chances of future wing commander game(s)

Well If I am not mistaken I think that back then , Origin was to make a Star Wars

Space sim , but Lucas(-arts?) didnt aprove or something like that.

LOAF or someone could bring some light to that .

If that happened , and with the success WC had in 1990 ,Lucasarts had to react somehow.They had to STRIKE BACK :p

IIRC they were after the Battlestar Galactica License(wich would be wise, and at least a lot cheaper). Lucas(Arts/Filmgames) was already doing (flight)games by then, and there were star-wars sims(like the arcade version) already for facing TIE's and performing the trench run in the early 80's.
 
I still haven't, for the life of me, heard why "genre" games couldn't be developed and marketed conservatively with a budget of less than ten million (for digital distribution)...

Unfortunately the math doesn't work out. If it was a retail game, EA is getting maybe $30some for each copy, because it's a major publisher. That requires the game to then sell some 300,000 copies to break even. It's not uncommon for big-budget/mass-marketed games to fall short of this figure! If you're talking downloadable-only games, the going price is more like $15. Now you have to sell 600,000 copies where niche games are going to be very lucky to hit 100,000 sales. Cutting the budget from $10 million to $5 still doesn't make the game profitable.

IIRC they were after the Battlestar Galactica License(wich would be wise, and at least a lot cheaper). Lucas(Arts/Filmgames) was already doing (flight)games by then, and there were star-wars sims(like the arcade version) already for facing TIE's and performing the trench run in the early 80's.

As someone recently said here, nobody was going after the Battlestar Galactica license in the 80s/90s. :)

In fact, I picked up a flight stick for the 360 recently for IL-2 and... future games... and I ultimately found just using the controller was a better experience (I think the same thing happened with Chris Reid and HAWX). Expect a game to be optimized for a controller with maybe a profile for the (now increasing in number for some reason) optional flight sticks.

Yeah, I got the XBox joystick branded and designed for TC HAWX, and I ended up playing 95% of the game with the controller in the end. There's nothing wrong with the stick (it can be plugged in and used on a PC), but the game just felt good with the controller. This is coming from someone who's played joystick games for twenty years. Now imagine that most of the core gaming audience today has never owned a joystick and has never even heard of "HOTAS."

Yes, if they optimize it for controllers it would end up playing with on those, but take a lot of nostalgia away(At least I have never seen a real or fictional cockpit with a gamepad resting in a batterycharger.)

But there are lots in WC without joysticks! :)

tarsuscockpit1.gif
 
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. X-Wing's campaign consisted of briefing fluff text and occasional short videos (of course, decorating and promoting your pilot was hooking - that's something all Wing Commanders after WC1 fell short on - I'd love for it to return in future titles, and it certainly will, since memory or FMV issues won't get in the way. Of course, two promotions per game are enough!))

I have to agree. It was always a goal for me in any games that features medals and promotion (especially the X-Wing series) to max out my character. I think that earning promotions should give you more privileges, however (maybe the ability to customize your ship or lead larger flight groups, like in the old Red Baron game; although in WC you automatically start out as wing leader, although you only lead one other ship).
 
I would still love a Star Crusader style WC game. Start as the Wing Commander on a really outdated carrier or cruiser/carrier and earn promotions to better ships as you go along if you do well. Gain Prestige if you do well also which you can spend to get new or different fighter and bomber models assigned to your Wing and possibly better pilots as well.
 
Expect the series to be boiled down to the *recognizable* elements -- Tiger's Claw, Chris Blair, Kilrathi. That might mean a remake of Wing Commander I, it might mean a prequel of some sort... but it won't be a sequel to Prophecy, it won't be a midquel that answers lost questions, it won't be anything that isn't part of the Kilrathi War.

Why do you think this? When I hear people talk about Wing Commander these days, they are pretty much always talking about Wing Commander III or IV. Nobody cares much about the Tiger's Claw from what I have seen. And Kilrathi? You'd need to have the Kilrathi involved somehow, but I don't think Wing Commander IV or Prophecy suffered from not having them as the main enemy, and I haven't gotten the impression that moderate fans of the series would demand it, especially those who remember Wing Commander IV fondly.

