Many ex-Origin employees attended a "wake" in honor of the company's glory-days, held by Ultima creator Richard Garriott -- featuring an EA-logo shaped bonfire. From GameSpy...
George Sanger, AKA The Fat Man, had a dot matrix printout design doc of "Squadron," the game that eventually became Wing Commander. He threw it onto the blaze and we watched it burn.... Everyone I know who ever worked with Origin was touched in some positive way by the experience. and everyone tonight seemed to understand that the moment was something special. I think the love of that place and of the people who powered it gave the air a weird electricity. It felt like a watershed event tonight.
What a waste -- on every possible level (It's also a good thing that we've got a copy of that document). You can read the entire article here, or see some pictures from the event here. (Thanks to the many, many people who reported this). Update: More pictures here, posted by Boomer, of all people!
GameSpy also posted this response regarding Origin's current status, from David Swofford."We're still called ORIGIN Systems, Inc. That part hasn't changed. The studio name will always be OSI. The only thing going away is the ORIGIN brand. All of the products coming from OSI will be branded either under EA Games or EA.Com. That's pretty much the way it is across all the EA studios, including Maxis and Westwood. As for UO, EA is putting a lot more resources into the UO world. Both in terms of money and manpower. The UO2 project has been canceled, but UO is alive and well and we expect it to continue to grow and prosper.""We did have 85 cutbacks, but there are still more than 150 people here, working on UO and EA.com. UO development is still handled from here. That group is not moving to Redwood City. The OSI office is not being closed. The UO2 project has been canceled. Many from that team were part of the layoffs. Some are moving over to work on UO Live which is getting an influx of money and manpower. Others on that team are looking for work. They were given a severance package and outplacement assistance."
Good news for Wing Commander fans planning to attend DragonCon 2001 -- and there are a bunch of us -- noted Wing Commander author William Forstchen has been added to the guest list! This is gonna be fun... (Reported by Joe Garrity, of The Origin Museum).
Update from the Invasion mod for ST: Armada -- the previously announcted "public beta test" is actually a closed beta test... so, despite their earlier posting, you can't play it. What's worse, they seem to be being real jerks to people who are interested in the mod -- these new guys are real rocket surgeons, WildCat...
Okay, one more beautiful new screenshot from the XWA/WC TC...
Rasputin has started a WCTC for Serious Sam, titled Wing Commander: Marine Force. A web page is currently located here. They're looking for coders, mappers, texture artists, modellers and voice actors... so there's room for everybody to help out on this one. Here's the description...A Total Conversion for the popular game Serious Sam, this multiplayer game allows players to use either Kilrathi Assembly of Clan Warriors or the Terran Confederation Marines. To fight in maps such as a Victory class Carrier to a desolate research station and onto a Fralthi class Cruiser. Based during the Wing Commander 3 era circa 2669.Two teams, Terran and Kilrathi, fight for control. Victory can be obtained by eliminating the opposing force or completing mission objectivs; take no prisoners.
Commander ChrisReid says: "Serious Sam kicks ass!"
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