inXile on Van Buren Trademark and Future Plans

I don’t know whether the fact that Eurogamer published a piece about the “Van Buren” trademark inXile filed for has been published only a few days after the Fallout 4 announcement is coincidental or not, but I’m certain that the piece is worth a read either way, as it offers an insight into Fargo’s long-term plans, and the reasons he decided to trademark the beloved codename in the first place.

Apparently, it all comes down to an idea Chris Avellone has about a post-apocalyptic game that Fargo would like to explore in the future. There’s no doubt that using “Van Buren” as the title for such a venture would attract more attention than another title, even an inspired one, but it does sound like Fargo plans to move away from this attention-grabbing tactics in the future and explore some of his own ideas:

I asked if Fargo was doing anything with the Van Buren trademark. “Not yet,” he replied. “But there were some things, some ideas, that Chris Avellone had for doing something that made the post-apoc – a twist on the whole what-was-being-done that we really loved. So we talked about it and we thought why not grab the rights so we can entertain this one of these days.

“But nothing now,” he stressed. “We have enough on our plate to be doing that right this second.”

…

“What’s left?” he mulled. “I’ve got so many ideas of things I’d like to do. I have some pet projects of mine I would love to do that are not sequels to hits in any way. It will be interesting to see how that all works out as we start to get into more speculative titles.”