EDIT - Ha ha, I'm a 2nd Lieutenant now. More than 10 years as a cadet must be some kind of record. Anyway...here's hoping for new Wing Commander.
 
Why do you think this? When I hear people talk about Wing Commander these days, they are pretty much always talking about Wing Commander III or IV. Nobody cares much about the Tiger's Claw from what I have seen. And Kilrathi? You'd need to have the Kilrathi involved somehow, but I don't think Wing Commander IV or Prophecy suffered from not having them as the main enemy, and I haven't gotten the impression that moderate fans of the series would demand it, especially those who remember Wing Commander IV fondly.

WC4 has the advantage of coming out just over a year after WC3 (Dec. 94 - Feb 96). That's barely five and a half years with *seven* Wing Commander games. That's a far cry from the 12 or so years we've gone with only one release which was Arena.
 
Why do you think this? When I hear people talk about Wing Commander these days, they are pretty much always talking about Wing Commander III or IV. Nobody cares much about the Tiger's Claw from what I have seen. And Kilrathi? You'd need to have the Kilrathi involved somehow, but I don't think Wing Commander IV or Prophecy suffered from not having them as the main enemy, and I haven't gotten the impression that moderate fans of the series would demand it, especially those who remember Wing Commander IV fondly.

I mostley here people talking about Wing1 and 2, not everybody "keeps playing" games, Strike Commander and Privateer are also the games remembered fondly.
FMV and Partial FMV was pretty common in early CD-based games, wing3 was only the first to get it done right, but the innovation itself did not catch everyones eye.
 
Why do you think this?

One reason is personal experience. I've been involved in talks about doing a relaunch five times in as many years and the absolute first thing that is ever discussed is what elements of the IP 'define' Wing Commander and made it succesful in the first place... and whether a producer decides for himself or he looks at sales numbers or he conducts research it is *always* those particular things (along with the various gameplay elements we would all assume are a given).

Remember, what EA (or whoever ends up doing this) wants is a firm base from which to (re)build a modern franchise for a current audience. It's not a matter of deciding what hardcore fans want and giving it to them--it's a matter of distilling what the million people who played the first game in 1990 loved and figuring out how to sell that again to ten million people in 2012. Why recast Kirk and Spock and friends for the new Star Trek film instead of creating new characters or using those from one of the more recent spinoffs? Simple numbers--some huge percent of the potential audience knows the original Star Trek compared to a tiny slice of the pie who know or care about 'Deep Space Nine'.

Another good reason, though, is that it has already happened three times. We've already seen three huge pushes to sell Wing Commander to a necessarily larger audiences: console games in 1993-4, television in 1996 and the film in 1999. Each and every time the developers went back to the same basic parts of the IP--Tiger's Claw, Blair and Maniac, Kilrathi.

When I hear people talk about Wing Commander these days, they are pretty much always talking about Wing Commander III or IV. Nobody cares much about the Tiger's Claw from what I have seen. And Kilrathi? You'd need to have the Kilrathi involved somehow, but I don't think Wing Commander IV or Prophecy suffered from not having them as the main enemy, and I haven't gotten the impression that moderate fans of the series would demand it, especially those who remember Wing Commander IV fondly.

We looked at social media trends for Wing Commander in preparation for something a while back. You know what most people 'talked about', by some incredible margin? The Wing Commander movie--because even though it was a box office failure, the difference between the sales base of PC games and movies meant that ten times as many people saw the thing as ever bought a Wing Commander game (it's also the one part of the franchise that stays in the public eye, thanks to regular airings on television). That's the kind of data point anyone who's going to spend eight or nine figures on a Wing Commander relaunch is looking at rather than what existing fans are chatting about.

So , Chris ? Is it true about Origin wanted to create a SW space sim ? Do you know something ?

