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(re: re: Which games are now public domain?)
More news about Vivendi… looks like they might keep the game division now?
Vivendi Signs Tie-Up with Game Developer Radical
Tue February 10, 2004 12:23 PM ETBy Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The video game arm of Vivendi Universal, redoubling its production efforts under a new management team, on Tuesday said it had signed an exclusive deal with developers Radical Entertainment that includes the right to buy the privately held firm.
Vivendi Universal Games said Radical would develop six multi-platform titles based on new and existing franchises. It will have the right to buy Radical at any time during the deal.
Radical most recently developed “The Simpsons: Hit & Run” for VU Games; that title was released last September and has sold nearly 2 million units.
Radical, founded in 1991, has more than 200 employees and is best known for sports and action games.
In mid-January, Vivendi, which had been seeking to sell its video game arm, brought in a new management team to the unit, installing Bruce Hack as chief executive. Hack, formerly vice chairman of Universal Music, was instrumental in negotiating the sale of Vivendi Universal Entertainment to NBC.
Hack has said that Vivendi is now committed to both keeping the game unit and investing in it to foster growth.
Luc Vanhal, North American president and chief operating officer for VU Games, told Reuters the Radical deal was the first sign of the company’s renewed commitment.
“We want to be successful by bringing our key development in-house,” Vanhal said. “This is for us hopefully the start of a new beginning.”
Vanhal said one of the most important elements of the deal was Radical’s four teams developing console games. Most of VU Games’ internal development is focused on the PC.
“We think this is a great partner. …we consider this an engagement prior to a marriage,” he said.
The first game under the deal, Vanhal said, is likely to be a “Hulk” sequel for 2005. All six games, he said, should be out over the next three years.
(re: re: re: re: Why not DVD) My apologies for not being clear, and for perhaps misunderstanding your original question…
I have always been interested in developing games for standard consumer DVD players, but strictly because the market is so large (and the competition so non-existent). The interactivity would be limited, but there are games that could be done through using the menu-ing system. Some games have been done though doing this, but I have no idea how well they sold.
If your original question had to do with the DVD players that are in computers, then that is a different issue. To a programmer, it would look like a CD drive with enormous capacity. Generally, games aren’t limited by what fits on a CD (or, at least they weren’t in my day). I haven’t seen the stats on what the household penetration of DVD drives is — but, doubt that they are pervasive enough to make economically feasible shipping a game that required a DVD drive.
-Ken W(re: re: re: Why not DVD)
I think there’s a misunderstanding here :).
Ken is probably referring to a game on a standalone DVD-player (like in your living room), which ofcourse, only has a limited set of options. Think of the ‘interactive menu’ system used nowadays in many DVD blockbuster movies.
I guess you were referring to the fact that developers just started to begin using the dvd-rom system to store their games on (in combination with pc’s)?
(re: re: Why not DVD)
Not very smart? I just assumed they did everything a cd-player could, but just held more data.
(re: Why not DVD) I remember pushing for this inside Sierra — especially with our “You don’t know Jack” product. Had I stayed at Sierra, we would have tested the water for a DVD game.
DVD players aren’t very smart, and the kinds of games you could do are limited — but, the market is HUGE, and those games that could be done would look incredible.
-Ken W(re: Which games are now public domain?)
Emily is right. Betrayal at Krondor was released for free, the 10 meg download version, on Sierra’s website, presumably to promote the upcoming Betrayal in Antara. This is at the same time that Sierra had that underwater shark screensaver for free on their website (which incidentally never worked on my computer).
(re: re: re: Which games are now public domain?) I did manage to get through to one of their top people. It would be better for me not to comment on the discussions until I see where they go – so, for now, I’ll refrain from further comment on this topic. I’ll post an update when I know more….
Ken, I hope I speak for others when I say that no matter how small a step this may be … it makes some of us wet our pants.
It seems kind of strange that these games have stuck with me for so many years. It has been 20 years or so since I was introduced to King’s Quest. It’s not right that games stick with you for that long. 🙂
Anyway, it’s exciting to think that you might be able to help out what was once a great company (that must have been painful for you to watch go down). We’ll all keep our fingers crossed, and hope that you can slap some sense into them. I have to go change my pants now.(re: re: re: Sierra Uniform)
If I remember correctly, I was able to snag them off of Ebay like you were able to. Do you remember who the seller was?
