This is one of the most inane threads I've read in a long time.
First off - game rights are going to cost a lot more than a few hundred dollars, no matter how old the game is. At the very least, you'd be looking in the tens of thousands. Remember, the rights al;low someone to commercially produce a game, or film , or book or whatever, potentially making them thousands of dollars. You don't sell something like that for less than a figure relative to what the buyer will make.
Secondly, even if by some freak of nature (or extremely philanthropic communtiy member) you actually managed to obtain the rights, attempting to dictate terms to [V] about their use would probably be next to pointless. Even if [V] bought the rights themselves, they might not jump straight into a game - how high a priority would they put on it if they not only had to pay a bunch of random net users a royalty (to whom precisey this would go would be another issue to resolve), but also had to agree to a set of terms, and even let relative amateurs take on the highly sought after jobs of professional programmers?
And finally, "and if :V: doesn't do as we like, we can simply terminate the agreement and get the rights back to us so we can relaese FS3"...precisely howwere you planning to make FS3? And if you say the SCP I'll headbut you. Take a look at sparky.vp, warble.vp, etc. etc. After the SCP hgad somehow produced a new engine, we'd have to do all that and much more, as an unpaid group of amateurs.
Sorry sirs, but you're dreaming.
All that said, on the initial topic of the thread I think FS2 has at least another year or two in it, simply because it's so easy to mod, and because of the SCP. FS2, given the rate that it's being upgraded ATM, should easily be able to hold its own with modern games very soon, plus the quality of campaigns is increasing with each passing day. You're not taking into account the interest generated by thingslike TBP, which draws dozens of B5 fans in all on its own. The only real difficulty with sustaining the comunity much beyond that is the finite limit on the number of copies of FS2 that exist - it's practically impossible to buy new these days, and even if you did buy it new, or hell, even secondhand, the community links it provides (to the VBB) are useless.
Basically, IMO, the FS2 community will survive only until people complete the current major projects, and then the vets will lose interest, the newbies will come in too slowly, the forums will slow down, and eventually cease to twitch. It's the only way out, from here on in
. Unless some developer pulls a Half Life (Buying a copy of the Quake engiune and massively upgrading it), all we can hope for is a final, crowning fan effort, where the best of the best unite to actually produce something akin to all the 'teh bestest campaign eva!' before we all go the way of the dodo. In short, we have PS to look forward to, which means it won't be so bad
.
Forgive me my ramblings - it's late
