Quo Vadis Space-Sims?

R

Rainman

Spaceman
As some of you may have heard: The "Freespace" franchise has gone, I just recently read that Interplay isn't planning a sequel to Freespace 2, one of the best Space-Sims ever created - but an horribly failure at the box office.

And ever since the dead of Wing Commander I'm keep asking myself the question what happened to the huge fanbase Space-Sims used to have? I mean... hell - I had to stand 2 straight hours in a line to grab a copy of Wing Commander IV when it was released back in 1996, but at the release day of Prophecy as good as nobody gave a sh!t, I almost felt lonely in front of the software store, 1 hour before it opened.

What happened to Space-Sims? What happed to the games that got so many people excited, that revolutionized gaming in many aspects?

Have the games gotten to complex, is the casual gamer nowadays freighted to buy a game witch can only be mastered if he uses a 10 Button Joystick and is able to remember 10+ Keyboard commands - Or aren't Space-Sims just not cool anymore?

I'd really like to hear your thoughts about this topic. What do you think, as Wing Commander fans, is the reason Space-Sims are dying out?

Rainman
 
OK first off, Freespace sucked, the ships handled like rocks. Second, Prophesy far out sold WCIV. Third, WC is not dead, OSI people say that there will be a new WC game, it is just a matter of when, they have the reasources and backing by EA to do it. ok buddy, and we are all here aren't we?
 
Originally posted by Rainman
As some of you may have heard: The "Freespace" franchise has gone, I just recently read that Interplay isn't planning a sequel to Freespace 2, one of the best Space-Sims ever created - but an horribly failure at the box office.

And ever since the dead of Wing Commander I'm keep asking myself the question what happened to the huge fanbase Space-Sims used to have? I mean... hell - I had to stand 2 straight hours in a line to grab a copy of Wing Commander IV when it was released back in 1996, but at the release day of Prophecy as good as nobody gave a sh!t, I almost felt lonely in front of the software store, 1 hour before it opened.

What happened to Space-Sims? What happed to the games that got so many people excited, that revolutionized gaming in many aspects?

Have the games gotten to complex, is the casual gamer nowadays freighted to buy a game witch can only be mastered if he uses a 10 Button Joystick and is able to remember 10+ Keyboard commands - Or aren't Space-Sims just not cool anymore?

I'd really like to hear your thoughts about this topic. What do you think, as Wing Commander fans, is the reason Space-Sims are dying out?

Rainman
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it's sad,if interplay doesnt want it,why are they keeping it away from Voltion..no common sense at all.

i have no idea it's ridiculous,it was bad enough loseing adventure games...it's like all the gamers were replaced by low attenion spanned kids who only play FPS.





OK first off, Freespace sucked, the ships handled like rocks. Second, Prophesy far out sold WCIV. Third, WC is not dead, OSI people say that there will be a new WC game, it is just a matter of when, they have the reasources and backing by EA to do it. ok buddy, and we are all here aren't we?
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nah,they were pretty fast for me,how do you know that? is there a listing on PCdata.com?

space sims won't be dead for 2001,Echelon!
 
First of all I would like to thank you for your answers so far.

I went to an programming school by the time Prophecy was released, as you can expect from a programming school with participants of an average age of 15, most of them where into PC gaming. And at the time Prophecy was released nobody gave a rats @ss because Quake 2 was THE game to play.
I never claimed Prophecy did bad at the box office, I’m pretty sure it had great sales compared to other games. But you simply cant compare a Wing Commander game to any other “normal” game. I guess that Prophecy has cost EA at LEAST 10 Million US-Dollars (Game Development + FMV filming, but without marketing costs), to make profit of it you just cant be satisfied with 200.000 sold copies.

Look at Wing Commander from a business perspective: Wing Commander is dead. Look at the sales statistics of StarLancer (I read that it only sold about 24.000 copies), Tachyon (did even worse than StarLancer) or Freespace 1 & 2 (Killed of because of low sales)– Why the hell would you release an Space-Sim which cost you about ten times as much as if you would license the Quake 3 engine to pump out an other first person shooter – which maybe even sell better? The market just don’t seem to accept Space-Sims anymore – and I’m asking myself why.

