Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Marauder on November 06, 2017, 12:00:11 am
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Here’s some food for thought. I could be misguided but hear me out — I’m not used to using my voice.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-09-life-after-agents-of-mayhem-where-now-for-volition (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-09-life-after-agents-of-mayhem-where-now-for-volition)
According to the above article, Studio Development Director Jim Boone has returned to DS Volition after an 18-month sojourn with Riot Games. He knows how much the FreeSpace series is beloved — having witnessed the birth of the franchise in 1998, he also gave that interview back in 2011 knowing how much the series was cherished by some Volition employees (http://www.pcgamer.com/volition-would-commit-murder-to-make-freespace-3 (http://www.pcgamer.com/volition-would-commit-murder-to-make-freespace-3)). Volition recently launched Agents of Mayhem to a lukewarm reception, and it’s certainly arguable the studio hasn't been staying true to their roots of innovative gameplay, narrative driven content, and sense of community. The terraforming mechanic in the original Red Faction, the six-degrees-of-freedom in Descent, and the creation of FRED as well as release of the SCP are cases in which I believe Volition pushed the gaming medium forward.
I ask earnestly if now is the time to ask again for FreeSpace 3, 18 years since the release of FreeSpace 2. Could we as a community amass proof that it would be a financially feasible project, pointing out the space sim genre’s slow reawakening since the introduction of Star Citizen and No Man's Sky? Escapist Magazine reported in 2013 that Interplay reacquired the rights from THQ for less than $8k (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124715-Interplay-Buys-Freespace-Rights-For-a-Cool-7-500 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124715-Interplay-Buys-Freespace-Rights-For-a-Cool-7-500)). Could Volition or the community crowdfund to buy those rights from Interplay, and give Volition control of the franchise? Interplay is a company that now uses their Twitter and Facebook feeds to promote sales of very old games, and their website has news no newer than 2015, which I find disappointing. Maybe FreeSpace Tactics was a way of testing the waters for a FreeSpace revival. The Kickstarter campaign was initiated by Interplay employees. When even the old publisher’s employees have enjoyed a game so much they try to revive it in a different way…you know this game is beloved.
Even the goddamn Half Life series (the first game of which came out the same year as FreeSpace) got some sort of an ending recently, even if it was in the form of a blog post. The fans felt relief and closure. Volition is not like Valve, however. It's a smaller, more intimate team that has lost their IPs event after unfortunate event. One month after the release of Agents of Mayhem, Volition laid off 15% of its staff(!), Kotaku reported in September (https://kotaku.com/big-layoffs-hit-agents-of-mayhem-developer-volition-1818844285 (https://kotaku.com/big-layoffs-hit-agents-of-mayhem-developer-volition-1818844285). Even if Volition reacquired the rights to the FS franchise, Deep Silver would have to be convinced that FreeSpace 3 is a worthwhile product, and I would hope that the continued presence of HLP could help to show them that. The underperformance of Agents of Mayhem could be the key act to follow here.
With respect to playability: Some speculate that the space sim genre originally died out in part due to the decline of the joystick. While some of us “keyboard jockeys” existed back then and still do now, I would argue that the game could be played with an Xbox controller. I attempted playing FreeSpace 2 on a Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X recently, and while it wasn’t for me, those with way more motor control than me could adapt easily to a new handheld layout, dust off their flight sticks, or buy new ones. Or join the keyboarders and mousers, tee hee.
Indeed, we HLPers have been here for longer than I think some of us expected to ever be (I’m looking at you: Sandwich, Axem, General Battuta, Darius, Goober5000, and others!!). Firesteel’s latest analyses on YouTube, Dan Wentz’s refreshing of the music, and last but not least, this community’s continued releases of mods and maintenance of the SCP, all show that players and professionals alike are still willing to support Volition in this endeavour. When you have a huge YouTube channel like WatchMojo.com release a video on the “Top 10 Space Combat Video Games” as recently as 2015 and sitting in the #1 spot is FreeSpace 2, you know this game has made some sort of mark on gaming history.
I don’t know the whole picture. I don’t understand how the transfer of IPs works, I don’t know what Volition’s situation is, I don’t know if Deep Silver has to care, or how many of us FreeSpace pilots would be left to buy FreeSpace 3 if it ever existed. HLP, let’s discuss: What do we have to do to finally make this happen or abandon all hope for FS3, maybe forever?
