This may sound like a simple question, but it isn't.

Who is gamesas now (in 2008), with the departures of all development members, all management, all executives, etc, from the original company (I specifically leave out Chris, who left and now apparently has returned)? The company imploded in the early 2000's, including being evicted from its offices in 2004 and being shut down by the state of California for non-payment of employee benefits. Whatever wheeling and dealing has been done over the last 4 years has been done by the Caen brothers and their "associates" (the Titus founders who seized control of the original IPLY from Brian Fargo back in the late '90s) who continue to pay themselves gigantic salaries despite having no company to run (Herve Caen was paying himself $460,000 per year to manage an empty office). All of this is public information, and the stock is still traded publicly (over the board), though with cumulative losses of $120,000,000 in shareholder's equity over the last decade, there probably aren't many shareholders who care.

A year or two back Titus was forced into bankruptcy, and apparently some investment company in Luxemburg bought 56% of gamesas's outstanding common stock for $159,000. With negative cash flow of around $2 million per year, I can't figure out how this skeleton stays bobbing around with news of "games in development", etc. Many/most/all of their professional services are being paid for with stock warrants, as are the development deals that I can unearth. Feels to me like an empty bag with a lot of smoke and mirrors.

So who are these guys?

Jason D. Anderson from the original Fallout team and co-founder of Troika is also on the development staff as creative director for an unannounced MMO (gamesas has the rights to a Fallout MMO, and while its not official, it's a safe bet that that's what they're making)

As far as how they've stayed afloat: 6 million from Bethesda Softworks for the Fallout license went a long way I'm sure. They are also selling most of their classic games (except for D&D ones unfortunately, those rights are with Atari now) on the Good Old Games digital download service, and a few titles on Wii Virtual Console.

EDIT: Also, for a long time before this new site was launched they had an "Investor Relations" link on their nearly blank site which showed a little spiel about their goal to make an MMO, citing that their goal was to raise 75 million for the project. With all the pre-release hype and now post release critical praise and sales figures of Fallout 3, I imagine they have met this goal.

This is a very good question, one i still cant find a real answer too, great news that gamesas are back with us but are they the for gamers by gamers we loved? Between owing Bethesda royalties for the upcoming mmo (unconfirmed) and the amount of their own company they don't seem to be owning, how much artist license do these guys have? For the sorry state pc gaming is currently in, i hope lots.

A clear answer for us would be a god send, i dont know about anyone else but when i read the news that gamesas went under the first time I couldn't believe it to be true, when i heard about the IP being sold off.. I'd rather not remember.

Between owing Bethesda royalties for the upcoming mmo (unconfirmed)

It's true, 12% goes to Bethsoft.

Seems like a lot but then again if gamesas pulls this thing off and only manages 100,000 subscribers (about 10% of their goal stated in a presentation I read awhile ago) they still go from almost no cash flow to about 1.3 million a month (based on a $15 a month subscription fee), not to mention box sales. That would make their stock explode and hopefully allow for some other great games and IP resurrections.

I had a dream, nay a vision! I was walking through a gamestop and lo' ! There were Black Isle RPG's sitting on a shelf between The Sims 17: The Septuagenarians! and Crysis 5: The Shootining. Haha, a guy can hope right?

Around 1 million is quite the goal, I hope for gamesass sake they reach it, they'll definitely have at least one sale right here, I just wonder if anyone can even look at an mmo in four years time. Also to the point that you started seeing black isle games in stores again does this mean they have put all the old games back out there to be bought? Ive been searching for a copy of icewind dale for a few months now.

Unless the internet implodes I think the market for MMOs is only going to increase. Potential users are going to expand as well with the increase of availability for broadband. I think the whole "wow-killer" thing is a myth, I don't think MMOs are even necessarily competing with wow. Most MMO players I know have multiple game account subscriptions going even if they're not actively playing them all.

I don't know what Warhammer is up to now but I read they had around 500,000 subscribers in their first couple weeks. gamesas's goal was 1 million in the first year. WoW is up to like what? 10 millionish or something insane like that. It's pretty amusing to think more people live in Azeroth than in many small countries

You can get new copies of Icewind Dale on amazon.com, you could also check ebay.

To be fair, WoW had blizzards initial repuation of starcraft, warcraft and diablo which spanned millions of players already, also making the game quite simplistic they opened the gate for the more casual gamer, something gamesass rpgs are not known for, thank god i might add.
Warhammer itself had the RvR tm to go on and thus attracted a ton of ex daoc players, a lot of wow players (which wow reports 60% of them coming back to wow after WAR) and the odd warhammer gamer.
So as to take back my previous arguments i'm going to have to agree with you, solely on the base that fallout online, to begin with, will be riding on fallout 3 and 4, its sad but true, the problem then stands what are all these players going to do when its nothing like their beloved fo3 and 4 (or what will some of us do if it is hehehe) The problems of mmo have been attributed not as attracting new players but keeping them, here's where we come to the problem of gamesas, the games it makes are too good, Its that simple. For some odd reason people want bad games, and developers want to make bad games (this is a huge generalization in in some cases of course, wrong), it generates money, and in this day and age thats what a lot of people think a game is, a way to make money.

