Freespace 3?

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Well I can honestly say this is the first time I've seen two video game communities delegating a peace treaty... maybe we should stop playing so many military oriented games eh? Hehe...

Seriously though, WC and FS fans should be on the same side. We're both into the same type of game and we're both hoping and praying for sequels.
 
Spien, I agree - I'm really looking for an end to bad blood between anyone who feels it towards HLP at the moment. The space sim genre isn't exactly flourishing right now - I don't want my time with HLP to disolve into managing a few half-wits who get kicks out of making trouble.
 
Okay, I think that's fair - if our people are trolling your boards, we'll deal with them here and vice versa.

Please try and let the HLP community know that making fun of Freespace is generally done in fun and is indicitive of our feelings towards the game released in 1999 - not the community in 2004.
 
That works for me, you should have my email on file right? If not it'll be on the HLP main page - I'll find yours from the same if I need it.

I'm glad it's worked out :)
 
This is good to see, I've loved Space Combat since watching BattleStar Galactica as a kid :) It's always pained me somewhat to see these two communities in particular at each others throats.

Oh, and Bandit, I got the jist of the letter, you hate what FS did to Space Sims but even you said we didn't deserve what we are getting. I respect that, and thanks for your own unique and amusing support :D
 
Can someone please explain to me how is it Freespace destroyed the space sim industry?! I thought the Wing Commander saga was killed by the fact that EA wanted to go mainstream.

I just played Freespace 2 demo and I must say I was blown away by the graphics. One wonders if it was because of the complex controls that killed the game.
 
And I quote:

Bandit LOAF said:
Freespace 2's exceptionally poor sales (20,000 units domestic) have been cited as one of the key reasons EA decided to cancel several Wing Commander projects (most notably Privateer Online). In order to 'turn a profit', a game like Freespace 2 must sell between 750,000 and a million copies - 20,000 copies is a horrible failure. Interplay promised to deliver an exciting new game... what the world got was Prophecy without characters, story or soul. The buying public reacted appropriately.
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Starkey said:
And I quote:
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Ok, but to think the EA canned Wing Commander Online(Privateer Online) because Freespace sold poorly is.....well....just plain dumb. How the hell can you compare an established franchise to a yet to be established franchise?! It's like saying, "We won't release The Longest Journey 2: DreamFall because Syberia and Broken Sword 3 sold poorly!"
Maybe I'm missing some information but how did you guys know EA was looking at FS2?! Was there any internal sources?!
 
I´m not in a mood to quote LOAF´s point on that too (and he does have a good one), so just read the "well shit" thread at the WC Saga forum. It´s all there.
 
Everyones entitled to their opinion at the end of the day, Bandit has his, and he's done a damn sight more research into the matter than I have :D

It wasn't Freespace 2 the game that caused the problem, it was FS2 the concept, marketting and particularly advertising that seemed to have damaged things. And even an avid Freespace 2 fan couldn't deny that a better job could have been done in that department :(

Freespace 2 is a damn good game, in my opinion, it's a pity it only sold 20,000 units. But so was Wing Commander, and it's a pity Privateer online never got written. But it's true that this community and HLP, who are both blameless for the poor performance of the FS2 marketting campaign, shouldn't really be blaming each other ;)
Remember, we're ALL the guys who DID buy those units and stayed faithful to Space Sims :)
 
Quake II was release at the end of 1997 and Half-Life in 1998. They made a lot of money. I guess most people were playing FPS and it was safer for EA to make FPS, sports and racing games than space sims. :(
 
I suspect part of the argument against new space-sims is the ongoing failure of the genre - Earth: Above and Beyond is the game which replaced Privateer Online so far as 'online space sim' goes, and it's being shut down in September due to lack of players. Jumpgate and a few other such games are still around, but they don't draw the massive numbers that UO and EQ do - heck, even Planetside seems pretty popular these days.

Granted, half those games are either poor designs, or were not fully realized (IIRC, EVE: Second Genesis has still been adding features since it went live last year), but it still is a bit disheartening, at least when you realize the companies who WOULD publish such games look at those results and decide the return on investment just isn't there.

It's one reason CRPGs were ignored for so many years, at least after the Gold Box series of games ended and games like Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2 helped revitalize this market on the PC, as publishers realized that these games COULD sell well. The space-sim genre hasn't had this in about eight years now - the last game which sold really well, IIRC, was WC3. Things have slid since then, even with the X-Wing games from Lucasarts: X-Wing Versus TIE-Fighter was probably their best title ever, as far as their space-sims go.
 
X2 Universe may prove interesting if it's ever made. Whilst X2 isn't everyones favourite game, it has a large fanbase, and a nice community to boot, and the game just begs multiplayer ;)

If only the combat model wasn't a bit shaky :( (though this might have been fixed in later patches).
 
Karthik@KANE said:
Ok, but to think the EA canned Wing Commander Online(Privateer Online) because Freespace sold poorly is.....well....just plain dumb. How the hell can you compare an established franchise to a yet to be established franchise?! It's like saying, "We won't release The Longest Journey 2: DreamFall because Syberia and Broken Sword 3 sold poorly!"
Maybe I'm missing some information but how did you guys know EA was looking at FS2?! Was there any internal sources?!
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It's the same way everything else works - you look at trends to work up your projections.

