[Inquisitor]

Since I am not allowed to post in other threads, and I am feeling particularly professorial, you get my soapbox. No apologies offered in advance. I am sure I will be discounted, and, I dont feel like posting my vita again. You can either believe I know what I am talking about or not. Posting will let me sleep tonight

Who WOULD you want to publish a new FS game?

When THQ bought Volition, everyone jumped on the "screw THQ" bandwagon.  So at some point, THQ was the devil. Some people hate Microsoft. Others hate EA. Is there anyone anybody likes unilaterally? The answer is no. Nobody has ever made everyone happy.

And a publisher, be it Derek Smart, HLP, Egosoft, or whoever, still needs a team to develop something. Who'd develop it? Those are two entirely different entities (well, most of the time).  Publishers distribute and oversee, developers make the bits and bytes work. Publishers deal with boxes and retail shelf space. They often provide logistics and QA support. They also often "Produce" the game, which, as often as not means they get in the way and say "no" . They are responsible for marketing and sales. And they wirte the checks to the developers.

Whoever acquires the IP has to pay to develop it. Making games is an expensive proposition. MaxGaming has yet to turn a profit, and I know how much it cost us to operate, even part time, in the last 2 years. And that's just operate, let alone pay people appropriately. I have a fair idea how many hours have gone into SCP, and, volunteer work is great, but if you suddenly shell out a half a million dollars for the RIGHTS to build a FS game, you're gonna want these things called deadlines, because that money is wasted if you don't produce something. And believe me, as talented as the SCP team is, we're not well known for our deadline making capability. People who are not paid, generally aren't well known for that. MaxGaming isn't well known for that. You have to pay the rent. Whoever acquires the rights will have to pay more than just the licensing acquisition fee, so that implies paying developers. And getting ex-V guys might not be possible for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we have collectively pissed off at least one key figure.

So. Buy the license. Pay a development team. Hope it sells.

So, who would the publisher be? And then who would actually make the damn thing?

Warning: Speculation-

It seems REALLY likely that Volition has/had a similar right of first refusal to the FS games that Outrage/Parallax has to the Descent Series. After all, the guy who likley engineered the deal with Interplay was 50% of Parallax. That means, they can, effectively block ANY developer from doing a sequel. It b locked Descent 4 (at least that's what Orbital claimed, whether or not Orbital could have executed is another thread). Smart thing for developers to own part of the IP, and these guys seem like they were smart (no pun intended, Derek). My idle speculation is that, the same guy who engineered owning the Descent IP likely built similar clauses into the FreeSpace IP contracts with the same publisher. I would have.

[Stryke 9]

Personally, I'd like to either see it given jointly to all the original developers of Freespace (the individuals, not Volition the company itself) in such a way that a majority endorsement by all contactable members (or, at least, a majority not objecting) would be necessary for any company to publish a for-sale version of Freespace. At the end of the day, they're the original authors and we're the fans, it's far more "their baby" than it is ours.

That said, there's no legal procedure I know of for doing it, and that'd be a bit awkward, so the alternative preferred option would to be release it open-license, something like GPL, where anybody could make a freeware product derived from any of the Freespace resources.

Last choice would be letting some legal entity owned by the HLP community retain it, and license it out to whoever the community wished. This... I don't particularly like, as we don't really have any particular moral rights to it even if we acquire the legal ones, and I don't know that we'd do particularly well at that job, but it'd permanently resolve the whole thing about IP infringement lawsuits or developers otherwise ****ing with the communty. Popular opinion here being what it is, if we get the license this is what's gonna happen.

And, naturally, if any other company buys it, well, whatever. I don't know any of 'em well enough to say who'd do a good job and who wouldn't, except that our effort here should not be merged with that of any corporation other than Volition unless we really end up falling short and have no other choice. Anything of that nature would be a more or less unfortunate compromise, and seeing as we're doing it to get out of an unfortunate future compromise it'd be really rather self-defeating.

And it'd be cool if Volition really had a final veto on any development, but that really only did any good while they were independent- as property of THQ, any choice they made would actually have to conform with THQ's choice, and I don't really see them picking a fight with Smart or anybody else by vetoing except if they had competed for the license, lost the price war, and wanted to get it cheap off of the winner. Which is entirely possible, their interest just has yet to be aroused (far as we know).