-Brad
(re: re: Which games are now public domain?) I’m not sure how I could (or, even if I could) help Sierra if I were involved today.
I did manage to get through to one of their top people. It would be better for me not to comment on the discussions until I see where they go – so, for now, I’ll refrain from further comment on this topic. I’ll post an update when I know more….
-Ken W(re: Which games are now public domain?)
oh ok
Ken, what kind of help are you referring to? Cause if it means that you’ll offer help with maybe Sierra bringing back some old classics and say continuing them with you and Roberta’s help then that would be great!!
Sierra could currently use a good boost right now, it really has gone majorly downhill lately.
(re: re: Sierra Uniform)
Brad,
It does match the description you gave! I’d really like to have a really old one, but, alas! Where did you get yours?
Thanks for your time!
(re: Which games are now public domain?)
Ken,
> Alas, happy endings and Sierra don’t always seem to go
> hand-in-hand. Monsieur Messier had his own scandal
> brewing. I have since forgotten what the scandal was, but
> the bottom line was that Vivendi stock crashed, and Mr.
> Messier was tossed out.He was victim of the Internet and mobile phones crash. When he became CEO of once was “Générale des Eaux”, he transformed what was a century-old National water company into a modern new-technology and communication company, progressively buying successful smaller companies. Havas was one of them, although it was already a very big company. Other companies included Canal + (a French pay-TV that finance most of the French movies), and Cegetel, which includes the second French mobile phone company, SFR. After renaming the company to Vivendi, he made it merge with Universal roughly at the time the IT stock exchange crashed. Most of the newly-acquired companies did poorly the following year, and Mr Messier was laid off as a result. It also happened to the CEO (Michel Bon) of the French first telephone and mobile phone company, France Telecom.
On the matter of you helping VU Games, I would suggest to use what Vivendi still holds, and more precisely SFR, the mobile phone company. When Vivendi merged with Universal, the mother company decided to sell music from the Universal catalogue to SFR users. I think this did quite well, but I do not think this has really been done with the VU Games catalogue, although the market is really heading towards mobile phone games. I would imagine that games like Gobliiins or Dr. Brain could be very fun to play on mobile phones, and quite easy to port. Even Powerchess could be resurected on mobiles phones.
Of course, I suppose no one could possibly listen to me at Vivendi, but I’m sure you can be taken very seriously if they ever want to listen to you. Sierra glory restoration would be very welcome, and I’m sure many fans would like to see it.Also, BTW, maybe my older post about imaging your collection of games was pushed too far when you were hard at work finishing the new version of your software. I have to add that it seems to be quite complicated to properly configure a machine for Disk2FDI, so I could be of help for this, at least. In any case, you said you wouldn’t come to Seattle before May, so we have some time.
Vincent.
(re: Sierra Uniform) Rygar,
Does the shirt have a collar, short sleeves, and 3 buttons at the neck? I have the same one I think. I am guessing around the 94-95 time period – but that is just off the top of my head. I also have two purple shirts, that have Yosemite on them, and the Sierra logo with the “curved” “S” note sure what time period, but probably more recent than 95. I’ll have to do some research.
-Brad(Which games are now public domain?)
And for those of us who skipped French Class to play games like King’s Quest, who would like to follow along with the founder of said game, the internet provides us with a very useful tool. http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr Instant French. -Brad
(Which games are now public domain?) Vincent:
Je vous ai compris sans problème, mais, comme vous m’avez suggéré…
So that all the non-french speakers can keep up, I’ll continue in english, and begin by explaining what we are talking about…
Sierra couldn’t have had worse luck post-acquisition. In 1996, Sierra was acquired by a company called CUC. About a year after the acquisition, CUC merged with another company called HFS to become Cendant. Shortly after that merger, it was discovered that CUC had been cooking its books for over five years, and had fabricated 500 million or so in profits. This wiped out much of the value of Cendant stock, and triggered both civil and criminal litigation which continues to this day. Many people who had worked with me for 10-20 years at Sierra were wiped out by this disaster. Roberta and I also lost a ton of money to this fraud, and sincerely hope that the culpable parties rot in jail for many decades to come.
