Now Focus on the Future (January 2, 2014)

[ChrisReid]

The new year also means it's time to run our traditional January poll. Based on what's happened lately and what you think about the year ahead, how do you think 2014 will be for Wing Commander?









The last poll asked which fighters everyone considered their favorite in Armada. The Wraith and Banshee were neck and neck in one of the closest races we've ever seen. The medium fighter maintained the lead for most of December, but the heavier craft pulled ahead by one vote at the last minute. I was very surprised by how many people voted for the Gladius, which came in third. Kilrathi fighters fared worse, with the tougher kats doing especially poorly in the race!

--
Original update published on January 2, 2014

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

A good year! After SC attracts more and more attention (and money), maybe we'll get an announcement that EA is considering a new WC. And maybe next year, wehn SC launches, it's announced or even released and that will be a great year!

 

[Quarto]

For the last half a decade or so, I believe I've consistently voted "average" - which, to me, did not mean "ok", but rather "same as the last couple of years, nothing new except maybe another re-release". Unfortunately, Star Citizen changed all that. Mere re-releases are no longer enough to stop the decay of the community.

So, this year, for the first time, I voted "poor" - which is what the last year was, and what I fear this year will be as well. But "poor" doesn't really reflect it - had there been a "terrible" option (and there should be - we have great and good on the positive side, but only poor on the negative), I would have gone with that in a flash. What should I be looking forward to, as a Wing Commander fan? Star Citizen blowing away the last remnants of this community? EA putting WC away once and for all, now that there's no hope Chris Roberts will ever get onboard for a WC project?

I suppose I can think positive, look at our two-man modding community (ok, ok, it's more than two men - I guess it's about five), and say to myself - hey, Wing Commander's all ours now. We're getting to the point where not only can we make WCP mods, but hopefully also WC1 and WC2 mods, perhaps even Privateer. And we can pretty much go crazy with new WC stories, because this time, it really does seem all but certain that there will never be another official Wing Commander title. Why would there be? Even if EA, inspired by Star Citizen, decided to make a competing title, why go back to the game developed by their new competitor, matching a material successor against a spiritual successor, when they can just whip out Mass Effect and tap into a franchise that's... you know, not dead?

So, in a way, it could be that the future of the series as such is brighter than it has been for half a decade - because if there's no expectations of an official product, it's all up to the modders, and however small their numbers may be, their creativity is huge. I fear, however, that there's nothing to look forward to down this avenue - ironically, the magic that HCl (and recently, delMar) pulls off is the easy part. Getting a team together to take a mod from design to implementation and completion is much harder, and the lack of an audience will not exactly help motivate people.

Sorry to go off spamming pessimism again, but as Doomsday would have said, I'm just being realistic. That said, we all know how often Blair turned Doomsday's "realistic" predictions into unfounded pessimism- so, here's hoping there's some Blair cooking up a miracle over at EA, and that when somebody reminds me of this post in a few months' time, I will be able to happily laugh about how crazily wrong I had been.

 

[ChrisReid]

So, this year, for the first time, I voted "poor" - which is what the last year was, and what I fear this year will be as well. But "poor" doesn't really reflect it - had there been a "terrible" option (and there should be - we have great and good on the positive side, but only poor on the negative), I would have gone with that in a flash. What should I be looking forward to, as a Wing Commander fan? Star Citizen blowing away the last remnants of this community? EA putting WC away once and for all, now that there's no hope Chris Roberts will ever get onboard for a WC project?

Ha, that's actually a good idea. Having only one negative option means that everyone who feels less-than-average has all their votes collected under one row. If we split the Poor vote into Poor and anything else (Fair and Poor are more common conventional choices - "Poor and Terrible" would be like having "Great and Amazing"), then it would make the Good and Great options all the more prominent, since they would be equally diluted.

But yeah, you're being overly pessimistic. I felt a bit bummed early last year when the potential for Star Citizen to become a Wing Commander game became less likely and they seemed to siphon some people off, but that's passed. With Mass Effect's existence (and doesn't EA doing Star Wars games now too?), we'd be in no better position today if Star Citizen didn't exist. Probably less so really. Thousands of articles across the internet starting with "Wing Commander Chris Roberts has..." has only boosted WC in the gaming world's consciousness - it can only be a good thing.

I don't think it's likely they'll soon create something to directly compete with Star Citizen or Mass Effect or Star Wars, but EA is a giant beast and the left hand often doesn't know what the right toe is doing. Ultima Forever is a good example of this - why the heck did they make that game last year? EA has Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur and even Warhammer if they want to make some quasi-fantasy RPG. It was made by Mythic - who has their own Dark Age of Camelot IP sitting in the closet. But for some reason, they did a new Ultima last year. A lot of this had to do with the quirkyness of Bioware Mythic. I think they just made a new Dungon Keeper, which is another '90s EA franchise that seemed to be dead up until this point. So why not Wing Commander? That's not the only prospect out there (Roberts is just a few short years from regaining the WC Movie rights, and there will be more news regarding WC music this year), but with all the luck we've had lately with WC Bluray, GOG and Academy on DVD, why can't we get a new WC game this year?

 

[delMar]

Getting a team together to take a mod from design to implementation and completion is much harder

This is exactly what I'm concerned about.

I hope, though, that the availability of well crafted tools and material will motivate people to create new Wing Commander content.

In my opinion, motivation of fan projects often not only fails because of lacking audience, but because of being just too large scaled. Things take longer than expected then and thus the motivation is lost.
Sentences like "we need to make it all new on ourselves because no other utility/tool/engine is capable of what we intend to do" are an indicator for that.
Admittedly, there's just nothing quite like that tap on the shoulder from the community to keep motivated.
But finishing projects is the only real thing.

Star Citizen blowing away the last remnants of this community?

After the first amazement about Star Citizen has waned, that's exactly what I was thinking too.
But then again, I guess we're not here because of today's technical brilliance of Wing Commander.
I think it's its universe. With all its star systems, campaigns, ships, cats and characters.
Not some universe with some stars, ships and folks.

Thousands of articles across the internet starting with "Wing Commander Chris Roberts has..." has only boosted WC in the gaming world's consciousness - it can only be a good thing.

I second that.
Wing Commander is a gem of the past, to be honest.
New players digging in is exceptional, to say the least.
So, maybe bringing the term "Wing Commander" back again, even if it's just an accessory for a different game, is not the worst that could happen.

For me, personally, I hope it will be a productive and yielding year of Wing Commander.
And if I look back then and see that it was, I'd say it was a great year.