that I assume (and hope) all rights revert to gamesas.

I suggest gamesas creates an mmo similiar to fallout but not the same name,

You could have a point there, but then again Fallout has the name recognition factor. Many people will buy anything if you slap a well known brand on it and Fallout's brand is so very strong. If gamesas managed to hire the top devs from the original Fallout, then the name wouldn't matter to the original fans. The only question is are there enough of those kinds of people for the game to make the kind of profit that is required these days?

I had considered that possibility myself. It would even be a tad poetic as Fallout was intended to be a sequel to Wasteland but EA had the rights at the time.

The thing is, I think gamesas is going to have to ride the Fallout name to secure the necessary funds. The nearly guaranteed success of FO3 will generate plenty of Fallout buzz, and gamesas could coast on that a bit instead of having to spend gazillions on advertising like Bethesda did. Also, Fallout 3 will bring the fallout name to people a decade younger than those who played the originals, expanding the the interest for a fallout mmo by quite a bit.

@ Davaris

Bethesda entirely owns the IP. The initial deal was a licensing for 3 fallout sequels, but beth purchased the entire IP shortly afterwards. Part of that deal was a "license back" to gamesas for a future Fallout MMO. Anything beyond that and gamesas would have to buy the IP back.

I didn't know that. I don't think they should have made that deal, but then again perhaps they didn't have a choice at the time. However Bethesda has the rights to make three games, after that I assume (and hope) all rights revert to gamesas.

Wrong, that was the original licensing deal, but since then, Bethesda purchased the rights to the entire Fallout franchise and they own it now. If any rights revert, it will be the MMO rights reverting to Bethesda, not single-player rights reverting to gamesas, unfortunately. See:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Online_FAQ

And yes, with the state IPLY is in, they need the name "Fallout" in order to secure investors, and Bethesda's hype will be very helpful for that. The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Fallout Online * Fallout IRC Channel * Fallout: New Vegas

Bethesda entirely owns the IP. The initial deal was a licensing for 3 fallout sequels, but beth purchased the entire IP shortly afterwards.

Sheer madness.

So who owns the Wasteland IP these days?

Brian Fargo snatched the rights to Wasteland for InXile entertainment a year or two ago. No news about it beyond that.

Brian Fargo snatched the rights to Wasteland for InXile entertainment a year or two ago. No news about it beyond that.

That`s it. It`ll be called "Wasteland II: Can you survive the terror of the fallout?"
Problem solved xDDDD. Boom de ya da!

..

Oye i was waiting for one of these threads to creep up.
Actually i was hoping it wouldnt, pity.
Lets see..

Ok we have covered the truth of the nature of the whole bethesda/gamesas thing, wont retouch on that.



Actually about the 12% thing..Ausir, you know a good deal about the whole deal, mind giving us some more info?
I do remember some more 'catches', one of them being Bethesda has Quality Control.
(That entire idea i find funny. A company...has Quality Control over another company who is making a game that they ORIGINATED even if they dont currently own the IP)

As for the selling products thing. Who says they cant sell anything?
They wouldnt be able to sell anything related to Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Fallout 3.
But i do believe (Feel free to correct me, i am no lawyer) they would be able to sell things DIRECTLY related to Fallout MMO, which they have a license to the rights of.

The movie/book thing. Meh. Honestly there should have been a whole 50/50 split of any movie/book profits originating from a fallout MMO.

What things are..necessary things? Plushies? Tshirts?



SLIPPERY slope. I can make an MMO that shares many similarities (Environment, Overall feeling, other reconizable things) with WoW, and not name it WoW, and ill still get my ass sued off for IP/Copyright infringment.
Overall a bad idea.

And getting around an IP period..is tricky and can lead to potential ruin honestly. And i doubt Bethesda would hesitate to sue gamesas if they tried. ANd last i checked..Bethesda has more bucks right now so they could hurt gamesas just from court fee's if they wanted.

