Could WC1 be made better?

[KrisV]

It comes across as "No you're wrong and I'm right and there will be no discussion." The OP and myself merely wished to discuss the simple idea of a remake but you're all so against it that it's nigh impossible to do so with the WC Community.

Chris and others have explained at length what the problems are with this idea.

 

[LeHah]

The OP and myself merely wished to discuss the simple idea of a remake but you're all so against it that it's nigh impossible to do so with the WC Community.

Why are you trying to make an arguement for a remake - when the biggest fanbase on the internet is telling you it's a bad idea? If you like wasting money like that I suggest you give it to me. I'll at least roll it over into a nice Roth IRA instead of flushing it down the perverbial toilet with this idea.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

One more thing to note - the last time EA tried to market another game which was not a Sims game or a sports game, they kinda got soaked. See "The Sims Online" for an example of this.

What the heck are you talking about? EA is the worlds largest game company -- they develop games of every size, shape and flavor.

Anyway, to jump into the overly dramatic internet thread...

In one sense, a remake is a good idea. The original Wing Commander was a classic game, and the idea that you would sell an already-proven game to a new audience is basically a good one. I would happily play a 'remake', and I would happily introduce my kids to a 'modern' Wing Commander that could hold their attention. That said, there are a bunch of downsides:

- There are legal issues surrounding the original Wing Commander. The first game was developed when Origin was an independent development house, and various elements were developed by people not on the payroll informal handshake-style. Nature of the business in 1990 -- but it scares EA legal today, so much so that they've expended a lot of efforts to 'secure' various rights (particularly music related) that no one even thinks about in relation to their still-profitable Ultima franchise.


- A remake is a slippery slope, be it a movie or a game. The first question you ask when you're writing your proposal is: who is this product for? Are we selling remade Wing Commander to the people who loved the original? In that case, you have to be *very* careful that the game has the right look and feel... on the other hand, if you're selling it to *new* fans, why bother remaking the game at all instead of developing a franchise with more freedom to work or developing a 'sure thing' title like a Sims spinoff. This is why a 'tech' remake is a good idea but a 'for the hell of it' remake is a bad one -- "it'll be the old game in Windows" is a saleable point... "it'll be the old game but with a new story!" is dangerous.

- EA has certain expectations about Wing Commander and space sims in general. As of yet, no one has proven that you can sell a space sim to a modern audience for one simple reason: joysticks are no longer standard fare. Average Joe User doesn't get a free joystick with his newly purchased Dell in 2005 like he did in 1990. The perception is that flight sim games are now for a narrow band of hobbyists and that 'space sim' action games have fallen by the wayside as a result of this shift. This is why space games like Freelancer went through such extremes to develop ways around the percieved need for a joystick interface -- with very little luck. Furthermore, EA has some expectations about what customers want from a Wing Commander game... they're very worried that people will not be interested in a game that isn't developed by Chris Roberts (a sad result of the 'make developers rock stars' mentality of the 90s) and they're very worried that people will not be interested in a game that doesn't feature live actors (no longer something that the industry will support). Wing Commander may have started off as a uniquely fun space game, but the 'modern' perception is that it's the game with Luke Skywalker in it.

 

[ChrisReid]

I'll admit I was a little disappointed that the idea was shot down so quickly but that doesn't mean I think anyone sucks

Well, it's only quick if you didn't go through six years of people pitching the remake idea. It's the same story, so we get very good at shooting down the same thing again and again. See LOAF's post for a thorough understanding of the actual reasoning behind things.

One more thing to note - the last time EA tried to market another game which was not a Sims game or a sports game, they kinda got soaked. See "The Sims Online" for an example of this. I doubt they're willing to risk another experiment on WC quite yet, at least outside of a console release, such as Prophecy.

There's nothing right and everything wrong with this paragraph. EA markets tons of non-Sims/sports games that make buckets of money. Medal of Honor, Need for Speed, James Bond, Harry Potter, Burnout, SSX, Command & Conquer, Freedom Force, Battlefield, TimeSplitters, Oddworld, Lord of the Rings, Ultima Online, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Def Jam Fighting, Lego Bionicle are more are all succesful franchises EA has worked on since the Sims Online. Some of the franchises have even gotten 4 or 5 successful titles out in that time. Bombs, such as Catwoman, are very few and far between for EA. That's part of the why a Wing Commander game wasn't made a few years ago. EA is going through an aggressive period of growth. Part of their growth can be attributed to EA becoming a household name known for making mass market titles and sure hits. But that's no reason for them not to make a Wing Commander game.. they just haven't yet gotten around to committing the resources necessary to make a WC game with the production values necessary for it to be a million seller. This is both good and bad. It may yet be a couple years before a new WC game finally does surface, but when it does, it'll have the full might and support of the biggest third party game developer in the world behind it. And EA had no direct part in deciding to make Prophecy Advance at all. Another company simply bought the rights to produce GBA versions of EA's back catalog, and that publisher happened to team up with a developer that wanted to do an epic space sim.

