Tag Archives: bc

Reader interaction… IN ACTION. We asked you to put your questions to Peter Molyneux, and he very kindly answered a few on the phone for us on Monday.

First up, Newbie101 with this: “Please ask him where BC is. Has it officially been canceled or is it still ‘suspended,’ and why was it suspended?”

Here you go:

This is a long time ago now, actually. It must be the back end of 2003, I would think. Basically, it was for a couple of reasons. One is that Microsoft has some very good reasons, and also Lionhead had to focus itself on one or two things. Otherwise we were getting too diluted, our efforts were getting too diluted.

And we had to pick between BC or Fable. We couldn’t do both simultaneously: it was just impossible for us to do that and maintain any quality at all. So we literally almost sat in a room and debated which one it should be, and some people thought it was going to be BC and some people thought it should be Fable that was going to be shelved, and in the end it came down on the side of BC being put on the shelf.

That’s all that’s done. We’re not saying it’s never going to come out. Currently it’s still on the shelf, but so many people ask about it and I find it absolutely fascinating that they do, because in a way some people here and at Microsoft said, ‘You know, we just don’t quite understand what the BC game’s all about.’ But everybody seems so enthusiastic about it. It really fascinates me.

More tomorrow.

This Canadian newspaper report warns that the British Columbian games development industry is being damaged by (considerable) tax breaks offered in Quebec to companies that set up development studios there. Those in BC are worried that, unsurprisingly, all the talent’s upping sticks and setting up in Montreal.

“We would love to see the BC government step up and provide more incentives along the lines of what is offered in Quebec,” said Josh Holmes, Propaganda Games VP, based in British Columbia.

The reason developers flock to Montreal isn’t hard to understand. The Quebec government offered tax breaks of up to 50 percent on multimedia development in 1997, meaning huge studios have risen in Montreal in recent years from companies such as Ubisoft and EA. That percentrage was pulled back to 37.5 percent in 2003, but the lure is still, obviously, very strong.

Well worth a read.