Maybe we will see an Wing Commander first person shooter besides the WCMC-Mod in the future, but I doubt we will ever see another full blown Wing Commander Space-Sim :(
 
Amazingly, Prophecy cost EA/Origin only about a million dollars -- and it sold 750k copies worldwide. EA was unimpressed, having set a goal of one million units (the team also blames a lack of promotion and Quake 2 for not reachign this goal).

The numbers on Freespace and StarLancer are what has EA running scared right now, though.
 
I hate to say it but maybe the best thing is for them to lay low for awhile with WC. Certainly it would sell better than Fresspace or Starlancer but it would definitly be less than it deserves. If we just hold on for a while longer the market will be ready for it again.
 
Stop posting to increase your postcount -- I have the magic ability to lower it with the push of several buttons:P
 
Just because I just mentioned my postcount on #wingnut doesn't mean I'm trying to artificially inflate it... :)

TC
 
Ultima Online is indeed successful, but as far as I know Ultima 9: Ascension was an major disappointment (I believe Origin only finished U9 because UO was so successful). Ultima Online is a massively multiplayer roleplaying game, not a classical RPG – that’s what the original Ultima games where all about. And after the disaster that Ultima 9 was you can be almost sure that traditional Ultima games are as dead as Wing Commander.

IMHO Wing Commander Online wouldn’t be (well, would have been.. :( ) a *real* Wing Commander game, it would have been a massively multiplayer game set in the Wing Commander universe – same applies to UO

Don’t get me wrong, I would love an Wing Commander Online game, but it could never replace the “traditional” Wing Commander games for me.
 
I perfectly agree. For me Wing Commander has always been about flying off of a carrier in fighters, with varying missions that would lead to an end result. Scoring of kills, flying with wingmen, and fighting an enemy for survival. I dont think they could or would make a massive online multiplayer Wing Commander to represent that.
 
That’s exactly what I mean. Ultima was all about experience the story of an exciting plot the player has to solve, not walking around the landscape and slashing for hours on a stone just to increase your stamina. Ultima Online is in NO WAY a *real* Ultima game, it’s an massively online multiplayer game, nothing more, nothing less. Ultima died long ago, with the release of Pagan (I’m almost sure Lord British and his team would have never been allowed to finish Ascension if UO wouldn’t have been such a mayor success), but that’s just my opinion.

Nevertheless the question why the masses forgot about their love to the Space-Sims still puzzles me. :)
 
Geat a grip boys! What's the problem with other spacesims?
O.K. , WC is THE spacesim for all of us, but check out all the others arround. Maybe Starlancer is a little "Playstationish" but in the end it's a great game, and I'm looking forward to play Freelancer. Then you have Freespace, Tachyon, X - Beyond the Fontier and even (can I say this in the CIC? ), the Lucasarts series. So, Don´t say spacesims are dead, they are just going where no spacesim has never gone before. The only thing is that it's a long way to get there. That's deep.
 
All space sims are good, but the wc series realy suck you into the story. I've never see an other space sim wich could do that.
 
I worship Wing Commander like any other one here but sometimes I feel the other spacesims are trashed just because the don´t have Mark Hammil on them. Specialy in the CIC. Look at Starlancer. The other day I was looking at the past CIC news and almost every reference to SL was that "it was going to be a WC clone". That's a bit unfair, because the game wasn´t even out...
 
That's right, how can you make an comment when you haven't played the game yet.

Offcourse it has some WC influences (like the explosions, they look the same as those in WCP. but i only saw them in magazines). After all, the maker was the "inventor" of wc.
 
Quo Vadis Space-Sims

I was around in '91 when WC1 was released. It was revolutionary in almost every way. From adding sound (other than annoying beebs) to gameplay and character development. The key to success in my opinion is to recapture that revolution. For so long games outstripped hardware so people were rushing out to by more powerfull systems, or CD-ROM kits (rememeber those), now the hardware is there but the software isn't taking full advantage. My suggestion would be to create a true 3D universe with actual 3D modeled planets. No more cutscenes then boom your 200 feet above a planets surface. Show atomosphere changes as you get closer, and play with gravity forces. Take a hint from other flight sims and make carrier landings a real hairball. WC3 did a good job of this but it could better. This level of detail might be unpopular with the console crowd but it would add dimensions to Space-sims that I think are lacking.
This is only my opinion.
 
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