After the crash, Cendant decided that the software business, which consisted of a consolidation of Sierra, Blizzard and Davidson, would be sold off to a french company called Havas. What had previously been called Cendant Software was renamed to Havas Interactive.
Havas was a subsidiary of a giant megacorporation called Vivendi. I was long gone by the time of the sale of Sierra to Vivendi, and never personally met anyone from Vivendi. I did receive a small amount of news though. My brother was still working for Sierra, in a senior marketing position. Also, Sierra’s corporate offices in Europe were located in Versailles, just outside of Paris. Much of Sierra’s revenues came from Europe (nearly half) and the management in our French office was very strong. Through my brother, and from my former collegues in France, I would hear from time to time about life under Vivendi.
Sometime after acquiring Sierra, Vivendi also acquired Universal Studios, and reconsolidated the games business into a new group called “Vivendi-Universal Games”, or, VU Games. My brother was able to sit in on some of the meetings with the french during this period of consolidation, some of which were attended by a gentleman named Jean-Marie Messier (aka J2M). At the time, he was world famous as the Bill Gates of France. People spoke of him as if he were one of the most important people in the world. And, indeed, at the time he was.
Alas, happy endings and Sierra don’t always seem to go hand-in-hand. Monsieur Messier had his own scandal brewing. I have since forgotten what the scandal was, but the bottom line was that Vivendi stock crashed, and Mr. Messier was tossed out. Vivendi has been a problem company ever since, selling off bits and pieces of itself, trying to pay down its debt. The software business has been on the block for at least a couple of years (something which has been sometimes admitted and sometimes denied). It has had declining revenues and lost money while they were trying to sell it – and, has not been sold. Who knows what its future will be?
My guess is that all of this uncertainty makes it tougher for those in the software business. It’s tough enough to ship great games, and even tougher when the world around you (corporately) is going through so many changes.
-Ken W(Which games are now public domain?)
Ken, > Vous avez raison. Mon frère, John, a déclaré > officiellement Mystery House comme dans le domaine > public. Je l’ai oublié. D’accord. C’est bien ça. > Est-ce que le homme dont vous parliez Jean-Marie Messier ? Oui, c’est bien lui. J2M de son petit-nom. 😉 > Je ne l’ai jamais rencontré mais mon frère l’ai rencontré > plusieurs fois et était très impressionné. J’était choqué > par ce qui lui est arrivé. Est-ce qu’il s’intéressait particulièrement à Sierra ? Je pensais qu’il n’en connaissait même pas l’existance, étant donné que Sierra appartenait à Cendant, qui appartenait à Havas Interactive, qui appartenait à Havas, que Vivendi (La Générale des Eaux à l’époque) venait d’acheter. Dans quel cadre votre frère a-t-il rencontré Jean-Marie Messier ? > Excusez-moi mon mauvais français. Je ne suis qu’un > débutant à votre langue… Vous êtes tout pardonné. Ceci constituera un bon exercice de lecture et de compréhension écrite. 😉 You can reply in English of course. Vincent.
(Which games are now public domain?)
Woohoo, high school French came through for me again! (for the most part…) I’m not sure which one, but I think one of the Krondor or Antara games was released into the public domain as a promo for another of those games. -emily
(re: re: QFG5 on XP?)
I’ve installed that patch. Didn’t work. I think I saw something about turning off DirectDraw. I’ll fiddle with that later. Thanks!
(re: re: re: Documentations – the solution)
Thx, this is a start.
But if somone has the original manual from the disk-version, I would really appreciate it. If I remember correctly the disk-version of the manual had some really nice character portraits and some beautiful artwork in it.But thx anyway collector 🙂
(Which games are now public domain?) Vincent:
Vous avez raison. Mon frère, John, a déclaré officiellement Mystery House comme dans le domaine public. Je l’ai oublié.