[Inquisitor]

You set up some kind of corporate entity. You elect board members. You get accountants to manage funds. Individuals can't be the focus. They can participate and drive it, but they can't be the focus. Partnership, LLC, or Inc. Those are your options. And those partipants at Volition would have to want the headache of being partners.

What's the upside. What's the payoff. How does Interplay pay its rent, and more importantly, how do any of hte people who sign up pay theirs?

Dinner time, back later

[Stryke 9]

Exactly. Naturally the Volition members would have to want to be a part of this- it's not like we'd force it on 'em. But as for the HLP thing, you can set up a trustee system to execute the wishes of the larger body of owners for them- either paid by the royalties of the Freespace license or volunteer- volunteer being less likely (especially here), but you can get people to do free work almost as easily as you can get free money these days (remember the boob job thing? Milholland's cool trick where he managed to quit his job based entirely on fan donations? Keep the individual burden light, and you can get a lot). Ideally, we'd have something where every ten bucks donated to buying the license would be repaid afterward with a share of stock, for use in deciding licensees and seeking partial reparations for the money spent, but that might be too complex for what we're actually capable of.

At the end of the day, there's no way that, say, all the donators would ever get all their money back if we bought Freespace. If nobody is going to be willing to outbid us if/when we ever make an offer, they're not gonna be interested in trying to pay more later. We might make enough off of charging small royalties for producing and manufacturing a Freespace game to keep a small, lightly-paid (but then, lightly-worked, this wouldn't exactly be a career here) board to manage the legal aspects, consisting of the more business-minded of willing HLPers- or the Volition crew.

[Flipside]

I suppose my main concerns are this :-

1 : That I get left alone to play with SCP and FS2 without worrying about IP problems as long as what I do remains free.

2 : That FS3 will not have Mod and Fred support, one of it's main purchasing weights when I chose FS2.

I suppose if I had the luxury of choosing my favourite, I would choose EgoSoft, I am aware some people dislike X2, but I am looking at how the company operates. They have a large friendly community, who have backed up HLP in it's current dilemma, they encourage modding, they even advise people on how the engine works so they can change stuff.

I'm not very up on all the financial thing, but I have to look at it from the point of view...

'What would FS3 offer me as a consumer?'

That is, and always will be my primary concern.

[Stryke 9]

Good call.

[Krackers87]

Id love for Relic, Bungie or Epic to develop FS3, that is of course if not V

Dream Catcher or Sierra would be great for publishing.

[Liberator]

Of those 3, Relic only makes RTSes, Bungie(afaik) is console only these days, and Epic is all about Unreal(though they do have the Unreal Engine which is a big plus as it's supposed to be faily easy to mod).  I'd have to vote for Epic, they have the technology, skills and ambition to make FS3 truly bad@$$, unlike Mr. Smart who certainly has the ambition, but lacks the desire or talent.

[Stryke 9]

PARTICLE SYSTEMS!

Oh, wait. They're dead, aren't they. Uhh... TROIKA! YES! IRONY!

[Ransom]

I'd say Egosoft. While I didn't particularly like X2, it's certainly a very high quality game. I think they have the talent for making FS3. Hopefully the rumours of them being interested are true.

[Nico]

Mmh, Psygnosys, ( the whole colony wars series looked pretty cool for a space shooter ), if they'd be ready to make it PC based first, of course

[Gloriano]

then there is this about Volition

]"I think in order for space sims to boom again, it will be in another form: on consoles." - Adam Pletcher

of course because there is bigger Market in Console games:)

[01010]

Originally posted by Nico
Mmh, Psygnosys, ( the whole colony wars series looked pretty cool for a space shooter ), if they'd be ready to make it PC based first, of course

Weren't psygnosis swallowed by Sony early on in the playstation years?

[Stealth]

in order to consider stocks, you have to be set up as a corporation, and be subject to all the massive (thousands of $$) fees, taxes, forms, etc.  unless if you do it under the table.

buying "Freespace stocks" is pretty appealing though