Bad Brain and Autumn Moon End Deal News
Jon Wilcox
18/04/2005
Difference of opinions sees the two developers break their deal to co-create "A Vampyre Story"...
When a number of former LucasArts left the studio disgruntled by its lack of direction in the adventure genre (a field of expertise before Star Wars tie-inâs consumed its attention), two teams quickly appeared. Dan Conners and co formed TellTale Games with the intention to bring Jeff Smithâs comic-book creation, Bone, to life; while fellow former LucasArts employee, Mike Kirchoff founded Autumn Moon Entertainment and began work on a new adventure title.
Despite looking likely to replicate the humour and style of classic LucasArts titles, finding a publisher for an adventure title is not an easy task these days; so when Autumn Moon Entertainment teamed up with Bad Brain Entertainment, some hope that this would come to fruition looked to be on the cards.
However, today the German developer/publisher announced that they have parted company with Autumn Moon, throwing the future of the title into some doubt.
In an announcement Bad Brain Entertainment CEO Dr. Wolfgang Kierdorf: said, âWe commiserate that Autumn Moon Entertainment and Bad Brain Entertainment will not finish ´A Vampyre Story´ side by side. But I am quite sure, that the title is not going to disappoint its fans, when it will be released. We want to wish the development team all the best for their continuing production time, and hope to bring much fun with many other adventure games to the international community."
Kierdorf will be a name that LucasArts fans will instantly recall, having found himself and Bad Brain Entertainment confusing the situation regarding the on-off, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, a few months back.
From the other side of the fence, Mike Kirchoff, Director of Business Development for Autumn Moon commented that, "While it is unfortunate and a setback that we were unable to come to terms with Bad Brain, we remain committed to bring AVS (A Vampyre Story) to market as we believe that there is a strong fan-base for this type of game world wide and we love working on this type of game."
Adding to the statement of colleague, Autumn Moon's CEO, Bill Tiller, stated that "Bad Brain's enthusiasm and shared dedication to this genre attracted us to them and we are certain that they will grow into a great company in the future, but at this point we have elected to seek a publisher elsewhere. We are happy that our title has brought attention to Bad Brain and appreciate their efforts thus far in promoting the game, but we feel it is time to move on."
The obvious result of this creative divorce is the delay in the gameâs release, but Kirchoff is already pointing towards the silver lining: ââ¦this change in plans may have a hidden benefit as well, we (AME) believe that this genre a game has a huge potential in portable market, such as Sony's Playstation Portable, where the style of gameplay and technology would appear to be an ideal match and this change allows us the potential to explore this opportunity."
Itâs rather interesting that these turn of events may have repercussions to the exact format of the game, especially if it does make the leap to the handheld market â“ guess weâll keep an eye on this in the coming months...