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The ship has sailed. No matter how much FreeSpace 3 is wanted, it can never EVER be created in a satisfying way any more. Volition is too different. People are too different. We as a community are too different. We can't turn back time make things how they were. At best, we get Duke Nukem Forever, an ok but lackluster title that far from satisfies and whose biggest contribution is putting that eternal question mark to rest.
As far as I'm concerned, the only way FreeSpace 3 gets made is by going back in time and making FS2 sell well enough to enable an FS3 a year or two after. And in the case of a more successful FreeSpace it's entirely possible the source code would never be released and this community would die when official content stopped, and is that really what you would want?
And let's face it, I highly doubt Volition, or any other company could produce anything of the quality that the community has. Maybe no single campaign, but certainly no matter what they put out, they would be done already and done better in every aspect by another fan-made campaign. Save perhaps voice-acting or cinematics. We've gone and taken a pretty good game so amazingly far and beyond it's original form, few other things can even compete. There is no way in hell an officially produced FreeSpace 3 won't feel like a massive step-down in quality from what's already been created.
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One major thing to remember is that Volition is not independent anymore. They are owned by Deep Silver. I don't know how autonomous they are but I don't think Deep Silver would take the pitch for a linear space combat sim (which is what I assume most of us would want). Also Volition is a very different studio than they were when they were founded. They're bigger. They (as in upper management) are probably not terribly interested in the risk of working on a linear space sim when it would inexorably be compared to Star Citizen.
I don't think playability is the issue here. Freespace 1 and 2 work perfectly well with standard keyboard controls. It's an issue of publishing and changing times.
The other thing to remember (and why I titled the now on hiatus series "the Forgotten Classic") is that only the small group of people who care about space combat games have any real memory of the series. The industry largely abandoned the narrative and system design of the series (and in my eyes throwing the family out with the bath water) and the current state of the industry likely wouldn't accept the game we at HLP would actually be interested in.
As a sidebar I'd be curious to know how well House of the Dying Sun did since it has some HLP DNA in it (particularly on the narrative style). People have stuck around here for both the coding and the story and I don't see a story like Freespace's being published in the current climate by a AA studio.
At this point given how much Volition has changed and even how much older all the folks who worked on Freespace are, we'd likely not get something very close to the games we've built this community around. Honestly there's a huge part of me that doesn't feel the need for a conclusion. We have HLP's past and future to speculate with. This community is (in my extremely biased opinion) one of :v:'s best legacies to date and we've been immersed in the code and story for longer than anyone at :v: has likely been able to do in their spare time.
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I guess I'll have to agree to disagree with some here. I wouldn't mind seeing FS3 and would buy it if produced. Having a "conclusion" to the saga wouldn't diminish my enjoyment of the campaigns currently released.
But on the subject of the thread (and leaving aside the question of whether Volition would produce a good FS3 today), who actually owns the FS rights these days? Is it still Interplay?
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One of the problems is that we're a decent-sized chunk of the target market and as people who follow a project in continuous development, we've gradually had our expectations raised beyond what I think would be reasonable to expect from a commercial release. Something like Blue Planet and Vassago's Dirge would not get made by a studio. They're too risky (in spite of being of higher quality than a fair number of commercial releases IMO). Even something like Derelict is a far cry from what I'd expect of a commercial release in this day and age.
(I don't feel like writing all of my rationale for why Freespace in its past and current form wouldn't be made since I have 40ish minutes of video doing that)
Freespace, especially in the direction HLP has taken it, is headier than the average sci-fi game getting released now and while there is demand for both Freespace and quality sci-fi, anyone beyond a small indie studio isn't risking the years and millions of dollars on a niche product.
It would be interesting to see an official conclusion to the story but I don't think we'd get what we'd be expecting even if someone at :v: dug up the little preproduction work done on Freespace 3 all those years ago. Too much has changed.
EDIT: I don't think it's Interplay since they sold off a bunch of assets last I remember but they could have bought them back somehow.
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One of the problems is that we're a decent-sized chunk of the target market and as people who follow a project in continuous development, we've gradually had our expectations raised beyond what I think would be reasonable to expect from a commercial release. Something like Blue Planet and Vassago's Dirge would not get made by a studio. They're too risky (in spite of being of higher quality than a fair number of commercial releases IMO). Even something like Derelict is a far cry from what I'd expect of a commercial release in this day and age.