Est-ce que le homme dont vous parliez Jean-Marie Messier ? Je ne l’ai jamais rencontré mais mon frère l’ai rencontré plusieurs fois et était très impressionné. J’était choqué par ce qui lui est arrivé.
Aujourd’hui est lundi. Espérons que J’entendrai quelque chose aujourd’hui.
Excusez-moi mon mauvais français. Je ne suis qu’un débutant à votre langue…
-Ken W(Which games are now public domain?)
Ken, Wasn’t Mystery House put into the public domain at some time? (I would say early-mid 90s) Even so, I would guess this would be the only Sierra game that could be legally distributed for free. On this VUG bad revenues issue, I feel all the more guilty as I am French, and the big boss of Vivendi at the time Sierra was sold to Vivendi was born in the same town as me (Grenoble)… I’d also really like to help in some way, if I was given the chance… Vincent.
(re: QFG5 on XP?)
There is an unofficial Windows 2000 patch (you can get it from qfgs’ site http://www.geocities.com/qfgs ), though it it can be hardware related also. It will run on one of my AMD machines with an ATI card in both Win 98 and XP (dual boot), however it will not run in either OS on another AMD box with a Matrox card.
(re: re: Documentations – the solution)
I would love to get a good PDF of this manual, too. You can at least see what’s in the manual by downloading the King’s Quest Collection Series manual from the Repacement Docs site. Both Laura Bow manuals are included in it.
(Which games are now public domain?) I have no idea which old Sierra games can be posted for download. My guess is that none of them have been made officially “public domain” — but, that it is very unlikely that anyone from Sierra would ever prosecute someone who was making the “really” old games available for download. That said, Roberta and I gave up all rights to all our old games when we sold Sierra. We can’t authorize anyone to do anything with respect to anything Sierra.
Here’s an interesting rumor for you…
On Friday morning, I (Ken Williams) received an email from Al Lowe which was some sort of press article talking about horrible financial results at VU (Vivendi Universal) Games. VU is the company that currently owns Sierra.
It has been frustrating to watch a company that Roberta and I built, over a nearly 20 year period, struggle. After reading the news clipping, I called the secretary of the current CEO to request his email address. Assuming I can get her to pass along my request, and I get a response, my plan is to ask how I can help.
I really don’t know what sort of help I was offering, or what help I could be. There is no scenario in which I would ever go back to running a software company. Eight years of retirement has spoiled me. I can’t imagine a life of riding around on airplanes and wearing a tie. Been there, done that. There are some good things, like getting to hang out with amazingly creative and talented people — but, like I said — been there, done that.
I am convinced that if Sierra, or VU Games, really wanted, that we could find a way that I could make some contribution – without having to be a “real” employee. I wouldn’t do anything for the money. It just feels wrong to see something I care so much about in trouble, and not offer to help.
All that said, we’ll see if they ever call…. I’ll be surprised if they do, but hopefully they will.
-Ken W
—–Full year revenues drop sharply for Vivendi Games Rob Fahey 12:33 06/02/2004
Uncertainty over future of games division blamed for poor results Media conglomerate Vivendi Universal has announced its revenue figures for the fourth quarter and full year of 2003, revealing that the company’s videogames division suffered a 28 per cent drop in revenues during the year.
Full year revenues at the division were €571 million, while the fourth quarter – traditionally the most important of the year for games companies – saw revenues of €254 million, down 13 per cent from the same period in 2002.
The company had expected better sales during the holiday season, and its results certainly took a hit from the failure of Half-Life 2 to materialise during 2003, but overall it was simply a bad year for VU Games – with a fairly weak line-up of products, and constant speculation over the future of the division taking its toll.
Even now, it’s not entirely clear what Vivendi plans to do with its game publishing business. The firm has abandoned plans to float it, and efforts at selling the division fell through some time ago – but with the sale of the majority of the company’s other media assets to General Electric last year, VU Games doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the company’s portfolio any more.
Declining revenues and the ongoing exodus of key staff from star development studio Blizzard certainly won’t help the company to secure a good price should it decide to put VU Games on the market again – but in the absence of a visible, solid future direction for the division, it’s hard to see Vivendi holding on to it in the long term.
