Come Back, Wing Commander (April 8, 2008)

[Bandit LOAF]

There is an excellent article on bringing back 'abandoned' gaming franchises in the San Francisco Chronicle... and Wing commander is among those singled out! The author seems to know his history, too -- it's great to see our goals discussed in this way in the more mainstream media. Here's the relevant portion:

Wing Commander. This space opera never regained its footing after EA acquired Origin Systems and Freddie Prinze Jr. crashed the movie adaptation. Wing Commander was the darling of space combat simulators, pitting humans against a feline-like alien race, the Kilrathi, in a xenophobic death match. Wing Commander yielded several great sequels and spin-offs that pioneered full-motion video, casting Malcolm McDowell and space-opera icon Mark Hamill in Heart of the Tiger and The Price of Freedom and a then-unknown Clive Owen in Privateer 2: The Darkening. Wing Commander was a forgotten franchise. Last year, EA attempted a rival with a poorly received shooter, Wing Commander Arena, for Xbox Live. However with the death of joysticks, I doubt any developer could recapture the spirit of space combat simulators as they did 20 jump-points ago.

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Original update published on April 8, 2008

 

[Taser8]

Interesting that the author asserts that the property never "regained its footing" after EA bought Origin - Wing III and IV and Prophecy were all after the acquisition and I don't thing anyone would argue that none of those were up to the standards of the first two!

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Ahh, I missed that -- EA bought Origin in '92, so every game from Wing Commander II Deluxe onward shipped under their watch. Hardly the end of the series!

(I just found a previously unknown music CD that sort of emphasises this -- an EA promotional disc from 1993 that's all tracks from their sports games, the 3DO launch stuff and a bunch of Origin games! Strike Commander, Privateer, Super Wing Commander, Pacific Strike and Bioforge...)

 

[BlackJack2064]

I think they could create a good console WC game (aside from Arena of course), that could use the control pad as effectively as a joystick/keyboard combo.

One of the big reasons why I want a WC game made goes along the lines of what has been accomplished in Standoff and Saga....

Massive fleet battles.

With modern rendering engines and good coding it would be possible to have dozens of ships actively engaged at one time, perhaps even more! Sensory overload would be a threat if you flew into an engagement zone with several hundred fighters duking it out over a Carrier and Escorts.

With a good team of writers and coders, Wing Commander would be a very intelligent IP to try to relaunch. It has a history of innovation in the field of video game marketing. With proper support for online play, a well crafted story and the ability to take to fight againt other players around the world, we could very well see a revitalization of a genre.

 

[maltinator]

One reason why space sims died out may be that they were ending stories: If you had finished the campaign, equiped the ships entirely und discovered the whole game universe, you had no motivation any more to play the game. But I believe that there exists more potencial that we have not exhausted yet. I think that we could overtake some features of the role playing games where you can discover a huge world, too, and achive some features. DarkStar One is one forward-lokking example of the direction in which space sims could develop: By collecting artifacts, you can rebuild your space craft. Like this, you may probably collect special features which give you advantages during membership at several guilds, like better targetting for the mercenarys or better profits for the merchants. Further, we must improve the online world where you can battle against each other. That's a feature which I have really missed in space sims. With that, and the role-playing-game-features, we could create a game with non-ending experience. What's your opinion of this?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

One reason why space sims died out may be that they were ending stories: If you had finished the campaign, equiped the ships entirely und discovered the whole game universe, you had no motivation any more to play the game.

I think the death of space sims was a bit more financial than that -- it would be nice to say that game developers abandon concepts when they become repetitive, but I think there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.

(Very, very few games go on forever -- and in fact Privateer and its ilk are among the handful that might make that claim.)

I think they could create a good console WC game (aside from Arena of course), that could use the control pad as effectively as a joystick/keyboard combo.

Yeah, it was always difficult to acclimatize yourself to the various console ports' interfaces... but I kind of wonder if that maybe isn't the case for people whose first experience with the series was the SNES/Sega/3DO/PSX/etc. versions.

Guitar Hero and the Wii have made custom controllers extremely popular these days -- it might be reasonable for Wing Commander X to ship with a (cheap) flight stick. The gimmick could be that the flight stick you hold is the same one that appears on screen and moves around in the cockpit...