(I don't feel like writing all of my rationale for why Freespace in its past and current form wouldn't be made since I have 40ish minutes of video doing that)
Freespace, especially in the direction HLP has taken it, is headier than the average sci-fi game getting released now and while there is demand for both Freespace and quality sci-fi, anyone beyond a small indie studio isn't risking the years and millions of dollars on a niche product.
It would be interesting to see an official conclusion to the story but I don't think we'd get what we'd be expecting even if someone at :v: dug up the little preproduction work done on Freespace 3 all those years ago. Too much has changed.
EDIT: I don't think it's Interplay since they sold off a bunch of assets last I remember but they could have bought them back somehow.
Don't take what I'm about to say as me hating BP...I think BP is a technical masterpiece. However, (and this is just my perspective), BP doesn't diminish enjoyment from other campaigns for me. I've seen people say BP makes other campaigns garbage in comparison. I'd hate to see that discourage people from making "simpler" campaigns like Warzone, Derelict, Aeos Affair, etc. Heck, I'm still hoping the Inferno remake eventually gets done still.
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I guess I didn't explain my usage of BP there DERP.
My point was that the (now) super projects like BP and ST:R have set a bar that I don't think a commercial release would be able to clear, at least on the narrative quality and tone.
I'm by no means saying BP invalidates stuff like Derelict mainly because of how different they are (good stuff). Hell Derelict and it's combination corporate espionage and cosmic horror angle is too iffy with the way it's told, as in it's more interesting than something I see a studio managing to put out.
I guess I missed talk about Inferno getting remade. If only I had time, I'd be interested in contributing something to it.
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I guess I didn't explain my usage of BP there DERP.
My point was that the (now) super projects like BP and ST:R have set a bar that I don't think a commercial release would be able to clear, at least on the narrative quality and tone.
I'm by no means saying BP invalidates stuff like Derelict mainly because of how different they are (good stuff). Hell Derelict and it's combination corporate espionage and cosmic horror angle is too iffy with the way it's told, as in it's more interesting than something I see a studio managing to put out.
I guess I missed talk about Inferno getting remade. If only I had time, I'd be interested in contributing something to it.
The remake is called "Inferno Nostos" and last I checked, it seemed to be on hiatus (it was originally supposed to be released in 2013) but Woomeister doesn't think it's completely dead.
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If Volition has still interest in a new space game, they should make a complete new IP, that is not related to Freespace in any way.
In a new IP they can use complete new ideas, a complete new story and they can use features without all the obligations from 18 years ago.
Also i do not think that it would be a good idea to create a continuiation for a game that story was not only 18 years ago, but was also a commercial failure anyway.
I have to say, that i also like, that there are enough campaigns, that everybody have now the possibility to create his/her own timeline after FS2 now.
There are enough campaigns which answers the questions from FS2 in a different way and so everyone can choose the campaign which corresponds more with your own ideas.
That has much more value for me than one official definitve answer could ever have.
Not only in the reason i dislike BP's approach to the freespace universe very much, for example :D
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Revival already expressed interest in creating a spiritual successor to FreeSpace once Overload is finished. Given that Revival includes some of the original team (whereas Volition does not afaik), in all likelihood they are the best hope for another quality Freespace-like game. Support the current title and then just maybe.. :)
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judging by what makes the most money nowadays, you'd end up with a F2P Freespace dogfight sim ala War Thunder where you buy an Erinyes in a 60 dollar pack or something
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Buy a lootbox that gives you the chance to get an Erinyes at 0.01% odds.
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If Volition has still interest in a new space game, they should make a complete new IP, that is not related to Freespace in any way.
In a new IP they can use complete new ideas, a complete new story and they can use features without all the obligations from 18 years ago.
I rather like this idea! A new game could be set in the same or a parallel universe to FreeSpace.
I have to say, that i also like, that there are enough campaigns, that everybody have now the possibility to create his/her own timeline after FS2 now.
There are enough campaigns which answers the questions from FS2 in a different way and so everyone can choose the campaign which corresponds more with your own ideas.
That has much more value for me than one official definitve answer could ever have.
I have to admit I haven't played too many of the community-made campaigns. Transcend, Sync, Blue Planet, and the Just Another Day series were all that I ever played. Maybe it's because I haven't played too many campaigns that my mind is still open to the possibility of part 3 — I don't have any expectations, but others will. I have to agree with CT27 here, if it were made, I'd most certainly buy it. Some of us may have stories to tell but lack the modding or composition skills to do so. Sure, that's what teams are for, but selling your vision to others, asking them to volunteer their little free time on your campaign, is a challenge in and of itself.
