Happy New Poll! (January 2, 2020)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
It's a new year and time for a new poll! Our annual new year's poll asks what kind of year you think it'll be for Wing Commander. As we saw in yesterday's recap, 2019 was a big year for Wing Commander, and there's no sign of letting up in 2020!









The old poll asked about the most underappreciated Wing Commander games. Armada, with its strategic mode and expansive multiplayer options, took the lead with Privateer 2 a close second. Super Wing Commander, Academy and even the Prophecy port for the Game Boy Advance also took in a good number of votes. It's great to see people who are fans of all these lesser-known WC products!

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Original update published on January 2, 2020
 
For once I would love to see a poll where the majority of respondents don't predict the year to be "Poor", SMH. I think it'll be a fair or average one myself, not really sure what's cooking among the fan projects right now, but a little more optimism is something the CIC could use, lol.
 
Aeronautico said:
For once I would love to see a poll where the majority of respondents don't predict the year to be "Poor", SMH. I think it'll be a fair or average one myself, not really sure what's cooking among the fan projects right now, but a little more optimism is something the CIC could use, lol.
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The past year has been surprisingly great on the fan project front. Things may not be as active as they were in the days when WC games were actively coming out, but compared to before, 2019 had an interesting resurgence in interest in WC. I'm hoping that continues right through 2020 and gains momentum. However, forums themselves have become an antiquated relic of the past. here sort of still useful but the internet in 2020 just doesn't really interact that way anymore. Heck even websites like WCNews just don't really happen anymore for other fandoms. The quiet in here isn't really indicative of interest in Wing Commander as a whole. There's a lot of people that remember the games fondly but it's just a matter of figuring out how to reach them.

On a similar note, as IRC was dying places like Discord have taken off. Our little discord channel seems to continue to get busier but it's a great place to just hang out.
 
Aeronautico said:
For once I would love to see a poll where the majority of respondents don't predict the year to be "Poor", SMH. I think it'll be a fair or average one myself, not really sure what's cooking among the fan projects right now, but a little more optimism is something the CIC could use, lol.
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Funny you should say that, because by odd coincidence, while I usually vote "average", this year I actually decided to vote "poor". Why?

Well, I think AD's post says it all - we're deluding ourselves. Our expectations for Wing Commander have collapsed to the point where people actually think fan projects make a great year for WC. And when we say "average", we actually mean - "neither better nor worse than previous years". As a franchise and fandom, Wing Commander hasn't had an objectively good year for so long, most of us have decided to redefine what we mean by "good".

And because I am tired of this kind of self-delusion, this year, with apologies to DefianceIndustries and Pedro and others working on really great and amazing fan projects, I've decided that rather than saying "average", I will actually say what I mean by "average" - namely, "poor".

On the bright side, if there were a "dismal" option on the poll, I would still vote for "poor", because I'd reserve "dismal" for those years when truly nothing interesting is happening, even on the fan project front. Yes, I'm excited to see WCP progressively being remastered visually. Yes, I am excited to see Pedro's slow-but-steady progress on his re-creation of WC4. But that kind of thing doesn't actually make Wing Commander any less dead as a franchise.

As a fandom, Wing Commander is by now the equivalent of a war veterans' association. Every year, we look back, and are excited to see how many of us are still left (only x people disappeared this year! Awesome!), and about how this or that guy is working on his memoirs or had a new uniform made, or made a cool display case for their medals, or whatever, and that's all great in its own way - but it doesn't change the fact that the "war" that brought us together has been over for eons, and ain't about to flare up again, no matter how we might wish otherwise.
 
The biggest problem is simply that we are fans of tradition and use the same wording as we did literally twenty years ago when Origin was still around and making WC games. But it's an obtuse and pessimistic reading of the poll question to apply the standards of 2000 to 2020. You compare the fandom to a bunch of old warhorses who don't realize the war's over, but that's literally the type of old fashioned thinking at play when you apply the old standards to today's poll. But however you want to classify it, veteran's associations exist. Fandoms for much much more dead franchises exist. And the far sadder situation is when those groups don't have a place like the CIC to congregate.

The fandom has long evolved to the point where the community flourishes without new WC games in the works. As AD said, you don't see it in things like forum traffic because that's not how people communicate on the internet anymore, but you absolutely see it in the quality of the numerous exciting fan projects that are in the works compared to 15 years ago when the last EA WC game was in production. I've wanted the CIC to do a streaming WC show and host a live CIC birthday party for 20+ years, and in 2019, we finally did it! That alone makes it one of the best years on record and makes me super excited for this year. Not to mention the fact that we'll be getting new music by George Oldziey, new artwork by multiple original Origin artists and other things that we don't even know about yet. Fantastic existing projects will release new amazing things, and new fan projects will start from scratch this year. That IS Wing Commander in 2020. I'm with Aeronautico - I think it's kind of insulting to all their hard work to dimiss that.
 
Paladin: So here you are, an instructor. Not a general, or a senator. And you could have had everything.
Maverick: “Everything” means I keep flying. So if you ask me, I’ve got everything.

I don't see it as any sort of delusion to have your expectations change as you get older; it's just part of growing. I will be perfectly happy with another year spent with good friends exploring what we already have. I haven't expected Electronic Arts will step in and do something with the IP for many years... and I often ask myself if that's even something I really want at this point.
 
To be clear, when I say we're like a veterans' association, this is in no way meant to disparage the community. Obviously, if I had meant it in a disparaging way… I simply wouldn't be here, right? I love this community for what it is, it's just that seeing this same poll question every year naturally inclines me to try to assess the franchise by the same standards I would have applied years earlier.

So, if we're asking why people vote "poor", this is the reason - the franchise is where it is. If you were to ask me about the state of the WC community, I'd respond more positively than "poor" - but that wasn't the question :). And as someone who invested a decade into fan projects, I don't think it's at all insulting to fan project developers to say that for all their efforts, they don't change much in the overall situation of the franchise. People who make fan projects also like to get new games - and are generally humble enough to realise their projects are only a small contribution… if only because anyone arrogant enough to think otherwise would have long, long ago moved on to greener pastures.
 
I wouldn't call Unknown Enemy, Standoff, and Saga to be small contributions. If anything, they're better than anything EA would be likely to make now, unless they could find a way to fill it with recurrent user spending. I think we'll see a nice mod or two for Outlaw take shape in the next year though.
 
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