D&D Video Gaming News - Hasbro sues for breach of contact by Atari

[MrMyth]

Why would anyone make a D&D game anyway now?

Because many fans of the game would thoroughly enjoy a 4E CRPG.

4E doesn't have any fluff at all and the setting many people are used to were completely destroyed. It doesn't offer any advantages besides the D&D name.

Except for the fantastic fluff of the core setting, which could easily set the stage for a CRPG set in the Nentir Vale. As well as having rewarding settings to use like Eberron - almost universally agreed to be a big success for 4E - and Forgotten Realms - which, however much some might complain about it, has proven a solid launching point for the incredibly successful Living Forgotten Realms.

And as disadvantages you have Hasbro/WotC meddleing with the development. Not to mention that the 4E combat system is hard to do in a real time way.

I think you'll need to expand on 'WotC meddling with development' before it becomes a real complaint. As for the difficulty of the system, there were also many who felt the same about 3rd - yet it was doable. I'm relatively confident that there are a variety of ways to smoothly map the 4E system onto a video game.

So, why go through all this trouble when you instead can make your own setting or just license some russian fantasy book (which costs much less)?

Because of the incredible success of NWN and other previous CRPGs?

 

[Shemeska]

Except for the fantastic fluff of the core setting, which could easily set the stage for a CRPG set in the Nentir Vale. As well as having rewarding settings to use like Eberron - almost universally agreed to be a big success for 4E - and Forgotten Realms - which, however much some might complain about it, has proven a solid launching point for the incredibly successful Living Forgotten Realms.

Well, umm, you're certainly entitled to your opinion on such things.

Assuming that the legal stuff is ironed out in time for actual development of a 4e game to be completed prior to 4.5e or anything else coming along from WotC, some settings would be better than others. FR would be ideal in that there are a whole slew of widely popular and acclaimed games set there like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and NWN... except you seriously run the risk of a total flop if you relied on people liking and recognizing that setting for a CRPG if you use the 4e Realms which radically changed massive amounts of the world's flavor and atmosphere - and wasn't Neverwinter totally destroyed with little comment of why or how? That sort of precludes a NWN 3.

Looking at Eberron it might work better in that regard since its transition was handled in the aftermath of fan reaction to the Realms, and its changes were nowhere near the radical nature of 4e FRs (no time jump, less retcons, half the world didn't vanish to make way for 4e unique stuff, etc). Except Eberron might not be as well known outside of tabletop players, and the previous Eberron CRPGs haven't exactly hit the same success as FR-based or Greyhawk-based games.

And the core 4e pseudo-setting, I'm not sure if enough people outside of active 4e players know anything about it to really have it as a selling point.

I think WotC may have done some damage to their IP by some of the 4e changes w/ regards to future ability to translate those so affected into CRPGs.

 

[Teemu]

I think some of you are overestimating how much the average person who likes video game RPGs cares about the changes in 4e Realms. As long as it's got the name and it's "fantasy", it's practically the same as before, in their eyes.

A 4e Baldur's Gate game would get positive attention simply because of the name alone. Spellscars or earth motes or whatever are really not a big deal for people with only casual interest in the setting itself, and those people would be the ones interested in the game.

 

[Derren]

A 4e Baldur's Gate game would get positive attention simply because of the name alone.

And a lot of critique because its not "Baldurs Gate" (different system).

4E is a different system, so it needs a different franchise. You will loose more people by "violating" a traditional name when you use it with 4E than you would gain.
And as 4E is fluff-less there isn't much to build on. FR was totally changed and Eberron is unknown in the VG world (or rather, is a bad name because of DDO and Dragonshard).

There is absolutely no reason why to use 4E instead of creating your own IP (or licensing a cheaper novel one). That way the VG publisher has much more control over it and is no slave to Hasbro/WotC.

 

[Amadeus Windfall]

There is absolutely no reason why to use 4E instead of creating your own IP (or licensing a cheaper novel one).

People recognise the D&D name, and it provides a basic system to program in rather than leaving you needing to come up with it all from scratch. Strikes me as a pretty good reason. There's no less reason to licence 4e than any previous edition of D&D, yet there's been tons of D&D video games over the years.

 

[MrMyth]

And a lot of critique because its not "Baldurs Gate" (different system).