 

[Maj.Striker]

Sorry to be so late in this conversation but in my opinion, after considering the current Wing Commander situations, the only way a new Wing Commander Game or even a Remake of one of the older games will ever take place is if some company/organization purchases the rights to the Wing Commander title. Doing so from EA would be extremely expensive and more than likely cost far more than the actual production cost of the game in addition so right now I can't think of any companies that would jump on that. The only alternative I can think of right now is that a company or group of individuals were to develop a complete game (from the ground up...new engine, new everything) they might be able to market the idea to EA much in the fashion of the GBA Prophecy. Pitch it to EA has maybe a 50/50 profit split and convince EA to pay for the distribution costs and marketing...they couldn't probably talk it up as a way for EA to "test the waters" without exposing themselves.

Still, doing something like that is risky for game studios because they would have to invest lots of time and money developing the game and then even if it is a success they don't have the copyrights to follow up with it so again, probably not likely to happen. But a fan can hope...

Wake, you're heart is in the right place but like the others have pointed out...over the period of time WC Fans have come to accept the situation as it is and to understand why it is the way it is.

 

[Mace]

It would have to be a remake to start with, the general audience could probably not pick up on a next installment of a game series from the last decade.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I can think of several reasons EA might return to the Wing Commander IP:


* Space sims become popular. The major companies wont' touch them because of how poorly the last generation of big budget space sims sold -- but other developers, particularly European developers which don't have the same overhead, are still willing to remember Wing Commander and give space sims a shot. If a small-budget space game like X2 were to be a million seller, EA would revisit Wing Commander. There's another option, which is that *space* becomes popular again. Right now it decidedly is not -- but with a hit TV show or a major real space program were to capture the public's imagination, it would cause the gaming industry to follow suite.

* They decide they want to launch a new property for the next generation consoles. EA considers Wing Commander to be in 'cold storage' of sort -- given a sufficient 'event' they could opt to bring it back out. "Relaunching" Wing Commander for the X-Box 360 or the Playstation 3 seems like a possibility.

* 1990s nostalgia. The people who played Wing Commander (or Wing Commander 3) as children are now adults. We've seen the same thing happen for games from the seventies and eighties, with companies developing modern Froggers, Galagas, Leisure Suit Larrys, Wolfensteins, Prince of Persia's, etc. DooM III could be the harbinger of this craze, selling well bringing back a 1990s franchise.

The old "fans buy the property, make amazing game" thing doesn't seem possible to me, just because EA has no interest in selling their intellectual properties... and why should they? They paid millions and millions to buy Origin, and then millions more to develop the franchise -- they're holding the rights for a rainy day, not until someone asks them if they could please borrow the car.

 

[Mace]

As for the european developers, the only space sim title i got was battlestar galactica, i also had to specially order a flightstick. any other titles available that anyone knows of(the only FS i got was crimson skies)

 

[Maj.Striker]

It might be worth noting that Freelancer did sell better than they had expected...so it sorta bucked the stereotype of the recent generation of space sim games. The down side was the tremendous development cost and long amount of time taken to release it. It's a give and take situation. If Freelancer could have been produced with half their budget and half the time then you'd probably see more companies giving the space sims another look.

 

[ChrisReid]

It would have to be a remake to start with, the general audience could probably not pick up on a next installment of a game series from the last decade.

You're missing the most obvious option: that the next WC game is neither a remake nor a direct continuation where the series left off. The next game would take its own place in the series.

 

[Dahan]

There is not harm of trying updating WC1 is there??

 

[ChrisReid]

There is not harm of trying updating WC1 is there??

That's the original question the thread is about. There's been about a dozen good posts explaining how commercially updating the original wouldn't make sense, and almost as many posts saying how fans doing the same would be better off working on something else. There is a cost to it, no matter what. The time used on such a project could be used for other, much more viable, Wing Commander projects.. and we definitely need successful creative projects to keep the franchise and community going before we need small-time niche remakes of games we already own.

 

[Dahan]

True, cant agree with that. But then the question remains as to who has time and resources to do it

 

[Confed]

Suppose it was possible to create a speech pack patch for the DOS version from the speech in the SNES version or from SWC. Would that also be considered illegal by EA?
That way, most people (like me ) that have already spent money on the original, don't have to buy another version & screw around with Mac or SNES emulators.

 

[KrisV]

EA doesn't decide what is legal.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The SNES version doesn't have speech.

 

[TigerDragon]

For all intents and purposes, I think Standoff may just be the closest to WC1 remake that we are gonna get.

 

[ChrisReid]

Well, it's not a remake at all. It uses a couple ships from Wing Commander 1, and takes place during Wing Commander 2 more or less. It's an original story that's not constrained by any framework from the games, yet it fact checks and tries to integrate bits from the game wherever it can. That's pretty much the ideal of what I described in this thread earlier.

 

[Mace]

EA has requested www.wingcommander.com from 2004 until 2008, let's hope they do something with it.

 

[Ptarmigan]

I used to think remakes are cool, but there seems to be a glut of them, especially in movies. As much as I like to see a WC1 and WC2 remake, I think it is better for an original story. People will play the game more.