3 ms·
I am absolutely not sure what to make of this. A lot of those companies have sad histories (Looking Glass especially) and went bankrupt or were closed, but rare
by Argorak 15y ago
I am absolutely not sure what to make of this. A lot of those companies have sad histories (Looking Glass especially) and went bankrupt or were closed, but rarely because of piracy. Some examples:
- Ion Storm built Daikatana (Romero, *, you know the history) and Deus Ex 2, 2 huge time- and moneysinks that are widely regarded as failures. Add Anachronox, which was mediocre at best.
- Ensemble Studios was closed by Microsoft with no specific reason, most likely due to a shift of focus, after multiple really successful releases, piracy or not. Also, Halo Wars didn't get a lot of praise.
- Core Design is praised for Tomb Raider I and hated for running the series into the ground release by release. This ended in Angel of Darkness, which was bundled with some ATI graphics boards (9800) on which it didn't run (!). I still have an unplayed but not untouched version of this.
- Kaos Studios made Frontline and Homefront which were... ehm... yes. Okayish at best.
I could go on. Games is a tough market. Production costs are high and failures are costly. Companies surviving more than 10 years in the gaming market are great. So whats the point of this post? Should we start paying rent to developers that worked on games for dying companies? Should sales of these games be stopped because the money goes to whatever publisher that still puts these games out on the shelves? And whats the thing with piracy again?
- gambler 15y agoAdd Anachronox, which was mediocre at best. Anachronox was a damn good game. It used non-traditional narrative techniques and did a fine job of utilizing the diverse set of characters to help the storytelling. It had great writing and humor, as as well as an interesting universe with many diverse, interactive areas to explore. The locations were probably the best part. They were so dynamic. When you were on a space station there were places with displaced gravity to make you feel like you're really on a space station. When you went to a dock, you could see space ships coming and leaving. Even now there are very few games that go to that level of detail, especially on such large scale.
- Argorak 15y agoI knew this one was going to bite me :). I meant mediocre in a product-market-fit way. It definitely had its high-points (and not accidentally), but it also suffered from the fact that Ion Storm Dallas was already burning when it was released. The cult following definitely showed that a lot of things were right about the game. This was strictly a personal note, I didn't enjoy the game as much as I could have and still consider it a wasted opportunity for greatness.
- gambler 15y agoAh, that I can agree with. The graphics in particular was quite outdated, even by the standards of those times.