Frictionless Insight on Interplay

[Saint_Proverbius]

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<a href="http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/">Frictionless Insight</a> has posted a tiny little <a href="http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/Arti ... article</a> about the history of <A href="http://interplay.com">Interplay</a> going back to 1983 at one point. Here's a slice:<br><br><blockquote>Interplay was founded in 1983 by Brian Fargo, who resigned as Chairman of the Board of Directors on January 7th, 2002. His resignation came in the wake of attempts to sell the company; a conflict with BioWare Corp. over Neverwinter Nights; and a power struggle with Titus Interactive. Interplay’s problems can be divided into money problems and control problems. Amidst the turmoil, Interplay only released ten titles in 2001, compared with 32 titles in 2000. Like many companies, Interplay kept little cash on hand, and relied on credit agreements and revenue from game sales to operate. With fewer titles shipping, and problems with their credit agreements, Interplay had to find sources of cash and ways to cut costs.<br><br>Some projects were cut entirely. Interplay had to recognize $8.1 million as a loss because of cancelled projects, including the aforementioned TORN. Neverwinter Nights, of course, survived with Infogrames as publisher. That arrangement not only ended the dispute between BioWare and Interplay, but reportedly Interplay received some compensation for the exchange. Interplay gave the rights to publish their games to Vivendi, in return for a $13.5 million dollar advance. That means that Vivendi paid Interplay $13.5 million that could be used for ongoing operations, hoping to collect that amount from Interplay’s cut of future sales. As of December 31st, 2001, Vivendi had recouped $3.4 million of that advance.</blockquote><br><br>It's funny they mention that <b>Fargo</b>'s split with <A href="http://interplay.com/">Interplay</a> was on friendly terms in the article, considering <b>Herve Caen</b> sent <a href="http://interplay.com">Interplay</a>'s lawyers after him for trying to compete with the software company. That doesn't sound like a warm handshake to me.<br><br>This was spotted over at <A href="http://ve3d.com/">VoodooExtreme</a>.