DDogwood wrote:Mordredd wrote:Oh, and I remember talking to someone in GW about this at the time (JJ, Andy, can't quite recall who) and the story they spun was that there were indeed many things that contributed to the victory; but that the pitch layout was the killer blow that sealed the deal for them due to it being unique to BB.
I don't know if anyone, even the folks at Cyanide or GW, can actually say whether the board layout was the 'killer blow', since the lawsuit was settled out of court. The fact that Cyanide walked away with the rights to produce a Blood Bowl video game implies that the case was far from cut-and-dried, and that both parties realized that there wasn't much benefit in a drawn-out court case.
If GW had an impregnable case, there wouldn't be much incentive for them to settle at all, let alone give the defendant the right to develop the game.
On your first point; have you considered that there had to be a point in the pre-trial negotiations at which Cyanide folded and conceded to GW? If that point was when GW pointed out that their BB pitch layout was unique then labelling it their coup de grace would seem reasonable, wouldn't you say?
As for incentive, well GW have tried to do BB computer games before (one got aborted in development pretty recently, relatively speaking; you can probably still find the trailer on youtube), and they know about the sucess of FUMBBL, so they're obviously interested in pursuing BB in this format. Now, thanks to legal action, they more or less own a computer games developer who has already gone most of the way to making one. Its wasn't actual BB, but the foundations and expertise was already there. So instead of having worthless IOUs from a bankrupt company they go for the we'll invest in you-you give us royalties in liu of damages win-win approach.
Ok, that may or may not be what happened (I don't know); but its a very plausible scenario.
Mordredd's Apocalypse: the Old World's premier Dwarf Magnet. :-?