Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Two Buttons (April 7, 2018)

No, I think this refers to the choices EA made in the 2000s. Although, jokes aside, rebooting Command & Conquer must surely have always seemed like a far better choice, given that space sims were out of fashion, while RTS games continued to sell.

Now, if we're talking about favouring Earth: Above and Beyond over Privateer Online, that's a different story. That was the move of a true master...
 
Quarto said:
No, I think this refers to the choices EA made in the 2000s. Although, jokes aside, rebooting Command & Conquer must surely have always seemed like a far better choice, given that space sims were out of fashion, while RTS games continued to sell.
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It continued on long after the 2000s RTS golden age. They doubled down in 2007 with the "Battlecast" streaming TV show in 2007: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2007/08/20 Then there were C&C3 and RA3 in 2007-2008 that should have prevented the C&C4 monstrosity which came out in 2010. :) Then they went on to do the browser based Tiberium Alliances thing in 2012 and were working on Generals 2 (which I would have actually liked to see finished) as late as 2013. Until that point, the series was amazingly bulletproof for fifteen years past prime Wing Commander development at EA.
 
Yeah, which is why it wouldn't even surprise me if this was topical. The whole C&C thing was pretty bizarre in its own right: First they made the third game in both series, which were pretty much the previous titles with some global abilities thrown in, then doubled down with reasonably large expansions for both despite the base games supposedly not being huge successes. Then they seemed to go out of their way to kill the franchise with the fourth one. Then despite that, they started working on generals 2, then pulled the plug despite everyone loving it because fuck actually making money off the franchise, I guess?
 
Well, the thing is... StarCraft II. EA absolutely could have succeeded with a good C&C game, because clearly, there were RTS games that were doing very well on the market all through that period. What's really crazy, and what probably contributed the most to their failures, was the way they keep changing the core concept of the game. You just can't make a good game when you keep flipping from one idea to another. They couldn't even make up their minds if they wanted to make a traditional story-based RTS, or a multiplayer-oriented one.
 
Yeah... and through it all... would anyone be really surprised if they announced C&C: Tiberian Dusk, Red Alert Renegade or whatever next month?
 
In all honesty, I'm not sure if I would even notice such news, let alone be surprised by it :). But yeah - it would be about as shocking as another Mass Effect game.

EA is really such an odd beast. Time and again, they get accused of caring about nothing but money... only, when you look at their practices, there are so many expensive and easily predictable mistakes being made, that you'd think an organisation concerned only about money would want to avoid, and would want to learn from.
 
Quarto said:
You just can't make a good game when you keep flipping from one idea to another. They couldn't even make up their minds if they wanted to make a traditional story-based RTS, or a multiplayer-oriented one.
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Seems to be a persistent problem in the industry. Everyone wants to be super casual and accessible and yet the next big eSports. It kinda makes their decision to axe Generals stranger, since it had the potential from what I've heard about the beta. They did the same thing with Dawngate, but that was probably the safer decision considering what has happened to every other MOBA trying to be the next big thing, as much as I loved that game.
 
Well, wouldn't you know it?


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Wait, so is that like a new C&C release in development just for the Chinese market? Goodness, if they do that for Wing Commander, we'll all have to learn Mandarin...
 
Maybe? The developer does do English games, and it seems like this wasn't much of an official rollout, so it's possible just the Chinese trailer leaked and an English version could be in the works as well
 
I don't think this is the first time EA has licensed an IP for a Chinese game; there was a Chinese Dungeon Keeper MMO in development some years back (but it looks like it never came out.)

I would be surprised to see a China-only Wing Commander because the series wasn't so popular there. For whatever reason, Red Alert 3 seems to have struck a chord with the Chinese audience - they have crazy modders who rebuilt the whole game to add China as an extra faction and you can even get a line of physical Red Alert LEGO (copy) kits!
 
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