Part of the reason HBS is talking to PGI is something that's been getting worked on for the better part of two decades. But BT and SR are both in a fairly healthy state right now.Īlso, AFAIK (though there may be something subterannean that I just don't know about, though unlikely), PGI is NOT the licensing arm for MechWarrior and SR games. It took a while, and there were some growing pains (Topps oversight on royalties was a bit different and they had to be educated in how the market veral times as agents cycled through). It also didn't help that FanPro Germany didn't actually care about the products or the employees and was just treating the company as a giant piggy bank.įinally, it came to a point where FanPro LLC had no money, authors were several YEARS in arrears (meaning no transfer of copyright on products on the shelf), and FanPro basically dropped the license.Īt that point, IMR (the people behind the BattleTech online fiction) stepped up, created Catalyst Game Labs, and started running with the products. Bindery was sub-par and quality control was practically nonexistent.) (If you look at some of the books produced then, they were assembled from odd lots of paper (because end-lots were cheap), leading to entire books with 3-7 different shades of paper. The guys running the company was wearing too many hats, and the US LLC was kept on a budget that couldn't even afford shoestrings. Wasn't really a good time for either product. He, in turn, licensed BT and SR out to FanPro, which had previously been the translator for BT and SR products in Germany. Prior to that, location-based computer entertainment (Virtual World) was it's own property.Īs noted, the BattleTech and Shadowrun rights were sold to WizKids, as Jordan was the owner of WizKids at the time. Jordan was The Idea Guy and not really suited to the paperwork of running a company.Įlectronic rights for the various properties had been split years ago with the creation of FASA Studios and its acquisition by Microsoft. Mort was the back-end manager and chief bean counter (as well as The Money) at FASA. I’m looking forward to seeing how this comes together.FASA basically became an IP holding company when Mort Wiseman decided to retire. Given Harebrained Schemes success with its more mature version of crowdfunding, there’s every reason to expect the company to deliver on all its promises in a timely fashion. I’m thrilled that Battletech is coming back. This makes the gap between crowdfunding completion and release a mere six months, delivering on the promise to release the latest installment this summer. Given the language in the media alert, we suspect the same model will be in play for Battletech when Harebrained Schemes begins to seek assistance later this year.Īs for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, it will arrive on August 20. The studio had base funding to make the game, but asked fans to contribute funds in order to make it a bigger, meatier game. When Harebrained Schemes last ventured to Kickstarter for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, it adopted a matured crowdfunding model. The Kickstarter will launch this fall for funding of a new, turn-based game set in the world of giant, armed-to-the-teeth mechs. Harebrained Schemes is asking fans to help make Battletech a reality once more. Our guesses were Battletech or Crimson Skies, and today we know which. During our chat, we asked about other upcoming projects at the studio and were told that another of Weisman’s older IPs was under consideration. Back in May, we spoke with Jordan Weisman and Mitch Gitelman of Harebrained Schemes.
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