 

[MannPower]

Wing Commander didn't really take a hit quality-wise after the acquisition. I think the Ultima series felt it more (from 8 onward).

 

[ELTEE]

Guitar Hero and the Wii have made custom controllers extremely popular these days -- it might be reasonable for Wing Commander X to ship with a (cheap) flight stick. The gimmick could be that the flight stick you hold is the same one that appears on screen and moves around in the cockpit...

I really think there is merit to this statement. The willingness of the industry to accept a custom controller has certainly increased in the past two years. The challenge would be in the marketing and the cost controlling - it would have to be the 'right' kind of stick. Nothing too fancy or expensive - but ergonomic and easy to use as well. (Even better if they figure out how to use it across various genres.)

 

[Jason_Ryock]

I wanted to ask about the claim that Arena was poorly received - was that true?

All of my exposure to the game has been through the CIC, so I've only seen the admittedly biased opinion of Wingnuts on the matter.

 

[AD]

I wanted to ask about the claim that Arena was poorly received - was that true?

All of my exposure to the game has been through the CIC, so I've only seen the admittedly biased opinion of Wingnuts on the matter.

There were very good reviews and some very poor reviews. And even if I remove my bias, (which technically is impossible ) I would still have to say the poor reviews were bad examples of Journalism. The gamespot guy didn't even really play it before giving it a bad score. That said the game isn't for everyone (even if I think it should be) and I wouldn't say the game sold poorly. It did ok for a live arcade title.

 

[MannPower]

A friend of mine - who's never had exposure to WC before, outside of the name - played Arena at my place on Sunday and found it quite enjoyable, so it's not just us. Some reviewers get to be reviewers because they're only able to be eloquently contrary.

 

[Frosty]

Well, contrary, anyway.

 

[Chaosbringer]

Wing Commander didn't really take a hit quality-wise after the acquisition. I think the Ultima series felt it more (from 8 onward).

I agree. I was a huge fan of Ultima, and it fell apart starting with Ultima 8, which looked like a beta version, an unfinished game.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I agree. I was a huge fan of Ultima, and it fell apart starting with Ultima 8, which looked like a beta version, an unfinished game.

As much as I respect Richard Garriott and the others who worked on the game, it has always seemed to me that there was a good bit of revisionist history going on with regards to the development of Ultima VIII.

The problem with the game wasn't that it was buggy, it was that the conscious changes they made to the design were awful. Things like dropping character customization in favor of a 3D-rendered Avatar avatar and adding arcade jumping sequences weren't forced on the game by some EA-insisted deadline... they were planned elements of the game which just didn't work out correctly.

(I believe Pagan was significantly delayed, too -- they weren't forced to ship for Christmas or anything like that. At the end of the day it seems buggier because the actual gameplay isn't as pleasant... think back: Ultima 7's spit-and-glue memory management was even more unstable from a technical standpoint. You just looked past that because the game itself was so cool.)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

A friend of mine - who's never had exposure to WC before, outside of the name - played Arena at my place on Sunday and found it quite enjoyable, so it's not just us. Some reviewers get to be reviewers because they're only able to be eloquently contrary.

Yes, I've never run into anyone in the actual game who disliked it -- but lots and lots of people who were surprised by how great it was, after hearing reviews online. Sales (as best as we can estimate them) seem to be mid-range for an XBLA title... better than BattleStar Galactica but worse by a significant amount than Boom Boom Rocket.

There are a few things worth noting -- particularly that the print media's reviews, with their month-plus lead time rendering them completely immune to any sort of manufactured internet negativity, were spectacular... and that the GameSpot editor who wrote the initial non-review was recently fired for exactly this sort of thing.

That said, I think Electronic Arts and Microsoft screwed up in some important areas -- namely with the game's free demo mode. Meteor Storm is a neat mode -- it's fun, it's fast, it's amusing... and the English major in me wants to call it a clever parody. It's not, however, the spirit of Wing Commander Arena... it's an aside.

The game *needed* some way to demonstrate its amazing multiplayer mode. Microsoft's policy prevented including straight multiplayer in the demo... and EA didn't go through great lengths to include a more complex or representative single player option. Without letting everyone see the cap ship battles or the boneyard dogfights or the heated satellite races everybody who tried the game just played Asteroids.