Revival already expressed interest in creating a spiritual successor to FreeSpace once Overload is finished. Given that Revival includes some of the original team (whereas Volition does not afaik), in all likelihood they are the best hope for another quality Freespace-like game. Support the current title and then just maybe.. :)
Well hot damn, I didn't know that! I was definitely planning on buying Overload since I was too young to appreciate Descent back when it came out. Just browsing their site now I'm blown away that a question about FreeSpace is in the FAQ!
(https://i.imgur.com/wzHpeib.png)
All right, good chat everyone, let's go home. :lol:
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Spiritual successor would be far better than an actual sequel.
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I'd like to ask about something I keep hearing about: FS2 being a commercial "failure".
Was that just because space-sims weren't that popular anymore at the time or was the game not marketed properly? Or was it something else?
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I'd like to ask about something I keep hearing about: FS2 being a commercial "failure".
Was that just because space-sims weren't that popular anymore at the time or was the game not marketed properly? Or was it something else?
My then 9-year-old impression back then was that it didn't get enough marketing on Interplay's part, so it did just OK. After the super great ratings Interplay tried to push the sim the following year but it was too late...
I think I've been overall convinced that a spiritual successor would be more satisfying, but I would still love some sort of blog post conclusion à la Half Life either way.
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I'd like to ask about something I keep hearing about: FS2 being a commercial "failure".
Was that just because space-sims weren't that popular anymore at the time or was the game not marketed properly? Or was it something else?
In germany it was mainly because the first one get a very bad and incomplete translation. In The Great War only the in-mission dialogue were voiced. Silent Threat was even worse than it was in english. In Freespace 2 the translation itself was better, but again it does not have much effort in the voice files, because next to the in-mission dialogue only the command briefings get voice acting.
Afaik one of the problems for the world wide unsuccess was indeed the bad marketing, because Interplay pushed the release ahead. So there was no time for a good marketing strategy. I do not know, why Interplay decided to release this game earlier than it should. Also i do not understand a release right in August and so in one of the summer months where games always do not get great attention by potential players.
And for FS3... the revelation of the "Shivantown" idea by Volition is enough to know, that i am not really interested in a FS3, because there where never an idea how to continue FS2 as this was developed :(
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Afaik one of the problems for the world wide unsuccess was indeed the bad marketing, because Interplay pushed the release ahead. So there was no time for a good marketing strategy. I do not know, why Interplay decided to release this game earlier than it should. Also i do not understand a release right in August and so in one of the summer months where games always do not get great attention by potential players.
That was actually completely on Volition, by their own admission. They finished FS2 ahead of schedule, and just called Interplay and were like "yeah, hey, we're done early, can you like, release?" Which caught Interplay with their pants down.
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And for FS3... the revelation of the "Shivantown" idea by Volition is enough to know, that i am not really interested in a FS3, because there where never an idea how to continue FS2 as this was developed :(
What exactly do you mean by this part of your statement? You say they had the Shivantown idea...but there was never an idea on how to continue FS2? Like it or not, wasn't Shivantown an idea?
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I think BP is a technical masterpiece. However, (and this is just my perspective), BP doesn't diminish enjoyment from other campaigns for me. I've seen people say BP makes other campaigns garbage in comparison. I'd hate to see that discourage people from making "simpler" campaigns like Warzone, Derelict, Aeos Affair, etc.
Ditto. Simple campaigns can be a lot of fun. And a lot of campaign managers fail to keep in mind that nobody will care how great your campaign is if it's never released.
Afaik one of the problems for the world wide unsuccess was indeed the bad marketing, because Interplay pushed the release ahead. So there was no time for a good marketing strategy. I do not know, why Interplay decided to release this game earlier than it should. Also i do not understand a release right in August and so in one of the summer months where games always do not get great attention by potential players.
That was actually completely on Volition, by their own admission. They finished FS2 ahead of schedule, and just called Interplay and were like "yeah, hey, we're done early, can you like, release?" Which caught Interplay with their pants down.
Citation needed. Because the story has always been that Interplay pushed Volition to release the game in time for them to announce it in their quarterly business report. But due to Interplay's mismanagement, the marketing campaign wasn't moved up one month to match the game release. And then when the marketing was scheduled to start, Interplay used the poor sales numbers as justification for not actually spending the marketing dollars.
That's the "incompetence" version. The "malice" version was that Interplay was already succumbing to mismanagement by that point and someone simply embezzled the money.