This is true. Origin contacted whoever held the Star Wars gaming license about using the IP for their space game when development began in early 1989 (it wasn't actually Lucas, though--it was... Broderbund?).

Where did you hear that story about X-Wing? I always thought it was pretty natural that a group of guys who been developing several arcade-ish flight sims for lucasarts, with Battlehawks, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Their Finest Hour, would eventually turn to the Star Wars IP.

It was the story going around Origin in the early 90s. SWOTL was supposedly part of the X-Wing deal--we'll do Star Wars if you let us do this riskier project.

As someone recently said here, nobody was going after the Battlestar Galactica license in the 80s/90s.

Yes, you're likely thinking of Digital Anvil's odd involvement with Battlestar Galactica in 1999. They were in talks to do VFX work on a BSG relaunch film project (which ultimately changed hands and became a Sci Fi Channel miniseries some years later) and pitched StarLancer as a platform for a BSG game (SL was also pitched as a Star Wars game (to replace Totally Games' series) and, of course, a Wing Commander movie game--I'm not sure if anybody really believed they'd publish the generic version).

Warthog in 2003(?) used one of those weird licensing splits to release a classic BSG console game to take advantage of the relaunch in some confusing way.

If anyone remembered the 1970s BSG in 1989... well, they didn't--no cable reruns and the series had died as the *dreadful* Galactica 1980... not a viable IP then. (Or now, somehow! The more things change...)
 
Remember, what EA (or whoever ends up doing this) wants is a firm base from which to (re)build a modern franchise for a current audience. It's not a matter of deciding what hardcore fans want and giving it to them--it's a matter of distilling what the million people who played the first game in 1990 loved and figuring out how to sell that again to ten million people in 2012.

You may be right, but I am surprised by it, because everyone I have talked to about Wing Commander (who is not a major fan of the series) always remembers not the original, but Wing Commander III and IV. And Privateer, now that I think about it.

Why recast Kirk and Spock and friends for the new Star Trek film instead of creating new characters or using those from one of the more recent spinoffs? Simple numbers--some huge percent of the potential audience knows the original Star Trek compared to a tiny slice of the pie who know or care about 'Deep Space Nine'.

That's different, though. In a movie or TV series, the characters are a much larger part of the whole than in a game, where the gameplay is the largest factor. If the gameplay is familiar, that matters more than the characters or the enemy. Though I will grant you that it is hard to use the style of gameplay in a marketing campaign, and easy to use familiar characters, ships, enemies, etc. and so it would clearly be advantageous in a relaunch to use these familiar elements in some way.

television in 1996 and the film in 1999. Each and every time the developers went back to the same basic parts of the IP--Tiger's Claw, Blair and Maniac, Kilrathi.

What else could you really do for a TV series or a movie? You're transferring the story to a different medium, and it makes sense to begin at the beginning of the story, leaving room for further seasons or sequels. It wouldn't even really make sense to make a movie out of Wing Commander III or IV, since those were pretty much already movies.

And even though the movie took some of the names of the things in the original game, it treated them in entirely different ways. Some of the ships were called the same thing, but they looked totally different. Many of the characters had the same names, but they didn't particularly resemble the characters from the game, and sometimes didn't even play the same role. If you took the names out of the movie, I honestly would have had no clue that it was a even a Wing Commander movie. And that's fine - you obviously have to do those things when translating a concept to a film. I just don't really see that the things they had to do to make a TV show or a movie are the same things they need to do to relaunch the franchise as a game.

I absolutely agree there need to be recognizable elements, I'm just not sure the Tiger's Claw or fighting in the Kilrathi War are those elements. But I really think that for people who are not big fans of the series, but remember having fun with some of the games, it's the gameplay that contains those familiar elements.

