Feargus Urquhart, Fallout 3?

On the Black Isle Studio forums, the fearless leader of the company, Feargus Urquhart, has addressed many current issues that BIS now faces. Especially check out the part at the end, which may be excruciatingly good news:

Well there is a whole bunch of stuff in this thread to respond to, and I’ll try to respond to some of it.

1) Slow Message Board – Well, I’ll have to apologize on this one, I have been meaning to be up here almost every day, but I’ve failed this week. Things were very hectic on the business side of my job this week, and was just not in my office that much. And when I was at home I have to confess that I was playing Dark Age of Camelot.

2) Letting Talented People go – For anyone that has had to manage a lay off and plans to continue running a company, division or department, there is a very simple equation to follow when you lay people off. You lay people off that are not performing, are junior, or are not needed with what you are currently doing. One of those things apply to everyone that has been laid off or left lack Isle in the last six months, except for one person – Jim Gardner. I understand that some of you may have an opinion of the people that were let go, but I am the one that managed them for anything from one year to five years. Ultimately, it makes no sense for me to lay people off that are important to the future success of Black Isle. That would just be plain dumb.

3) Products in Development – Black Isle released Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster this year, and currently has two unannounced projects in development. We are also working on two projects externally with developers. So, we are doing things.

4) Sequels – There are a lot of debates externally and internally about Black Isle doing sequels. While I can not deny that we have fallen back on sequels in times of trouble, one of big things about CRPGs is the long string of sequels. The way I look at it is that everyone time we look to start a new product, we consider many different options. These options are tempered by the people, technology, and time we have available. The one thing I can say is that I think a lot of people do want us to continue the product lines we have started like Fallout, IWD, and Torment – possibly not DTU though.

5) Fallout 3 – You guys don’t have to convince us to make it. It is what we want to do. I will hopefully have more to say on this early in the new year – and this is not just to put you all off.

6) Swimming, Close the Circle, Faith Comment – I’m not really sure I understood this one Grommy. However, we are not asking you guys to hold on, or to hope for things that might not happen. Everyone in Black Isle is working on projects that we belive will be released. To us, the only hope is that Interplay stays above water and lets us continue to do what we do. However, even if Interplay were to disolve, I assume that another publisher would pick up Black Isle and we would continue doing what we love to do. I try to look at all of this as pragmatically as possible and create an environment that allows the talent that Black Isle has to make the games that you all enjoy playing.

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Feargus Urquhart
President
Black Isle Studios