Did we screw ourselves out of a Star Control sequel?

[Angelfish]

From the Battlezone 2 wikipedia:

When Battlezone II was released to the public on January 2000, the game was met with a lot of enthusiasum, but it quickly began receiving negative views because of out-of-the-box bug issues and an over the top requirements to run the game for its time. With a multiplayer that was broken and not fixed until patch 1.1 the game received a lot of negative publicity while it was on the shelf.

In an interview Nathan Mates, A programmer that worked on Battlezone II attempted to explain why after the first game, BZ2 did not fare well on the market, in an interview with the Battlezone Magazine. "Despite things not being a huge success at retail,there's a definite, but smaller, portion of the population that likes the FPS+RTS genre. Their options are somewhat limited. So, they stick with what they know and love. As I said above,(About why Battlezone III was never made) this tenaciousness can really backfire and hurt things – if the BZ1 fans hadn't bashed BZ2 for so long, then there might have been more people exposed to BZ2. I see this with different BZ2 versions – there's an extreme amount of anger directed at anything that changes."

This makes me wonder, has our criticism on Star Control 3 hurt the chances of there being a sequel to it (or to SC2)? In the end, to the top people in big gaming companies, making a good game doesn't really matter anymore, but making a lot of money by selling a lot of copies does.. And somehow I don't think that a true star control sequel will not sell that many copies, as the greatness of SC2 is only known in a 'niche' market and when Atari DOES release a new Star Control onto the shelves, won't people also search the internet for reviews of the last game in the series, namely Star Control 3? They'll likely only find bad reviews and our criticisms on the internet, which is bad for sales and thus a reason not to make a Star Control sequel.
Therefore I think that it's best to abandon the Star Control name and trademark altogether if a sequel is to be made, even if it's made by TFB and they somehow acquire the trademark, it's tarnished by the negative reputation of Star Control 3.
TFB also needs to be smart about this, if they plan on ever pitching a new SC2 sequel to the big guys at the big companies, just tell them that TFB wants to make a space game filled with an epic storyline, witty dialogue and fast paced spaceship combat without actually referring to making a sequel .

[Eth]

  I think that nobody remember SC3 anymore anyway, except us.  It's been well over a decade. 

[Alen]

And the people who do remember it end up killing themselves anyways.

[jwj442]

Well I don't think that would make a difference...nobody really cares about SC3 anymore, but SC2 is still liked by a lot of people. As Shiver and I discussed in chat once, there's actually a good number of gamers who like SC2 (almost everyone who plays UQM is impressed), they just don't bother with our community, which is understandable.

Here's one thing to think about: in the late 90s/early 00s, space games in general (not all sci-fi, but games that mostly place in space) kind of imploded. Space flight sims pretty much completely died off, and then Master of Orion 3 was a huge flop. Even Star Wars didn't get any games set mainly in space for a long while...if something as big as Wing Commander didn't have a chance, how could Star Control? This is just speculation on my part though.

Recently they've made a little bit of a comeback with games like Galactic Civilizations 2 and Mass Effect, but a lot of time has passed now since the last SC and even more since the last good one. Now Mass Effect has some similarities to Star Control and I think its success shows there's a market for games like SC (and the fact that it gets compared to SC2 sometimes shows SC2 hasn't been completely forgotten), but unfortunately Activision isn't a company to take risks.

For awhile I hoped that SC1 Genesis would make it to the Wii virtual console and raise awareness of SC, but I don't think that'll ever happen.

[Guesst]

I gave up any hope of this a long time ago.

If we did have a sequel it would need to be a relaunch. And only with FF & PR3 at the helm. And juding from their reactions that's about as likely as nothing, so there's no point in getting all excited about it.

Except for Dragon's Remake.

[Dragon]

I doubt anything we said would affect Activisions decision to finance a sequel.  The marketting people/executives are (in my experience) quite far removed from the communities and their priorities are to maximise profits safetly.  We're quite likely to see a COD7 because there's a guaranteed return on development but it's unlikely the accounting department even remember SC2 or 3

Anyway, I was actually posting here because I didn't want to bump my thread.  There might possibly be another SC related project to get excited about.  Array!  It's a small part of the reason why SC:R has been crawling.  I'm also doing the coding on it although they share a common codebase which minimises my work.  Others are doing the real work with game design and graphics, I'm just the code monkey.  A tiny ray of hope is that things at the office have slowed down and I have (unintentionally) got quite a lot of SC related stuff done these past three days.

And that's enough teasing now.  *gives thread back*

[Alen]

I doubt anything we said would affect Activisions decision to finance a sequel.  The marketting people/executives are (in my experience) quite far removed from the communities and their priorities are to maximise profits safetly.  We're quite likely to see a COD7 because there's a guaranteed return on development but it's unlikely the accounting department even remember SC2 or 3

Anyway, I was actually posting here because I didn't want to bump my thread.  There might possibly be another SC related project to get excited about.  Array!  It's a small part of the reason why SC:R has been crawling.  I'm also doing the coding on it although they share a common codebase which minimises my work.  Others are doing the real work with game design and graphics, I'm just the code monkey.  A tiny ray of hope is that things at the office have slowed down and I have (unintentionally) got quite a lot of SC related stuff done these past three days.

And that's enough teasing now.  *gives thread back*

Do you enjoy torturing us with hints and teasing?

[Lukipela]

Do you enjoy torturing us with hints and teasing?

You know, I rather think he does. looking forward to the project though, it's going to be very interesting.

Oh, on topic:

I don't think the Sc3 debunkle hurt the chances of another sequel. it was a wild last shot, made by a company trying to turn a buck without investing more than the minimum in it. If it had been received better, we might have gotten StarCon, but we all saw how that would've turned out, and it wasn't pretty.

[Alen]

Do you enjoy torturing us with hints and teasing?

You know, I rather think he does. looking forward to the project though, it's going to be very interesting.

Oh, on topic:

I don't think the Sc3 debunkle hurt the chances of another sequel. it was a wild last shot, made by a company trying to turn a buck without investing more than the minimum in it. If it had been received better, we might have gotten StarCon, but we all saw how that would've turned out, and it wasn't pretty.

Im sure if one of us were very wealthy, there could be a grass roots project.

[Death 999]

What I don't get is why the copyright holder doesn't say, "Okay, TFB, you want to make it? Give us 1% of the gross. Go to town."

1% of something > 100% of nothing.

Maybe they believe that hiring TFB to do other things would be more profitable? Maybe they're asking for much much more of a cut, and not backing down? IDK. It's certainly a waste, and an abuse of the trademark system.

[Eth]

TFB is the copyright holder.  Atari/whatever is the trademark holder. 

[Angelfish]

actually, it's a little more complicated.
TFB owns the copyright to the content of the SC1 and SC2 games, but Activision/Atari owns the trademark Star Control .

[Death 999]

OK. 1% of something is still > 100% of nothing.

[jwj442]

What I don't get is why the copyright holder doesn't say, "Okay, TFB, you want to make it? Give us 1% of the gross. Go to town."

1% of something > 100% of nothing.

Maybe they believe that hiring TFB to do other things would be more profitable? Maybe they're asking for much much more of a cut, and not backing down? IDK. It's certainly a waste, and an abuse of the trademark system.

Well, I think getting Activision to let them make the game is probably a bigger obstacle right now...

[Death 999]

... That IS the obstacle I'm speaking of.