Out of curiousity,
Any idea how much the FS licence would sell for?, or around?, (as an approximation).
Guessing the price is really an anything-goes affair. Volition won't want to sell the development rights, but THQ might not be bothered with a game whose latest iteration sold 25,000 copies in its first year. Interplay's recovery scheme seems to be to promise everything and the kitchen sink, so they probably won't want to sell the publishing rights, unless (or until, depending on your estimation of their prospects) they get desperate for cash again. Each component can feasibly be described as being anywhere from dirt-cheap to not-for-sale.
Beyond the rights to make/publish the game, though, Volition is further saddled by being a subsidiary of THQ. If THQ doesn't think a FreeSpace sequel is worth the investment, they won't greenlight the project. Then, the only way for interested parties within Volition to make FS3 would be to spin-off their own studio, at which point they'd have to buy both the development and publishing rights, requiring them to negotiate with competing publishers, which would likely turn into one giant fustercluck.
Now, you'll have to excuse me, while I get extra-cynical: Why is it that Volition seems to bring this up to the gaming press on an almost annual basis? Telling
us doesn't advance FreeSpace 3 towards being greenlit. You've got to convince your bosses to make the game, not your diehard fans to want the game (since they likely will, with or without prompting). I suspect that, while there are elements of Volition that want to make FS3, the ploy here is to make us expect FreeSpace-related easter eggs in totally unrelated games, so that we are more likely to buy those games. Before you ask, "Why would they do that?" or "What's the likelihood of that actually selling more games?" think about the cost to Volition. They had to have
one person take the time to answer
one more question in an interview. If they sell a single extra copy of Saint's Row or Red Faction to someone who just wanted to scour the game, looking for an office with a computer with a screenshot from FS2 on the monitor, they've covered their costs and made more money that they otherwise would have. Given that we had a discussion on the Wiki forum last year about whether or not to document all of the links between the Red Faction, Saint's Row, and FreeSpace universes, I'd suggest that this methodology has moved at least a few copies of Volition's non-FreeSpace games.
Oh, and even supposing that the "we would kill," line isn't hyperbolic rhetoric, just because all of the employees are dead doesn't stop a corporation from existing and holding intellectual property. Parallax still exists in name only to hang onto the development rights to Descent (which rather begs the question as to how Interplay thinks it's going to get Descent 4 made). Still, an old Roman style arena deathmatch between Volition and Interplay could have some entertainment value. Since Interplay's outsourced the Fallout MMO to focus on paying their legal department to defend against Bethesda's lawsuits, it'd be interesting to find out who's scrappier in a fight: a game developer or a lawyer.
