Fallout London, while “held together with duct tape” by the dev’s own admission is an impressive machine nonetheless. Our news writer Joshua Wolens has been having a blast with the behemoth Fallout 4 mod when it’s not been booting him to desktop, and I’m chuffed as chips (I felt a British saying was on-theme) to see it stick the landing as well as a mod can be expected to.
On the back of Fallout London’s success, its developers have big plans for the future. As outlined in a follow-up interview with the BBC, Dean Carter of Team Folon has expressed an interest in turning the team who made it from avid modders to a proper indie studio.
“As much as I love that it’s a free project … free doesn’t pay our bills. What has been great for us is that a lot of the people who have enjoyed it have donated to us.” For legal reasons, you generally can’t ask for cash for a mod unless you’re working through an official storefront—donations, on the other hand, are a lot easier to let slide.
“What we’ve done with that is we’re channelling that into team Folon: Which is what we’re going to be moving into, and then we should hopefully launch our own indie games company.”
As a RPG appreciator myself (assuming that Folon doesn’t hard-pivot into farming simulators) that’s pretty exciting news. One more developer making good stuff for one of my favourite genres can only be a good thing. It’s likely a while off, mind. Games take years to make, and switching gears from modding to whole-hog game development is a massive project.
Carter’s excited, though, telling the BBC that it’ll allow the team to “come up with our own ideas, create our own game, and really work with the community without having to speak to anyone above us.”
That particular subject seems like a point of frustration. As Carter reveals earlier in the interview, the team Folon hasn’t heard a peep from Bethesda: “We don’t expect anything from them, we’re just fans of the project, and it is just their IP, but no there hasn’t been any communication. Which is strange, because we’ve had communication from other people in the industry … but Bethesda themselves haven’t spoken to us at all, no.”
While Bethesda was ever under an obligation to give them a heads up about the next-gen update, I’m surprised to hear they haven’t extended as much as a single kudos at Fallout London’s—even just on the community-facing side of things. It seems like a free win, but hey. When you’ve got the actual former Speaker of the House on board, I feel like that’s recognition enough.