Capcom explains why Talisman was binned

By Robert Purchese Published 5 November, 2008

PSN and XBLA still in "infancy".

Capcom director of production Adam Boyes believes Xbox Live and PlayStation Network are "still in their infancy".

This was one of the reasons board game adaptation Talisman was canned at the beginning of October, he explained. Apparently the online services can't yet recreate the social atmosphere of friends sitting around a table and playing together in the same room.

"We looked at the other games on XBLA and PSN and realized that very few people were willing to sit and play a game for more than an hour. With a regular Talisman match coming in between three-to-five hours, this created an issue with how we would make the game fun and engaging for that whole time," Boyes told Giant Realm.

"This brings us one thing that we again failed to realize as PSN and XBLA were still in their infancy. Complex board games like Talisman live and die on the social interaction of people.

"...If the people in your match aren't going to use their headsets, the social aspect of a board game gets completely drained and becomes a slog as you could be sitting there for five minutes waiting for your next turn," he added.

Unfortunately, Boyes said Capcom found out "too late" this was the case, and that Talisman would eventually not deliver what fans of the game wanted.

Capcom US community chief Chris Kramer agrees, and admits on his blog that the company probably talked about the project too early.

But what about games such as Catan, Carcassone, Ticket to Ride and Lost Cities? Aren't they all board game adaptations that have worked on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network?

"Those games are lighter fare, and I do think that they lend themselves greatly to the XBLA and PSN user base," added Boyes. "If those games are light appetisers, Talisman would be a five-course meal.

"From the research we've done and looking at the games that succeed in the downloadable space, we found that people prefer the appetizers to hunkering down for a huge meal."

Boyes added: "I review hundreds of pitches and we will never close the door to developing a board game or card game that fits our user base."

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About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dizzy #1 3 years ago

    I think he found out that you cannot copy a boardgame and hope it will work. You will need to adapt the gameplay... gaming over the Internet is a different beast than boardgaming around a table. From all the movies I saw from Talisman it looked like a 100% copy of the boardgame and that doesn't work and probably will never work. Has nothing to do with "maturing" of the platforms.

  • Madafunkola #2 3 years ago

    Talisman too immature for PSN/XBLA???

  • kangarootoo #3 3 years ago

    Massive feeble excuse.

    Did they not sit down and look at the internet before they started, and work out what it was capable of and what they would need to accomodate in their designs.

    "From all the movies I saw from Talisman it looked like a 100% copy of the boardgame and that doesn't work and probably will never work. Has nothing to do with "maturing" of the platforms."

    Exactly. Sounds like they were just going for a straight port, and then someone with purse strings came along and said "this isn't fun".


    I think his comment about "you could be sitting there for five minutes waiting for your next turn" is pretty revealing. I'm not sure how he thinks that PSN or XBL are at fault there, rather than their own design.

  • phoenixology #4 3 years ago

    Of course with Xbox Live you can recreate the social atmosphere of friends sitting around a table!!

    It can already be done with UNO using the camera and headset and with avatars coming out in a couple of weeks it will be much improved.

  • spelk #5 3 years ago

    What about playing against a set of graded AI opponents? What about drop in drop out gameplay, with AI taking over. I'm sure those people who would be willing to sit down for a game of Talisman, would prefer some version of the game to NO version of the game. What about saving the game mid-point to allow a continuation of it! To say that the gaming platforms are not ready for complex board games is a bit of a cop-out really. Look at CivRev. Talisman is no more complex than that. I'm gaggin to play Talisman on a computer format, with AI, with my mates - just so I can play it. XBLA should be an untapped market for "complex" boardgames.

  • McGeeza #6 3 years ago

    The manufacturing rights for the board game were recently sold to Fantasy Flight Games (but before it was announced the game was being scrapped). Coincidence?

    I can see what they mean by the 3 hour play time though. Could have been easily remedied with turn time limits however. For me this would have been a good way to have a local game with my kids without all the setup time of the boardgame.

    Shame, but I won't cry myself to sleep over it.

  • drumbaby #7 3 years ago

    Expect it on the Wii with shit graphics and no online.

  • kangarootoo #8 3 years ago

    "I'm sure those people who would be willing to sit down for a game of Talisman, would prefer some version of the game to NO version of the game."

    I'm sure they would (I would probably be one of them), but there probably isn't enough of them to create enough sales. From a business point of view, as well as a quality pov, this sounds like the right decision.

  • Destrin #9 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 12:47:09 13-12-2011

  • menage #10 3 years ago

    I doubt people who would be into this wouldn't want to play more than an hour.

    If you'd buy chess of XBLA you wouldn't expect matches to end in 15 minutes would you. My girlfriend can play Catan all evening if she had too, why wouldn't fans of this game play it more than an hour. Oh yes, to small a base to sell it too.

  • bionutz #11 3 years ago

    yeah he's right. the only possibility for digitalized board games is that microsoft device that looks like a coffee table with a big square LCD instead of the glass, i think. Waiting without interaction at a board game (also named "society" games in some countries) is boring.

  • superdecade #12 3 years ago

    Although Capcom failed to produce an electronic version of Talisman, I spent the summer coding it myself. It is available for free download following this link. It works fine on Windows XP, and VISTA (although the sound does not work well in Vista).
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/08 @ 17:24