Yeah, I do recall how Baldur's Gate and NWN bombed because they weren't the same system as the old SSI Gold Box games, or the old NWN online game... or, alternatively, that never happened.

Similarly, if a new Planescape game came out right this moment, and had all the flavor and story and excellence of Planescape: Torment (an impossible task, I know, but bear with me for a moment)... do you really think people would hate it because it wasn't using 2nd Ed rules?

Seriously, these games didn't rely on players being attached to one specific system in order to find an audience. People played because it was D&D. That remains true. And if the game itself is good, they will be happy with it, rather than distressed over it being different than a game from a decade ago.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to convince you of anything - especially given your continual claims that 4E has no fluff whatsoever, in complete denial of the actual books themselves. But I'm confident a 4E CRPG will come along eventually, and absolutely nothing you've predicted about it will in any way hold true.

 

[AllisterH]

Derren and Shemeska complaining about 4e fluff?

Well isn't that a surprise. Geez, I know you guys hate it with a passion, but there are people here who actually like the changes to the fluff of the setting(s).

As for the fluff itself and videogame players being turned off, doubtful since as mentioned, most videogame fans only are looking for "surface" similarities.

(Waterdeep for example is pretty much the same as it was in 1e and many of the other games are set into dungeons so I'm not sure how much of a big deal this is.)

I do agree with one point Derren makes. And that is a lot of companies wish to have total control over their IP. Every videogame company is looking for that one IP (God of War, Dragon Age, Infamous) that they can then leverage in different formats and ride the gravy train.

That said, a KNOWN IP has one major advantage. Inbuilt audience. An unknown IP is a risky venture and using a known quantity helps immensely (ex: In videogame circlees/websites there are arguments as to whether Arkham Asylum is a new IP - personally I think not since without Batman and Joker, the game simply wouldn't be as well loved)

What I think Hasbro should do is look for the next Bioware. A small development house that is hungry and wants to get its name out there in the public and the D&D license would be one sure way to make some sort of headway against the rest.

Hasbro announces that the Baldur's Gate/D&D license is up for grabs and it will be innudated by developers wanting to become the next Bioware.

(BTW, what's wrong with DDO? Since they went to the micro-transaction model, they significantly increased their userbase (since the switch, they've actually gotten had to get 2 new servers to handle the load Personally, not my cup of tea but it seems to be decent)

 

[Turtlejay]

There are *a lot* of turn based RPG-type games for the DS. If somone managed to put out a quality one with the D&D name on it, the good reviews and the D&D name should be enough to make it a good seller. I don't see turn based games like that coming back to the PC anytime soon. . .maybe if you tried something like Heroes of Might and Magic?

I am all for a turn based D&D game, 4e would work, but would really have to be dumbed down. So many of the powers would stop the action with their decisions about where to push, who to hit, who gets the bonus, where to move, when to shift, blah blah...

Just like they changed 3.5 to fit into CRPG's, if you do it well enough, folks will still play and like it.

Jay

 

[jeffh]

As for the "turn-based won't sell" meme, as far as I can see that's a notion that has somehow gotten into the heads of decision-makers at vg companies despite a complete lack of empirical support. It's at best an untested theory. A lot of people pounced on the relative failure of Temple of Elemental Evil as "proof" of this, but that was an incredibly buggy, poorly paced game and I tend to blame its relative lack of success on those factors. (It's also still selling, which is more than can be said for most "successful" games its age.)

 

[Thistonius]

I'm hoping that everyone who is talking on here knows that all of the D&D rpg games, aside from DDO, were all turn based beneath the real-time exterior? You just tapped the space bar to pause the action so you could issue commands when that character initiative turned up, just like in PnP D&D.

As for DnD Turn based games, where you could only act on that characters initiative, not selling well, so Secret of the SIlver blades, Pools of Radiance and knights of Krynn, to name a few, didn't sell well then? I think some people might have to go and take a look at the sales of those games and the people who worked on them and where they are now. Yes, some are at bioware, Obsidian and blizzard today.

To the people who say that 4E is going to put people off playing it as a VG, that is your opinion, but if you are stating it as a fact, please can you direct us to that resource so we can see for ourseleves. Thanks

Thisto