Example: Pepsi decides to release a new soft drink and looks around. It ends up going for a vanilla-flavored drink, so it checks the market to see how well vanilla sodas have sold. They look at Coke's sales for Vanilla Coke, and see it's sold reasonably well. In turn, they authorize a budget to market their own vanilla Pepsi drink.

Now, let's say they decide to go and release a new, licorice-flavored beverage to the market. They're first to market with it, and the drink sells poorly. Now, Coke's also been considering releasing something else to the market, with a new flavor. They look at how Licorice Pepsi's doing, and see that it sells badly - as a result, they have a choice - either they take a risk and hope their licorice-flavored beverage does well, and ignore the sales data which suggests people don't want licorice in their colas, or else they decide to can the idea and focus on something with a hint of lime.

The reason that Longest Journey 2's in production is because the first game did so well - the failure of the new Broken Sword and Syberia games can be ignored as a blip as a result. However, in the EA case, the fact that Prophecy didn't do as well as hoped combined with the poorer sales of Freespace 2 and other space sims in general convinced them there was a trend that suggested people were tired of space sims as a genre.

That's why.
 
Part of the problem was that Interplay basically played a game of one-upmanship on the WC license just as the FPS rose to fame.

It was basically a case of 'Anything they can do, we can do better'. They promised atmospheric combat and a whole host of other things which never appeared.

I'm not going to defend what are obvious mistakes in advertising etc, I'm just hoping we can all stop blaming each other for a very sad loss of a genre.
 
OK anyone that thinks Freespace 3 will sell is right the fans of the series will buy the game. Funny though last i had heard freespace was bassed loosley off of the Decent series. Now personaly I wont buy the game IF Mr Smart gets the licence and I would not buy it even if he did not get the licence. Why? well I've played both freespace games and I prefeer Wing Commander for a space sim even Starlancer and Freelancer. Now I'm ot saying Freespce was bad it's just not everyones type of game. Now I konw the whole story of the Mr Smart contreversy I kept up on it over the years. Now I worked for a company that tryed it's hand at game publishing an developing. We tryed getting a few different licences one being from Paramount (yes the Star Trek TOS licence) and tryed also geting the rights to make SFC3 but we failed as we didn't have the recorces to purchase said licence. The other was EA as we tryed to get another game licence that the name escapes me right now. Why did i mention this well it costs ALOT of cash to buy a game licence or exclusive rights to a game and personaly I dont think he (Mr. Smart) has the recorces to buy the licence or exclusive rights to the game. Unless you have money to throw away I dont recomend anyone go out and buy a game licence there not cheep.

Now as far as acusation of the guy himself it's been proven he's lied in the past. I'm not saying he's lying right now about trying to ge the freespace licence but I do know he's not the only one trying to get it. Now being a developer and publicly attacking ppl who talk bad about him is bad for buisness. I know from working for AT&T you DONT do that it only make ppl madder and turns potential customers away. I find it kind of funny he claims to have sued publishers (and I'm not saying he has not) and has lawers all over on speed dial. That to me is hillarious to boast about stuff like that. Now I have lawyers on speed dial all over too but thats just because they deal with the companies I've tryed to aquire liceneces from for my company when i was with them. Hey personaly if they guy does get the licence all the more power to him and if he makes a good game wow I'll be impressed as I persoanly think it will be his first.

I leave the decision in the capable hands of Interplay.

Now on a seperate note I saw someone made a referal to the canceling of Privateer online due to bad freespace sales. NO. the reason privateer online was canceled was because of Westwood building Earth and Beyond, and they did not want 2 simmilar games on the market at the same time. Now that EnB is going in the toilet this year in september (and yes I've been playing it since the beta) is going to be a huge dissapointment in gamers. Already erver stats are down from the normal 45% durring the week to over 70% durring the weekends (and yes they were 5000 person servers) down to about 8% now after the news of EnB closing. Now EA did say in a letter to all subscibers that they were going to be building another MMORPG game. now being nosey i decided to look into the WC licence again to try to see if they lowered the price, to my surprise the licence is NO LONGER AVAILABLE to purchase. Now the only time I've seen that is if a game is in production or the licence is about to be sold to someone else. With the thought in mind that EA is building another game space sim MMORPG game similar to EnB get me thinking that Privateer online is back in production. Who knows only time will tell.
 
What I fail to understand why the hell is EA trying to make a MMORPG out of Wing Commander when the single player aspect of it was the reason it sold well. NOT multiplayer! Look at Wc3 and Wc4! It sold well enough and EA makes profit like no one else yet they're too scared to take risks like Infogrames and Ubisoft!
 
Karthik@KANE said:
What I fail to understand why the hell is EA trying to make a MMORPG out of Wing Commander when the single player aspect of it was the reason it sold well. NOT multiplayer! Look at Wc3 and Wc4! It sold well enough and EA makes profit like no one else yet they're too scared to take risks like Infogrames and Ubisoft!
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Actually, there's no proof they're making a MMOG out of WC - and the way that other games are falling down or showing a general lack of success seems to suggest that the market there's saturated as all hell. While most people liked the story of WC (which could conceivably be continued in an MMOG context, as per Asheron's Call or several other RPGs I can name), the online combat would probably be more attractive.

Remember that several other single- and multi-player projects have fallen before the UO juggernaut, so I'd bet more on more of than than WC at the moment. Ultima X and Ultima Online 2 were both victims of the 'stay with what's profitable' school of business, as EA's clearly milking UO for all it's worth. ;)
 
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