What im getting at here is, in order to hit the one million mark they have to do two things, cater to the average mmo gamer of today and keep them. This isnt usually gamesass style so if they are making the game in their old style and knowingly that its possible their entire financial future rests on the game they must be pretty damn sure this is going to be THE mmo that changes everything because as it stands they seem to be in the same waters flagship studios were swimming in not too long ago. I may sound cynical but only because I want gamesas to succeed and i don't want to pile my hopes into them just to have the crushed once again, I don't console game, gamesas have made a huge contribution to my gaming past and i hope they make an even bigger one to my future.

Also thanks for the tip on where to find icewind dale, I shall be getting that in the mail this week =D

I read that statistic about WAR players going back to WoW as well. Those stats don't mean that much to WAR though, as it only means they reactivated their WoW accounts, not that they canceled their WAR accounts. Also, that was 60% of people who actually filled that form out when quiting so it means even less. When I quit I put "I prefer trampolines"

Now if FOOL turns out to be more like the originals I would hope that people coming from having only played fallout 3 or 4 (if its out by then) would have the same reaction as most reviewers of FO3 who played the originals have had. "It's definitely different, but still a solid game"

Retaining players is definitely the key to success, and I think if there's one thing these guys know it's how to make a game with longevity. Did anyone see that Vampire TM: Bloodlines was in both steam and D2D's top 10 sellers just the other week? Argh, Too bad it's so long after it could have kept Troika around. And the Fallout trilogy is still selling. Good game design will keep people interested. Many of us are still playing gamesas and Troika single-player games that are 5 or more years old, imagine that kind of hold on people applied to an MMO.

Another thing to consider is that even though some MMO's that have come out and then seemingly dropped off the radar after a couple weeks aren't necessarily failures. Even if they don't have millions of subscribers, that doesn't mean they aren't profitable. To use WAR as an example again: Say they don't sell anymore copies, and everybody who bought it only paid for one month. Thats still 32.5 mil (65 x 500k) in what two months since release? That figure is a bit inflated as it uses retail box sales instead of wholesale prices, but still it looks as though they'll be turning a tidy profit in a few more months (no idea what their development costs were)

Gad, enough ranting, I feel like I'm a volunteer marketer for gamesas, damn fanboism Project V13's success may be a blind shot down a dark alley but I'm hoping for a natural 20 (ever see that bumper sticker / t-shirt? "Gamers do it on a natural 20" )

I want to believe, and do my part to help gamesas get there. So for that I've been buying gamesas games off Good Old Games' website. I suggest if you want to help to do the same.

As far as who's in the company now and what they're doing, I'm afraid I can't be of much help. The most noteable name I see is Chris Taylor, because I'm very familiar with his work.

At this point I just hope gamesas reaches their needs to keep the mmo license going. And based on what I've seen, played, and felt, I'm sure there are at least 10's of thousands of fans that would buy the mmo, no questions asked. But saying that, it would have to be special (pun intended) to keep us there, because as much as we like the company in question, an mmo has to be solid to retain gamers' attention.

I hope for the best!
-Cym

.......Totally irrelevant in this forum. I've read that article most probably a scam. Besides Jagex can easily trace RWT so don't bother. Again if you wan't to talk about RS there's a TRUCK LOAD of RS fansites.

I had a dream, nay a vision! I was walking through a gamestop and lo' ! There were Black Isle RPG's sitting on a shelf between The Sims 17: The Septuagenarians! and Crysis 5: The Shootining. Haha, a guy can hope right?

Sims 17??? Sims 3 is even still coming and its been what 5, 6 years since Sims original release? Although Crysis 5 is acceptable and BIS closed down and formed Obsidian Entertainment but hey a guy can dream

Who is gamesas? Check the internet.

and BIS closed down and formed Obsidian Entertainment but hey a guy can dream

Black Isle was just gamesas's name for it's RPG dev studio. A couple folks who worked for gamesas went to Obsidian, but gamesas still has the Black Isle name. (if you go to http://www.blackisle.com it redirects you here) So if in the future gamesas puts out an RPG, I'm betting they'll slap that logo on there.

Black Isle was just gamesas's name for it's RPG dev studio. A couple folks who worked for gamesas went to Obsidian, but gamesas still has the Black Isle name. (if you go to http://www.blackisle.com it redirects you here) So if in the future gamesas puts out an RPG, I'm betting they'll slap that logo on there.

Black Isle name brings great deal of nostaliga on my shoulders... And the gamesas logo with the golden globe with that music while the globe rotates and gamesas name fades... The Sarmatians