Vesko wrote:
Indeed, DA was in financial troubles, that’s the reason they searched for a publisher in the first place. Unfortunately, I don’t think Microsoft was the best choice, though. Personally, I think the best choice would’ve been a smaller publisher, unlike the big ones like MS Games, Activision, EA etc. smaller publishers usually aren’t as greedy, and many of the really small/indie publishers do it because they enjoy making games. Heck, we would’ve had Freelancer 2 or even 3 a long time ago had it been one of these publishers that snatched DA.
Sources of information please. Maybe FL 2 would have happened but we don’t know. However, for the general nay-saying of folks in this thread (not pointing to Vesko) I honestly think we need to look at things without our very very biased personal thoughts.
Digital Anvil was purchased by Microsoft on 5 Dec 2000.
This is 3 years before release. 3 YEARS…
Many of the Digital Anvil staff working on Loose Cannon were reassigned to the company’s flagship Freelancer.
Hardly sounds like under investment…sounds like FL had far too few staff working on development.
The game was initially announced by Chris Roberts in 1999, and following many production schedule mishaps and a buyout of Digital Anvil by Microsoft, it was eventually released in March 2003.
Marry this with:
The game was commonly regarded as vaporware due to its promised release date of 2001. The game was eventually released in 2003 with a markedly different feature set than the initial plans, but was received fairly favorably.
3 years of development, 2 years late. It doesn’t matter how much you love something, someone somewhere has to step up and say “guys, it’s time to call it”. They did that - the game wasn’t what we hoped for, but is it Microsoft’s fault that it fell short of the vision Roberts had… or after 4 years of development (with increased team numbers), 2 years being overdue, that the original mandate was wholly beyond reach? You could say it is bad project management - this is possible to. However, I have no doubt that MS would have thrown it if this were the case.
The first game to be released by Digital Anvil was Starlancer, developed externally by Warthog Games. It was, unfortunately, released during an era of declining interest in space-combat, and the game was a financial failure. Two planned sequels were scrapped.
3 years on a game (at least) where the prequel was (according to the wiki anyway) a financial failure…
3 years.
Sources for all this are wikipedia, which aren’t 100% factual, but at least aren’t based upon my own personal assumptions. I would love to find better sources, but honestly…there aren’t any (wiki contains links to the places it is derived from. However, still treat it all with a pinch of salt - BUT I still view this as superior to my own pre-conceptions or personal skewed viewpoint). I’d like to point out that people in the community always blame, to the point that people think it’s fact. I’ve never seen a single reference which highlights culpability at Microsoft’s door alone. Try paying the wages of a development team for 2 years longer than the original project budgeted for and see how many publishers are still going to say “please, carry on until you get what you said originally”. I honestly think you’d get zero. Heck, I’m amazed it wasn’t canned…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Anvil
The points of real interest are also:
Roberts left the company for his own pursuits shortly after the Microsoft acquisition
Instantly you’d assume he left because they forced him to do stuff/make changes he didn’t want to see. This may not be true. Remember, Roberts had done his Wing Commander movie and it appeared he was more interested in films than computer games at that point…
Looking back, yes, it is disappointing it isn’t what was hoped. However, given the huge amount of extra development time that went into the game - with what must have been a hugely over-budget production in the end, we got a really good game. A REALLY good game.
Yes, we can have wished for more (certainly a sequel!), but we shouldn’t appear ungrateful for what we got - especially when looking at the circumstances surrounding it. Was it Microsoft’s fault? You be the judge if no-one can provide real solid evidence - but don’t forget, years overdue whilst being financed. How many places would have let that happen? Honestly?
b.t.w I have no love for Microsoft, but I do think fair is fair. For instance, the ini bugs. That’s not the publisher’s fault (however, by that time DA was part of MS, so Developer and Publisher I guess 😄 ) - that’s the developer’s fault. Would they ever have been corrected even if not pushed for release (if they were pushed for release…)? Unlikely. Why? Because once coded, unless someone noticed the error during testing, it’d have gotten through.
If it was a game breaking ini error, then yeah, insufficient testing before release - signs of publisher pressure I’d agree 😄 However, I remember FL as being very very stable. Certainly compared to any game I’m currently playing 😉
