The venerable InXile Entertainment celebrates its 20th anniversary with a new studio video featuring key figures talking about their journey so far. InXile was founded by his Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo in 2002, and the first game set a high bar: The Bard’s Tale achieved the rare feat of being a genuinely entertaining video game. It’s his APRG that breaks his 4th wall.
However, quality does not always equate to success. InXile had a rough handle on things, including spells when developing games for mobile and Nintendo DS. Canceled projects didn’t help either. Many years ago I visited a Codemasters preview event to see a demo of Heist, an in-depth bank robbery strategy game that never saw the light of day. It actually looked great, but apparently looks can be deceiving.
The studio’s anniversary video had a lot of ups and downs, but what really surprised me was an event that I completely missed at the time. One of the avenues InXile pursued when trying to keep things on track was the huge Nintendo DS market and a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for “lite” style simulation games.
“The world was changing under our feet,” said Fargo. “Okay, we have to be brave entrepreneurs. We have the rights to Line Rider. Then Nintendogs came out. I’m like, ‘Let’s do the cats.’ . I mean, what else to do…the dog is done, what else to do. Well, people love babies…”
This would end up being a game called Baby Pals, but what happened shortly after its release must have taken InXile by surprise. The anniversary video was released by an American cable news clip (Time stamp (opens in new tab)), the mother was distressed after buying the game as a reward for an 8-year-old girl before “discovering” that the game contained a hidden message, the reporter said. The baby seems to say, “Islam is the light.”
“We licensed the sound library,” says Fargo. “This was the same material that Mattel used for one of its dolls, so it seemed safe. , is that the baby says “Islam is the light.” .
“I’m like, okay, you must be kidding me. Yeah… okay, kind of a stretch.”
“It wasn’t even a word,” adds another voice, but they’re clearly right. However, random baby sounds make for weird approximations. It’s one of those things you can listen to if you’re looking for it (and some definitely do).
InXile’s Elene Campbell recalls: “There were no hidden references and it caused so many problems. It was so silly. But Baby Pals was great!”
At the time, the publisher of the game noted that the Mattel dolls also included the same sounds, stating: Pronounce these words, not to mention the entire grammatically correct phrase. ”
The controversy was eventually blown away, and the perpetually offended cable news show moved on to other targets like French Mustard.
Things seem to be going pretty well for InXile these days, with their latest title, Wasteland 3, getting a positive response from players and critics. It remains to be seen what the studio’s next project will be, but following its acquisition by Microsoft in 2018, the various talking heads here strongly indicate that it will be a famous kind of game. No, that doesn’t mean Baby Pals.
