Bathesda to publish Rage

[Combine Hybrid]

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/12/15/rage-will-be-published-by-bethesda-ea-out-of-the-picture/

EA is out of picture.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Saw that, I'd say that's good news. Particularly considering the relative lack of competition in the game publishing world.

 

[Kadayi]

I think it's more a case of EA dropped the publishing rights (there would of been a contract, they had to have agreed to terminate for Bethesda to declare that they were going ahead with this). Probably because they realised that RAGE is likely to tank when it comes to market as it's little more than a shiny graphics bauble, rather than a game that's going to score well. Plus as there is no likelihood of rights to publish a sequel why bother spending money on promoting it?

RAGE = Tech demo for a game engine no other developer will likely touch

This mega texture technology that Carmack has come up with is great on paper but for one major problem; it doesn't support day/night cycles. Effectively it only creates static environments . Great if you're making a game like Dragon Age where in wherever your character goes the day/night cycle is determined and the game world is not open world, however not so great if you want flexibility. I'd say most developers would choose flexibility in their engines.

Vs Borderlands or even Fallout 3, RAGE will certainly win the graphical plaudits, but the game play options are clearly going to be much narrower, and I think it will suffer as a result of that. As we've seen from the footage clearly there is an RPG element to it, but I don't think it's going to compare favourably to those that have come before it given it's both SP & not open world.

 

[kupocake]

it's little more than a shiny graphics bauble, rather than a game that's going to score well.

What? Clearly I missed the announcement that reviewers and gamers alike were going to start boycotting games shit games that look great, breaking with thirty years of established tradition. Being shiny and stupid never stopped an ID game selling well enough before. They're game developments' Tarentino. They can do what they **** they like because they're guaranteed to at least break even on the name alone.

 

[Kadayi]

They're game developments' Tarentino. They can do what they **** they like because they're guaranteed to at least break even on the name alone.

I hate to burst your bubble but people don't get bought out unless they have to in order to survive. ID haven't shipped a financially winning game for years and simply breaking even isn't enough in an industry where in development teams are consistently getting bigger and bigger, in order to develop grander games. Carmack pretty much admitted when the merger happened that they needed to fully align with a publisher in order to survive as a viable development studio in the long term & Zenimax offered them the best terms. This idea that Carmack sleeps on an endless mattress of cash is somewhat mistaken.

But, but, but Kadayi Doom 3 sold 3.5 million units!!! surely that's a wad of cash? You'se is soo wrong

3.5 million units over 5 years. So firstly not every unit sold for £30 or $60, some of those sales were probably for £5 or $10. Secondly half that money goes straight to the retailer. Thirdly then your publisher get's their cut, then the tax man, plus you've got to pay your staff, pay for your studio and cover your day to day.

Where I work were about 100 strong and on average it costs the company about 650K a month just to keep running in terms of overheads & wages. Albeit Id is smaller in number of staff I expect their wage bill is probably comparable & their overheads are probably a lot higher. So at a conservative estimate I'd say they probably burn though $7-8 million in running costs a year.

Back in the days of Quake there was money to be made by licensing the engine tech to other development houses, however Unreal have pretty much sewn up that end of the market, and the D3 engine wholly failed to capture developers imaginations. With it's extremely limited scope it's unlikely that Tech 5 is going to change that situation.

RAGE falls into that uncomfortable territory of a game that is probably neither shootery enough for shooter fans, or RPGy enough for RPG fans and there in lies the problem for it.

Back before it released everyone thought that Brütal Legend was going to be stellar because Tim Schafer is one of the funniest men in gaming, Psychonauts was ace, Jack Black was a high profile name and EA poured a tonne of money into promoting it. The uncomfortable truth is, most gamers don't give a shit about 70s heavy metal and it tanked badly at release. In EAs mind RAGE probably might well do the same.

 

[Asknoone]

Better EA than Bethesda.

 

[kupocake]

Brütal Legend [...] Psychonauts

I can hardly believe I'm seeing an example of financial forecasting up the creak using Double Fine as an example. Tim Schaefer probably wouldn't have even attained a reputation if Psychonauts hadn't been met with the legendary tomb of apathy it was consigned to.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

I thought psychonauts was vastly overrated anyway >_>

but yeah I can't say i am bothered about this news and it really only highlights the perspective of what EA and bethesda are aiming for.
Bethesda: more fallout looking games
EA: bigger devotion to its key franchises (MoH, battlefield, dead space etc)

This makes no difference on the game right? Can't say I cared bout this gameanyway (and 2010 is way too crowded already) :| last game id made themselves was doom 3 and it was crap. What was their last game before that?

 

[Kadayi]

I can hardly believe I'm seeing an example of financial forecasting up the creak using Double Fine as an example. Tim Schaefer probably wouldn't have even attained a reputation if Psychonauts hadn't been met with the legendary tomb of apathy it was consigned to.

My point is that EA more than anything right now need to be seen to be backing winning horses with a future from the perspective of shareholder confidence. I'm not sure how much you follow the gaming scene in terms of sales etc, but despite a few wins of late (Sims 3, DA: O, retail L4D2) EA are struggling at present, thus the closing down of under performing studios like Pandemic and the releasing of a lot of staff across the board. As CEO John Riccitiello seems to have set EA on a much better course in terms of the quality and standard of their products, but without some future big wins in the next year, he might well find himself ousted or someone like Microsoft might well come in and buy EA up (and given M$ have very little interest in supporting the PC over the 360, that would be a very bad thing for us PC gamers).

Yes as an Id game RAGE has a certain profile in terms of cache, but there are pros and cons to that in that people are going to be much more critical in their assessment of it, and personally I'm suspecting it's going to be a Deathproof Vs a Pulp Fiction in terms of reception.

 

[VirusType2]

Might as well put these videos up. I don't remember seeing them before.

From 2007. There was some debate from looking at the screenshots whether the clouds move, but you can see here they do. There's pretty impressive detail even when you zoom all the way in on something as small as a pebble. The narrator explains that you can get out of your vehicle anywhere and explore on foot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=219ohJZd8dI

the biggest thing about RAGE, and the thing that makes it new and exciting for me as a designer is that this is the first new IP that we make in id Software for over 10 years.

Full interview (September 10th, 2009):
http://ragegame.net/35/new-rage-game-interview#more-35