Wing Commander Area. I'm a big a Wing Commander fan. Bigger than most people who played the games, but not as big as most of you all here. I didn't really play the games not in the main series, I never read the novels, etc. Now, when Wing Commander Arena was announced, I was excited at first, because it was a new Wing Commander product. But as I learned what kind of game it was, I cared less and less. It had some familiar names and designs in it, but that wasn't what made me love Wing Commander, and that was not enough to get me to want to buy the game. What I loved was the experience of playing the original games. And while I'm glad the Wing Commander name was used in some way, it just wasn't a product that appealed to me in the end, because it was completely missing the elements that attracted me to it in the first place. And the same was true for all the people I know who were more casual fans of Wing Commander than I was.

We looked at social media trends for Wing Commander in preparation for something a while back. You know what most people 'talked about', by some incredible margin? The Wing Commander movie--because even though it was a box office failure, the difference between the sales base of PC games and movies meant that ten times as many people saw the thing as ever bought a Wing Commander game (it's also the one part of the franchise that stays in the public eye, thanks to regular airings on television). That's the kind of data point anyone who's going to spend eight or nine figures on a Wing Commander relaunch is looking at rather than what existing fans are chatting about.

Granted, but I don't think anyone really loved the Wing Commander movie who didn't already like the games, and no one is going to play a new game because of the movie who wasn't already going to play it anyway because of playing the previous games.

Personally, as a fairly large fan of the series, I don't want to see a game set during the Kilrathi War. I have already been there and done that, I know that story, and I know how it ends. But give me classic Wing Commander gameplay, and it doesn't really matter - I'd be sold. I think delivering the gameplay experience is far more important than anything else in the success of the game, and a lot of that really depends on whether or not people care to play that kind of game anymore. I can't believe that whether or not the Tiger's Claw is involved will affect anything.

But let's say they do decide to take this approach, and make a game set during the Kilrathi War, with Chris Blair flying off the Tiger's Claw. And let's say it's a big enough success to merit a sequel. Where do you see them going with the sequel? Would they then move on to new stories, or would they be stuck retelling the same story as the previous games all over again? Or would they pull a Star Trek and go with a kind of "alternate universe"?
 
No, I understand what Wing Commander fans want... they are, by and large, the same thing I want. The point is that it and we don't matter because this project needs to sell millions of copies... and 'this placates a thousand geeks' isn't a reaussurance to the folks signing the checks that it will. (We're going to buy the thing anyway... or not buy it in a way that has absolutely no overall affect on the bottom line.)

Also remember that your casual user friends who think fondly of Wing Commander III and IV do so because of the live actors and not something particularly special about their setting. I think we already talked about how a theoretical project would a) not ever have FMV again and b) would involve those same actors in a different way. That's how the started-with-WC3 crowed tie into this.

And to be clear, we're not talking about launching a Wing Commander game, we're talking about launching a Wing Commander property. That's how AAA titles work in 2010. EA will look to define how Wing Commander works as a game, an animated movie, a comic book license, a novel, a social media project, a browser game and so on. This is the kind of project that's planned in a way that it can make a big chunk of budget back just selling the film rights--it's more complex than just how a game plays. The challenge is to come up with the Wing Commander style book.

A sequel could be anything... but you have to build the franchise first.

Also you missed a fun little game with Arena.
 
No, I understand what Wing Commander fans want... they are, by and large, the same thing I want. The point is that it and we don't matter because this project needs to sell millions of copies... and 'this placates a thousand geeks' isn't a reaussurance to the folks signing the checks that it will. (We're going to buy the thing anyway... or not buy it in a way that has absolutely no overall affect on the bottom line.)

Right, but like I said, I'm not talking about those people. Just people who casually played the games in the past. And those are the people you are trying to reach with familiar elements.

Also remember that your casual user friends who think fondly of Wing Commander III and IV do so because of the live actors and not something particularly special about their setting. I think we already talked about how a theoretical project would a) not ever have FMV again and b) would involve those same actors in a different way. That's how the started-with-WC3 crowed tie into this.