Here's a few ideas those that wont lead gamesas to getting it up the arse from Bethesda...
1)Expansions.
--Dont do the one expansion a year thing. Do A bunch of small expansions a year. Kind of like 'Action Packs' that add certain things that presence, or lack there of, will NOT cause mass imbalances in the game. Some things (Not gaurenteed not to cause imbalance) could be cars, vehicles, more weapons, more weapon options, etc etc.
--Fallout is SO open ended that expansions would be very possible and plentiful.
2)LEGALIZED In Game/Out of Game Money Trading.
--WOAH Folks. Listen first, before you go screaming 'CHINESE FARMER'. I play EVE Online k? CCP (The creators) have legalized this..but they CONTROL it. Basically you can buy a GTC (Global Time Card. Basically a time card) for say 30bucks for a 60day GTC. Then you can go through a secure service offered by CCP to 'trade' that GTC with someone for INGAME money (About 450M Isk atm). So CCP controls everything. They sell the GTC's, the service is on their website to make it secure, and they promote it.
Guess what. Buying ISK (The ingame currency) from websites is lower than MOST MMo's becuase if you really want to take your hard earned money to get some more...you can..legally. So CCP gets the 30 bucks from the gtc and you get what you want. THis means their GTC sales are not simply those folks without credit cards using it for their monthly payment, but people who work 70hrs a week and can only play a limited amount but want ingame money.

~Vac

A sanctioned in-game money purchasing system is a terrible idea. This creates in game currency out of thin air and would ruin any attempt at an in game economy. At least with gold farmers they're taking money generated by normal means in the game and then redistributing it.

I've never understood the antagonism towards gold farmers. If you lived in a part of the world where it was worthwhile to sit and play a video game to make money wouldn't you? I just think it's sad that people are willing to pay real money for monopoly money.

Oh and ..


Where the hell did you get that idea (Underlined)?

Let me explain the system again, either i goofed the first time or YOU didnt read. Ill default to saying i goofed up the explanation....

Ok lets take Guy A, he works 70 hours and makes gobs of money in real life. He plays EVE but cannot spend alot of time doing so because of his job.
Now lets meet Guy B, he works a regular job and plays EVE Alot. He doesn't make all that much money IRL, but in EVE, he's rich as shit.

Now here is the situation.
Guy B doesnt make enough IRL to pay for his account's monthly fee.
Guy A makes more than enough IRL, but wants a little extra ingame cash.

So through a CCP Sanctioned secure system...

Guy A goes ahead and buys a 60day GTC (There's only 60day GTCs available) it costs about $30. Its trade value is 450M ISK(Ingame money).
Guy A puts an ad up on the special 'Timecode' forum that he has a 60Day GTC he is wanting to sell for 450M Isk.
Guy B comes along and see's the ad. He has more than enough ISK, but cant pay for his account. So he goes through the steps (Theres alot). He gives Guy A 450M isk and gets the GTC codes in return.

Now Guy A is 450M Isk richer, and Guy B (Who is still rich) can play for another 2 months without worrying about it.

The money does NOT come out of nowhere, it comes from other players.

It also makes CCP alot of money because certain folks like myself who make enough IRL buy a few GTC's a month and trade them just for isk (ingame money) to go have fun with.

The 'system' to do all this trading is designed by CCP, and ensured to be secure (So no one gets screwed). And as long as you do the trade by following Step A, Then B, and Then C in that order and no other....its legal.

So using your argument on gold farmers ..

thats no different than what is done in EVE by CCP.
IRL Money is swaped for ingame currency. Just that in EVE its controlled by the developing company and regulated.
And here's the best part....you dont have to risk the virus's, credit card scams, and other various bad things that happen with gold farmers. (Sorry but ive heard one too many stories of folks trying to buy ingame currency from a site only to get nothing and find their credit card charged up to the wazzoo.)

Hmph.
Just one idea on how gamesas can make some moneys other than regular subscription fee's.

Back on topic..meh.
I believe the making of a Fallout MMO will need to be a very delicate procedure, but ...with the original designers back on board...me no worried.

