In these
previous days Rebel Act Studios has released an official press-note in which
they confirm the suspension of payments and say good-bye to all their fans. It
is sad to see how a project which inspired so many passions vanishes with such
very little noise...
Juan Diaz Bustamante, one of the leaders of RAS, has
agreed to spare some of his time to comment on the situation.
BLADE
FOREVER: The news, even if it was known and awaited, has opened again old wounds
and it confirms it is over. Many of us remember that day in which the RAS forum
stopped working without any previous notice. We all were waiting for a
remodelation... Then the rumours started. In the beginning it seemed that the
search for investors advised against spreading negative news, but the reality
was that the secret was known by everyone. Why did you choose that way of saying
good bye?
JUAN D. BUSTAMANTE: We were waiting until the last moment,
looking for solutions for the future of our company. Some of them were close to
come to fruition, but the international situation wasn't very favourable at the
end of the previous year. I guess we didn't have as well the experience at the
time of confronting a situation like this from the point of view of confronting
the media and players. Later it was Codemasters the one to suggest waiting in
order to make a joint press-note to be released at the same time in Spain and
the rest of the world. We were delaying it and in the end we decided to release
our own press note.
BF: The sales figures of BLADE haven't been made
available. The impression is that it worked out alright in Spain: the press
praised its development and the distribution by Friendware was decent. But in
the international forums we could see users were having problems to buy the
game. What opinion do you have of Codemasters's work as a publisher? Do you
think they had complete faith in the game from the beginning?
JDB: The
sales in Europe, including Spain, were good for a game like BLADE. We can't
complain, though they were lower than it was expected. We could confirm that
games like BLADE have a much more limited market than strategy games, for
instance, as they don't attract casual gamers. BLADE topped the charts in all
Europe to disappear inmediately afterwards. Also, this kind of games is very
affected by piracy. I'll set an example: BLADE didn't reached in Spain a figure
of 20,000 units sold as a full-priced game, while Age of Empires went over
50,000 units. And we are talking about Spain, where the game was having more
repercussion. The fact is the game didn't work in the USA. A lot of causes for
that, no doubt. Codemasters signed for the game with no time for making it known
there.
The American market is VERY complicated. Is is unusual for an
European game to top the charts. And if it is aiming so high, it should use a
whole year of marketing actions if it wants to stand a chance.
BF: Many
people think that the world sale figures weren't good and it contributed to the
fall of RAS. Is it the answer, or only part of it?
JDB: There are several
reasons, from my point of view. One of them is sumed up by what some person from
Activision told us when coming to our offices: "It is incredible that in a
country without a development industry, with an unexperienced managing and
development team and without a great company backing you financially you could
get such a complex game off the ground". As a consequence of this, BLADE took
too much time to be completed (RAS was founded in June 1996 and the game hit the
stores in February 2001) with a cost consequently too high, though not
impossible to cover if the sales had been better.
BF: In your goodbye you
mention piracy as one of the causes of RAS closing down. It is difficult to
evaluate, but I think most of the regular people in the BLADE forums have the
feeling that this was a very respected game and many people bought it. Maybe in
that environment the special editions were frequent and it is not easy to see
the impact of piracy. Do you think the harm made by piracy was
determinant?
JDB: Yes, piracy has made a great damage to us, but I was
referring to an international level. It is possible that in Spain more people
respected the game, for which I'm sincerely grateful. But just for you to
understand the extent of this aspect, I must say that Codemasters wanted to
emphasize this point clearly in the joint press note we were preparing. And
you must consider that piracy in Spain takes over 60% or 65% of the market
share. Those figures make impossible any industry. If piracy were weaker,
publishing companies would be stronger and could release more games, make better
localizations and sell them for a lower price. And there would be more
developing companies which could recoup most of their inversion only with their
sales in Spain. I saw that in some forums people has misunderstood my
comment. Piracy is not the ONLY cause of the fall of RAS, though it is a VERY
important one.