That's true, but I agree that FMV will not happen. And I don't really think it is needed. I think people who remember those games fondly would ultimately be just as happy with CGI cutscenes, and voice-overs from the old actors would be icing on the cake.

And to be clear, we're not talking about launching a Wing Commander game, we're talking about launching a Wing Commander property. That's how AAA titles work in 2010. EA will look to define how Wing Commander works as a game, an animated movie, a comic book license, a novel, a social media project, a browser game and so on. This is the kind of project that's planned in a way that it can make a big chunk of budget back just selling the film rights--it's more complex than just how a game plays. The challenge is to come up with the Wing Commander style book.

Do they really need to take it that far, though? Many games do not have animated movies, novels, and so on associated with them. Is there a reason this has to be a "AAA" title? It seems like the genre itself is not popular enough for that, even if it is popular enough to make a profitable game. Do they just think the Wing Commander name is capable of AAA status, and aren't going to risk damaging the name without a project of that size?

Also you missed a fun little game with Arena.

I tried it, but it just wasn't my kind of game.
 
Gah, the movie...I saw it once in the theaters and came out angry. I don't get the talk that it's part of the same canon as the games . it obviously won't seam into Wing Commander I where you're fresh off the Academy and meet all of your comrades for the first time, fly your first combat missions and score your first kills.

So, in that sense, the movie and Academy are spin-offs. I think the movie diluted the Wing Commander experience so much that were the characters based on that, I'd be hugely disappointed. The Kilrathi had lost everything cool about them, and were now blundering space lizardmen who were utterly crap at close combat (to the point that pilots, not marines, do boarding missions (?!).


Anyway, as for the maths, maybe it's so that old-school games only sell to old-school people then, and thus all games have to be with the times.
Still, by throwing a ten million figure around, that leads me to believe that at least
a new WC game might not require the fifty million I feared it would.
 
I believe that there is just as much audience for the Van Halen edition of Guitar Hero as for a next WC game. You can't just do the "fandom thingie". The movie has been discussed over and over. WC Movie still gets airtime, when was the last time you saw any other game movie getting regular reruns? Honestly it is not that bad.

You need to make the concept appealing to an audience. Making a big budget WC is a giant risk, it might be an incredible loss if no-one buys it. Wing 3's budget was based on the success of the first and second part, and that other companies were trying to copy off of their succes. Wing1 and 2 were probably very cheap to produce inhouse with some creativity and elbowgrease.

The market for flight(and space) sims is at an alltime low.
 
Gah, the movie...I saw it once in the theaters and came out angry. I don't get the talk that it's part of the same canon as the games . it obviously won't seam into Wing Commander I where you're fresh off the Academy and meet all of your comrades for the first time, fly your first combat missions and score your first kills.

So, in that sense, the movie and Academy are spin-offs. I think the movie diluted the Wing Commander experience so much that were the characters based on that, I'd be hugely disappointed. The Kilrathi had lost everything cool about them, and were now blundering space lizardmen who were utterly crap at close combat (to the point that pilots, not marines, do boarding missions (?!).

A lot of the bullet-points of why people don't like the movie have been discussed to death. By all means contribute to one of those threads if you fell like it. In the meantime, there are some considerations worth mentioning when if comes to how the movie affects the publics perception of the WC brand. And strangely enought, there's a segment of the population that have never played the games, but love the used and worn look of the movie hardware, and that can't wait for a sequel.

On the other hand a lot of the people that were extremely disapointed couldn't get past some superficial elements and easily explainable elements. There are some definite issues with the movie steming from it's production process and lack of a larger budget, but it would have been interesting to see how the film would have been recieved had it not been hacked to death in the editing room or had some of the animatronics worked out as intended.

