Ushgarak
Since Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame annoucned his new project, I've been interested to see what some of you young-uns and not-quite-so-young 'uns make of this. Details below, first some context.
Space sims were big in the day, what with the X-Wing, Wing Commander and Freespace franchises, all of which formed a big part of my teenage gaming years.
But wind me back younger than that and I was a big player of the seminal 1984 game Elite- never had a BBC to play it on, but I played the Spectrum version and later the highly upgraded Amiga version. This was possibly |(I know of no other) the first open sandbox game, where you were given a ship and some money and a playing field far vaster than any other seen at the time- no objectives, just go and make money how you want. David Braben repeated his success with the sequel Frontier on the Amiga a decade later, which was the first game I ever saw with a trailer (still a very impressive one, from my view) and expanded the scope to cover millions of star systems to visit, with certain ones (like Sol) done in detail.
This kind of open-ended go-and-do-what-you-like-in-space genre has always had the attraction of going for the Han Solo wanna-be crowd, and yet it's never quite reached full focus. Wing Commander got into the action with the Privateer games, the first of which was great and the second passable. I always thought this was part of a slow transition into modern gaming greatness as time went on- but instead, space sims died on their arse.
For whatever reason, these things have become a niche. I know Sol Exodus has just tried to revive the space combat genre, but only in a so-so way to a limited audience. The X games are a genuine attempt to replicate the Elite-style, but I think they missed the mark. EVE Online has done great things, but ita player base is not huge and the whole player-driven constant PvP griefing nightmare thing just doesn't do it for me. That and the sub fee. And of course, it's set in space but you don't directly fly your ship, Elite style.
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Anyway. All of a sudden, these things have come back into focus- they may make it or may not. I hope they do.
It's started with Chris Roberts, the Wing Commander guru. He's announced his new game Star Citizen, He actually wanted to make more Wing Commander, but EA (who hold the rights) said it would have to be on consoles as well, and Chris doesn't want that. Instead, he's opted to self-publish his new take on it all.
Take a look at the trailer- for any Wing Commander players, you will note it is so similar in imagery that it must be close to copyright violation. It also looks awesome (those are in-game graphics):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN8MZHT74sE
Note the trailer calls itself 'Squadron 42'. This is because Chris is going both ways at once- the game is both Squadron 42, in which you take on the bad guys (not the Kilrathi, but ridiculously similar) as a military pilot, and Star Citizen, where you are a freelancer going around the universe doing as you want. Pilots are constant between the two; completing S42 makes you a Citizen, Roman-style, in Star Citizen (though there are other ways to get citizenship as well, if you even care).
Of course, with no publisher, Chris needs money, so he's gone for crowd funding. And boy, has it worked! Aiming for an ambitious two million, he's raised over seven million so far, making this the largest crowd funded project ever.
https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/
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I think this is awesome.. and then, at the same time, David Braben finally announced Elite 4, which has been on the backburner for ages. He's crowd funding as well. It's almost irritating that both darn projects start at once, though looking at their pitches you can see they are offering different takes on the angle (Braben is very eloquent in talking about anti-griefing approaches, showing he's still 'got it', despite now being absolutely ancient in game design terms). This one even made BBC news.
Called Elite: Dangerous, it also looks good from the vids they've shown, though less far along.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous
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Both games are talking about persistent online play OR private servers OR offline single play, however you want it, no sub fees. It's all completely awesome and I think gaming will be a better place if these games succeed.
Thoughts?
Space sims were big in the day, what with the X-Wing, Wing Commander and Freespace franchises, all of which formed a big part of my teenage gaming years.
But wind me back younger than that and I was a big player of the seminal 1984 game Elite- never had a BBC to play it on, but I played the Spectrum version and later the highly upgraded Amiga version. This was possibly |(I know of no other) the first open sandbox game, where you were given a ship and some money and a playing field far vaster than any other seen at the time- no objectives, just go and make money how you want. David Braben repeated his success with the sequel Frontier on the Amiga a decade later, which was the first game I ever saw with a trailer (still a very impressive one, from my view) and expanded the scope to cover millions of star systems to visit, with certain ones (like Sol) done in detail.
This kind of open-ended go-and-do-what-you-like-in-space genre has always had the attraction of going for the Han Solo wanna-be crowd, and yet it's never quite reached full focus. Wing Commander got into the action with the Privateer games, the first of which was great and the second passable. I always thought this was part of a slow transition into modern gaming greatness as time went on- but instead, space sims died on their arse.
For whatever reason, these things have become a niche. I know Sol Exodus has just tried to revive the space combat genre, but only in a so-so way to a limited audience. The X games are a genuine attempt to replicate the Elite-style, but I think they missed the mark. EVE Online has done great things, but ita player base is not huge and the whole player-driven constant PvP griefing nightmare thing just doesn't do it for me. That and the sub fee. And of course, it's set in space but you don't directly fly your ship, Elite style.
-
Anyway. All of a sudden, these things have come back into focus- they may make it or may not. I hope they do.
It's started with Chris Roberts, the Wing Commander guru. He's announced his new game Star Citizen, He actually wanted to make more Wing Commander, but EA (who hold the rights) said it would have to be on consoles as well, and Chris doesn't want that. Instead, he's opted to self-publish his new take on it all.
Take a look at the trailer- for any Wing Commander players, you will note it is so similar in imagery that it must be close to copyright violation. It also looks awesome (those are in-game graphics):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN8MZHT74sE
Note the trailer calls itself 'Squadron 42'. This is because Chris is going both ways at once- the game is both Squadron 42, in which you take on the bad guys (not the Kilrathi, but ridiculously similar) as a military pilot, and Star Citizen, where you are a freelancer going around the universe doing as you want. Pilots are constant between the two; completing S42 makes you a Citizen, Roman-style, in Star Citizen (though there are other ways to get citizenship as well, if you even care).
Of course, with no publisher, Chris needs money, so he's gone for crowd funding. And boy, has it worked! Aiming for an ambitious two million, he's raised over seven million so far, making this the largest crowd funded project ever.
https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/
-
I think this is awesome.. and then, at the same time, David Braben finally announced Elite 4, which has been on the backburner for ages. He's crowd funding as well. It's almost irritating that both darn projects start at once, though looking at their pitches you can see they are offering different takes on the angle (Braben is very eloquent in talking about anti-griefing approaches, showing he's still 'got it', despite now being absolutely ancient in game design terms). This one even made BBC news.
Called Elite: Dangerous, it also looks good from the vids they've shown, though less far along.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous
-
Both games are talking about persistent online play OR private servers OR offline single play, however you want it, no sub fees. It's all completely awesome and I think gaming will be a better place if these games succeed.
Thoughts?