Alright, I had no idea what those acronyms mean (which is strange cuz in nerd fashion I usually UAI (understand acronyms intrinsically ) So I guess I was a bit confused. It sounded like they had a system where you could just buy in game cash from the developer. That'd be worse than horse armor imo!

Cash trading is a very sticky wicket indeed.

Vactet, I see your reasoning and it is a nice idea, but I think the only way a game could do that is if 50% of the gold taken from the player to purchase the extra time on thier account is deleted from the game altogether to help prevent wealthier players from strangling the economy. So some rare items dont cost a rediculous amount of bottle caps or (gold, I refer to the games economy as gold as this is what im accustomed to), just because the inflation of gold buyers a few examples (za bear mount in wow costs about 9000-25000 gold depending on time and server- average player has about 3000gold, runescape godsword 100-500 million gold-the average player only has about half a million gold).

Yes having developer endorsed trading of RL Cash for Ingame currency (Through what i described above) is potentially problematic.
The odd thing is that the estimated number of Illegal Sales of ingame currency (Read: Chinese Farmer selling to players) in EVE is almost 200% less then other games (Dont remember where I read it, some article on Cnet or IGN, meh).
Basically this is because the developer offers such services as legal trading. So most players are not willing to take the risk of doing the illegal thing if theres a perfectly legal way of doing it.
Hell, back in WoW, i bought gold. IF there had been a legal way to do it through blizzard (In such a fashion that didnt mean the money was just being created) then i would have had no reason to buy gold.

So it cuts down on gold sellers in the game which keeps the players safer as most of those sites are ripe with virus's or spyware that arent all that friendly.

Meh i support it.
And i understand why others have apprehensions about it, but from my experience in EVE, it works.

~Vac

As a player of EVE I have to say that this system works perfectly. EVE is probably the best MMO you can play and the economy of the game is brilliant, fully player driven and complex/on the real world level . It might be wise for developers of Fallout MMO to learn from CCP.

Fallout MMO would own as long as gamesas made it. They wouldnt fumble it around and screw it all up. It would be are beloved dark, gritty, bloody and just plain crazy post-apocalyptic world we all adore.

Glad to see another eve player here.

As for real money/ingame money trading.
In reference to it being controlled and regulated by the developer..

One odd thing about CCP is that they actually have an economist on staff to help regulate things that need regulating. One being the trade values (To some extent) of real money/ingame money via the methods described above (So theres no money appearing, just changing hands).

I will say this. A developer controled way of trading real money for ingame money where the ingame money is POOFed into existance is BAD, i will agree on that. But where they simply enable players to trade the two commedities which simply makes the ingame money change hands is another level of a player driven market actually.


Uh yeh no offense, thats awfuly simplistic.
There are many problems facing gamesas and we were trying to discuss them.
Blind faith is bad. Faith is good. Mkay?

~Vac

Well, we all have to remember that without selling the Fallout name to Bethesda gamesas (My Favorite Game Company) woulden't be here right now... so I'm just happy that gamesas is back!

Your optimism is certainly refreshing but frankly I don't share it.

Everything that makes an MMO work seems to go against what makes Fallout work.

Unless you want an MMO full of soloers and loners, killing each other for ammo on sight, then well.. what do you have? You get a classic diku-derivative that is party based versus enemy AI, sometimes on a large scale such as raids and maybe some PvP 'mini-games' ala WoW.

So unless they recreate Ultima Online circa 1999 (and frankly at the cost this project will be that is not feasible) then no matter what they do it just won't feel like Fallout did. Not to mention that large scale big-budget MMOs will never work as turn-based leading to yet another deviation to the core Fallout experience.

We will end up with Fallout Tactics: Online at best and FallWoW at worst.

But maybe I am just being a pessimist.

Meh i think everyone shares a healthy does of pessimism with a fallout MMO.
Not because they dont want one, cause god do they ever, but because many folks understand the challenges of bringing the things that made Fallout work..into an MMO.
I trully hope gamesas pulls it off, but i do understand (somewhat atleast) what they have ahead of them.

~Vac