To illustrate, just one example that I'll touch on is the idea of Pilots acting as marines: Basically in the actual scheme of things, they don't. In the workprint of the film, blair is the dilligent's turret gunner. He leaves his post and boards the Concom on his own because of a signal from the traitor. It's also not really explained that the reason Angel goes along is because she apparently had some training on a captured kilrathi ship so she may have been familiar with the layout as opposed to Gerald's actually Marine contingent. This also isn't the first time we've seen stuff like this: like how Vagabond and Sosa infiltrate a Borderworlds comm station in WC4 (which turns into a firefight) or Blair boarding the Nephilim wormhole gate tower in WCP.
 
I reckon if anything EA should look at how Lucasarts are bringing back the Monkey Island games, and re-launching Monkey Island 2, similar style, make a HD remake of the 1st game, (with an option to revert back to the old graphics) see how popular it proves, "test the water" so to speak, if EA dont want to commit to bringing out a brand new chapter in the WC franchise, just yet then they could at least try to bring a reboot of it back!....

Games like as mentioned Monkey Island, Bionic Commando, have been remade and proved successful, (the xbla versions I mean) although my hunch is that EA are more than happy to have Mass Effect in their wings as a "major sci-fi franchise" they've got covered, and wont be too bothered at the moment of bringing back WC by 2012 for example..
 
Indeed, the Monkey Island games were on my mind as I started pitching my idea, but apparently such things are not possible today....well, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see if the Monkey Island games will be economically viable, or the 3d adventures from Telltale Games.

I admit the movie isn't that bad. And yes, those aforementioned cases about pilots soldiering up ( SPOILER: both leading to their loss, but at least Vagabond's wasn't retarded - I still can't get over why Blair simply didn't run for his ship instead of spending a couple of minutes waiting around) do have a game precedent...but at least they weren't against Kilrathi.

However, the point is, I'm not looking for "not that bad" from Wing Commander. I'm looking for the Wing Commander feeling. But enough about that. If they continue from the movie, that's fine, the characters / actors will be changed anyway (and in CGI), and I'm sure the Kilrathi will be redesigned, so no worries.
 
Indeed, the Monkey Island games were on my mind as I started pitching my idea, but apparently such things are not possible today....well, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see if the Monkey Island games will be economically viable, or the 3d adventures from Telltale Games.

I admit the movie isn't that bad. And yes, those aforementioned cases about pilots soldiering up ( SPOILER: both leading to their loss, but at least Vagabond's wasn't retarded - I still can't get over why Blair simply didn't run for his ship instead of spending a couple of minutes waiting around) do have a game precedent...but at least they weren't against Kilrathi.

However, the point is, I'm not looking for "not that bad" from Wing Commander. I'm looking for the Wing Commander feeling. But enough about that. If they continue from the movie, that's fine, the characters / actors will be changed anyway (and in CGI), and I'm sure the Kilrathi will be redesigned, so no worries.

Actually, all situations make sense: WCM: The tiger's claw is on her own, and you take as many men you need to do a certain job with, marines or not, there were no reinforcements available and the fuel was needed. WC4: The MIPS were used to send in two persons, Sosa(She is comm tech and the only one capable of decrypting/cracking/obtaining the info), and it is clearly stated that vagabond had the training in the past to go on that mission(and made the script easier), WCP: All marines were allready engaged in a battle, and all pilots(but the insane one) were out there fighting off the enemies counterattack. Blair was the most qualified to go. Having Angel out on covert ops with an infiltration unit around kilrah makes a whole lot of less sense.
 
Yeah, I wasn't complaining about them or even mentioning them in relation to WCM because I didn't have a problem with them - all I'm saying is that the epic, final cutscene with Blair falls on its face as everyone is urging Blair to just GTFO (his ship is 20-30 meters away, as can be seen in the cutscene), but instead he takes it painfully slow (in an attempt to create suspense) and instead of actually leaving, wastes enough time for a bug to find him...I guess that since they'd (or Roberts had) already decided Blair's fate (whatever that would have ultimately been, for us it's simply MIA/KIA now), tChris didn't want him to go down running.
 
I believe the idea was that it was never Blair's intention to escape. Think of Obi-Wan's stand aboard the Death Star in Star Wars.
 
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