[jr2]

[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]

Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.

...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting.   

[Grizzly]

But wasn' tTiberium Wars also developed by EA ,and a reboot of sorts?

[Luis Dias]

Come on, even ME2 was "made" by EA.

C&C is horrible right now because there's only so much you can milk out of a nineties' genre.

[Mustang19]

If Interplay dies can we finally make FS3?

[Luis Dias]

No, lol. If interplay dies (something that will happen exactly one day after you die, obviously), then they will sell Freespace IP to someone else. And then they'll hold the rights of FS, and nothing will continue to happen.

Forget FS3. Embrace BP or other "continuations".

[General Battuta]

[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]

Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.

...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting.   

EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.

Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.

[JCDNWarrior]

THQ would be a good call to buy it up, but i'm curious how much interest there is to buy the Freespace license. However, there are at least several other games that Interplay holds, well, hostage, that deserve to be continued. I believe Planescape Torment was among them for instance.

[Luis Dias]

THQ doesn't have the policy to buy other's IP.

Really, it's dead. We have buried it long time ago. Let it RIP.

[jr2]

[Srsbsns] There was no C&C 4. [/Srsbsns]

Seriously. Tiberium Wars and it's slightly less awesome expansion pack where the last two entries in the franchise in my book.

...aaand that's what we'd be saying of FS2 if EA got FS3, I'm betting.   

EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.

Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.

I don't mean that.  How would you like to have FS3 tied to your EA account like Crysis?  Would EA even allow GOG.com to keep selling FS2 / FS1 for cheap with no DRM?  EA IIRC breathes DRM.  Right?

EDIT: Not to mention, would they bother to allow FS3 to be easily modded?  Although in that respect AFAIK they are pretty good, I hear the Crysis editor is fabulous, so probably no worries there.

[BlueFlames]

There are at least several other games that Interplay holds, well, hostage, that deserve to be continued. I believe Planescape Torment was among them for instance.

Oh, lordy....  Torment is a whole can of worms unto itself.  It's effectively just as stalemated as FreeSpace or Descent, not because the Torment IP is split, but because Atari has the exclusive publishing license for games utilizing anything D&D (except for the Baldur's Gate series, which I believe Interplay is free to continue - hence the old Dark Alliance games, which had nothing to do with the BG series but bore the name anyway).

Really, though, Torment was a closed story arc.  A sequel could only hope to feel tacked-on, at best.  The Planescape setting definately deserves some more attention, as it is always a welcome change-of-pace from the rather overused (in cRPGs at least) Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk settings.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on what you think of Atari's ambitions/capabilities), I don't think that Atari would have to interact with Interplay or even make any further agreements with Wizards of the Coast in order to utilize the Planescape setting, so long as the game isn't directly related to Torment.

[General Battuta]

I don't mean that.  How would you like to have FS3 tied to your EA account like Crysis?

To my recollection Crysis doesn't have any DRM (ed: on steam, iirc) beyond a five simultaneous activation limit. You can also get it on Steam, which yes, I would absolutely love.

EA IIRC breathes DRM.  Right?

You remember incorrectly. EA's DRM policies are much less restrictive than those of companies like Ubisoft.

EDIT: Not to mention, would they bother to allow FS3 to be easily modded?  Although in that respect AFAIK they are pretty good, I hear the Crysis editor is fabulous, so probably no worries there.

It seems like you're confusing publishers and developers here. EA is a publisher. They can lean on developers but do not make games themselves except via their studios. Crysis is a game by CryTek, which is an EA studio.

[jr2]

Hmmm.... right, but how much control does a publisher have?  IIRC M$ is the publisher for Halo, and Bungie is a Microsoft Studio.  Crappy Halo 2 PC port, no Halo 3 PC port, I don't think those were Bungie decisions, I think M$ was trying to $ell XBOXes and told Bungie no.

Sound correct?

[General Battuta]

Bungie is now an independent studio with a publishing agreement with Activision. And of course publishers have a degree of control (though I doubt Bungie had any interest in or ability to develop those games for PC on its own), but if a publisher's going to have control it's better to have EA than someone like Activision or Ubisoft.

Volition works for the financially shaky THQ.

[PsychoLandlord]

I actually have nothing but good things to say about EA at the moment, even given the aforementioned C&C4 debacle which had a multitude of reasons for occurring well outside EA's hands. I never understood why THAT was the one publisher everybody **** on. Do we just conveniently not notice groups like Activision or something?

[General Battuta]

It's because EA was worth ****ting on prior to about 2007 and then got its **** together, and that news hasn't reached everyone yet.

[jr2]

Ah.  I see.  I didn't realize they'd turned around.  I have Crysis cause it's awesome, but I've always heard EA was terrible, and I know that I had a retarded time with Battlefield 2142 cause the person who sold it to me had previously played it... it ended up (after long and useless dialogs with support) that he had to give me his account and I had to use that (fortunately, he had not activated any other games on that account).  At which point I decided that EA was not such a great company.

[SpardaSon21]

As to THQ's financial situation, they just lost a few million dollars betting on Company of Heroes Online.  It was a stupid attempt to make the quite good RTS Company of Heroes into a F2P micro-transaction Korean-style MMORTS.  Not surprisingly, it failed hard in the American market.  Its status in Korea is currently unknown to me.

I predict similar epic fail for End of Nations, an MMORTS with a monthly fee by Petroglyph.  I honestly don't know what those guys at Petroglyph are smoking to think people will pay a monthly fee to play an RTS game.

[Hades]

Yeah, that's true. I hope THQ doesn't go under though, they've been a pretty good publisher and less 'hands on' as I recall.

[Hades]

EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.

Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.

Yeah, it's a lot like the still-strong Derek Smart hate even after the guy's calmed down a lot and generally gotten pretty cool. He's not really even a bad developer, he has some great ideas. He just doesn't have the manpower to implement a lot of his ideas.

[BlueFlames]

EA also did the excellent C&C3 and helped publish ME2. By any sane account they're one of the least repulsive big, stable publishing houses.

Getting mad at EA is so...four years ago. It's the Riccitiello era now.

Yeah, it's a lot like the still-strong Derek Smart hate even after the guy's calmed down a lot and generally gotten pretty cool. He's not really even a bad developer, he has some great ideas. He just doesn't have the manpower to implement a lot of his ideas.

There is a difference, though:  Derek Smart came here and acted super-dickish directly to us, then badmouthed us in the press.  The quality of the games he makes has little to do with why many members of the FS-community still dislike him.  Much of the hate for him is on a personal level and still justified, to an extent, as he's never apologized for any of it, nor has he ever returned to interact with the community in a positive manner.  You might call it arrogant to lay the expectation upon him to take time out of his schedule to apologize to us for anything, but he took the time out of his schedule to make several long-winded posts about how little he cared for us in the first place, so five minutes (or seconds for that matter) to bang out, "I am sorry for my previous, immature behavior and hope that the FreeSpace community can find it in their hearts to forgive me," doesn't feel like asking too much.  Then, we could go back to judging him strictly as a game developer.

By contrast, EA made some bad business decisions a few years back and has since endeavored to correct their course.  It was never personal with EA, and even if it had been, the company has had a change of leadership, so any remaining grudge with the company is woefully mistargeted.  EA has done what they needed to do in order to redeem themselves.  Derek Smart still has a big step to take to properly resolve remaining grievances between himself and many members of our community.