BF: The days prior to the closing were unusually lively,
with the participation of the protagonists from the different developments. Was
it a strategy to attract investors or was the team really motivated? If everyone
was so excited as the programmers, how do you live that day in which you must
gather the whole staff and announce the situation?
JDB: I think it was
all different before and after BLADE. With BLADE we learn a lot of things. Good
ones and bad ones. To be able to finish a game like that gives a lot of
experience. The two projects we were developing after that one were much better
organized. We all had more experience. That's why the teams were more
motivated.
BF: The comments from those days, the images that were
released later and some videos we could see in this web site prove that the
works for ULTIMATE BLADE were very advanced. Friendware always did such a great
effort to support the BLADE team... Why didn't they try to give you a final
push?
Couldn't they carry some additional months for the development and
release of UBOD? Couldn't it have been a way to gather resources and time to
complete BLADE 2?
JDB: It is regrettable that Friendware is such a small
company. Their yearly turnover doesn't rise above 600 million pesetas ($
3,000,000)... For you to know, other publishing companies like PROEIN or EA go
over 3,000 million pesetas. Friendware helped until they couldn't do anymore, as
they didn't have more money. They were close to risking their own survival. It
was such a huge effort from everyone involved from a monetary and personal point
of view. These are very rough times now.
I'm sure some years later we
will look back at what was achieved, though it will be very hard to think that
we were not able to cope. Why didn't we do a final effort? We didn't have money
to pay the workers (we at the directing staff weren't earning anything from a
lot of months ago), and the workers are always the first priority. We can't ask
anyone to work for free...
BF: The dynamic of the videogame market makes
it very unlikely to allow the release of a BLADE 2, at least with the design it
had, but what happens with ULTIMATE BLADE? Is it still on the works? Who owns
the license?
JDB: BLADE OF DARKNESS is a trademark owned by Rebel Act
Studios. The proyect has stopped, so I don't think, regrettably, that it will be
released ever. I don't know if Codemasters will choose to use the trademark
SEVERANCE, which they owned.
BF: One of the more usual questions is: Who
owns the rights to BLADE and its engine? We have seen there is a desire to use
that engine in more commercial projects. Is there any interest to market BLADE's
engine?
JDB: The rights to BLADE and its engine are owned by Rebel Act
Studios. Regrettably the source code to the engine was not, when we finished the
game, fit enough to be licensed for several reasons. But we were excited about
the code that we were making for BLADE 2, much more thought out and structured
from the starting point. That could have been our chance to enter into the
market of third-party technology..
BF: If legal problems allow it, it
could be such a tribute for BLADE to be able to hand over its engine for the
public domain... Is it possible that some day the engine and its associate
resources could be free?
JDB: I didn't think about that. I will see what
can be done and how.
BF: We see you are still working in Friendware. Can
it be a way to recover Rebel Act Studios, or are you engaged in new
projects?
JDB: I'm one of the founding partners of Friendware, so I will
stay here (I hope that for a long time). Now we are struggling for Friendware
to recover from the heavy investment it made. Maybe sometime in the future we
can return to the attack with new developments, though for this time we know we
must have the financial aspect settled before we start working.
BF: If
you want to add something else, we are listening...
JDB: I want to use
this opportunity to mention some comments I read in some forums that have hurt
me, though they made me learn some lessons. People don't know what really
happened, but they comment on what they think that happened. And I see there are
some very unfavorable opinions. I guess this is related to the first question
you asked and how bad we transmited what happened in these last months. I was
specially hurt by someone who said that the owners in suits and ties were surely
resting confortably in their villas while the workers were all dismissed. Well,
I don't even wear a tie and I lost the few I had. That doesn't imply we are
sorry to have created Rebel Act. On the contrary. We would repeat it if we
could.
BF: Thanks for your time and we hope the new challenges that you
are up to in your professional career give us products with the quality of
BLADE, though we hope the period to enjoy the success is much
longer.
JDB: Thanks to BLADE FOREVER for giving me the chance to
communicate with you. Thanks everybody! Juan....... Juan
Diaz-Bustamante www.friendware.es