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I've mentioned this before, but there is an incarnation of FS3 that I would be receptive to. We've had contact with a few of the original story-makers of the FS universe over the years. I'd like to see as many of those as possible, teaming up (non-profit) with some of the more talented community members to create a joint FS3 project.
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Citation needed. Because the story has always been that Interplay pushed Volition to release the game in time for them to announce it in their quarterly business report. But due to Interplay's mismanagement, the marketing campaign wasn't moved up one month to match the game release. And then when the marketing was scheduled to start, Interplay used the poor sales numbers as justification for not actually spending the marketing dollars.
That's the "incompetence" version. The "malice" version was that Interplay was already succumbing to mismanagement by that point and someone simply embezzled the money.
I remember it being said in one of the recent ish interview/podcast videos, I forgot which one. Wikipedia also mentions FS2 being completed ahead of schedule.
But hey, I could be misremembering.
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Wikipedia also mentions FS2 being completed ahead of schedule.
But hey, I could be misremembering.
Do games ever get completed ahead of schedule anymore? Sounds like a dream.
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Do games ever get completed ahead of schedule anymore? Sounds like a dream.
I think Freespace 2 may be one of the very few in the entire history of gaming.
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I had heard that the lack of FS2 marketing on Interplay's part was also related to them (Interplay) being worried about losing sales on the latest Descent title, and so they didn't promote what could potentially have been a second flagship title for them.
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First of all, HOLY CRAP this place is still alive! I am beyond impressed how much support such an old game like this still has. Awesome!
Second, my love for this game is as strong as it's ever been the past few years, during which I played Derelict and BluePlanet. I hope all of us still here will continue to love this game for our remaining lifetimes.
And now my opinion about the subject in the OP post: I would love to have a Freespace 3 created as well that carries all the things that made its predecessors great. See I actually enjoy the fact that Freespace 2 hasn't ended because it leaves the door open to imagination. This goes well with the FRED system, because we get to create our own futures for the game. How many games have all of us played that end with so many unanswered questions? This game not only has a "create your own campaign" system, but also the best excuse in the world...er, universe: It takes place in SPACE! Wormholes, time travel, black holes, supernovas, etc etc could potentially affect the outcome of the ending. Basically, its one of those games that doesn't need an ending. :pimp: In fact, if they made a new engine for this game from scratch while keeping the originality of the game intact, with a small campaign, I would be happy. Then the continuation of the game can be handled by us and the many new fans that will join us. Add the game to Steam with the community workshop and there will be a lot more supporters for this game. We will make this game the LONGEST supported game EVAAAAAAAAAH! :cool: ;7 :pimp:
Finally some past memories: When I started playing this game and played it till the end, back in 2000, I only cared about the main campaign. I had no interest in FRED and its capabilities. Fast forward 6 years, 2006, I took a look at FRED and realized its potential. Easy to learn, fun to use, and made a few missions and a cheesy campaign. I came across this site and I was already amazed by the support behind it, but little did I know until I started exploring the site more how much work you guys were putting into making the game better. It blew my mind that some of you would go this far for this game. But you know what? If I had known programming back then, I would have done the same :lol: ;7 :D
Went through some of my older posts and realized that sometimes I made some good posts while others I was just full of it :lol:
MatthTheGeek, remember this? :
Quote from: MachManX on May 11, 2010, 02:11:33 am
MachManX: Maybe it's some hyper-advanced version of FreeCell <--Yes, I thought this
MatthTheGeek: I loled so hard.
Link to post (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68514.msg1371438#msg1371438)
Wow, now that I am older and do some programming, I understand the difficulty involved in debugging and fixing code. It's not nearly as easy as someone might think it is, especially when fixing code that someone else wrote! Add to this, the fact that the code was written with the standards back in 99 or pre-99 AND its a Game with game code, it gets even more difficult to fix something small. Just to give you non-programmers an idea, one time I had to fix an issue at work that caused a checkbox to remain unchecked. It took me a week to find out that it was setting the wrong type of registry value (using dword instead of string). But to find that issue I had to go through 10 pages of code with multiple functions before finding the underlying problem. The code wasn't wrong from a machine standpoint, it was wrong due to human logic.
I wonder what IDE you use to fix FS2 problems? Jeez you guys are amazing.
Shout out to all of you who are still around supporting this game! :yes: :yes: I will pop in from time to time to see what's going on.
PS: I was a keyboard guy as well ;)