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Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new.

I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments yet, but AGD Interactive's commercial arm, Himalaya Studios, announced during the KQ3 release that they are working on something new: a role-playing adventure called Mages's Initiation. From the official announcement on their forum, their promo page, and a thread on the AGDI forum, it looks like in will leverage a lot of their knowledge in creating the Quest for Glory II remake to really bring that unique genre into the present day and future. I still haven't found a game that followed up on the promise of Quest for Glory II in my mind, so I'm personally looking forward to it quite a bit.

Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new.

I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments yet, but AGD Interactive's commercial arm, Himalaya Studios, announced during the KQ3 release that they are working on something new: a role-playing adventure called Mages's Initiation. From the official announcement on their forum, their promo page, and a thread on the AGDI forum, it looks like in will leverage a lot of their knowledge in creating the Quest for Glory II remake to really bring that unique genre into the present day and future. I still haven't found a game that followed up on the promise of Quest for Glory II in my mind, so I'm personally looking forward to it quite a bit.

Just imagine if all the talented people who spent hundreds or thousands of man-hours making this remake instead spent their energy on something new.

I haven't seen it mentioned in the comments yet, but AGD Interactive's commercial arm, Himalaya Studios, announced during the KQ3 release that they are working on something new: a role-playing adventure called Mages's Initiation. From the official announcement on their forum, their promo page, and a thread on the AGDI forum, it looks like in will leverage a lot of their knowledge in creating the Quest for Glory II remake to really bring that unique genre into the present day and future. I still haven't found a game that followed up on the promise of Quest for Glory II in my mind, so I'm personally looking forward to it quite a bit.

Nonsense. We pirates have had free access to all these things for years. I guarantee you there's not one game in their catalog that's not freely and easily available on the internet. So really, there's absolutely no point to putting DRM on it.

But I'm not sure there's much point to selling these old games either. Everyone involved with their creation got paid and moved on many years ago, so there's not really a moral imperative to reward the creators. I'd feel guilty if I pirated a new retro style game, like Al Emmo, but not these.

I'm sure someone will want to pay for these though, so someone might as well sell it. I suppose there's always a possibility that if enough people buy Freespace 2 we might see a Freespace 3, but that seems slim.

Too bad LucasArts axed it initially, along with the Full Throttle sequel.

Also check out:

http://www.himalayastudios.com/
http://www.agdinteractive.com/
http://www.bigbluecup.com/
http://www.justadventure.com/

Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine (sorry for the flash site). This has sort of been flying under the radar, but deserves more attention. There is a demo available, with the full version available soon. Very well done for an "off-broadway" production, and the people that are making it deserve some support!

It's not stopping these people. Their first game may be a good test of the market. They've pulled in some talented people to make the game (creative content) so they're above amateurs, but....well, I can't bring myself to download the 234MB demo for a 640x480 adventure game. Maybe it's worth it and I should just give it a try.

Hi, I'm the Audio Director for Flashbang Studios. We make small web/downloadable games, but we're a teeny tiny studio and budget for an entire game is less than a single voice actor working 8 hours in a studio for $375 dollars. Almost at the garage games level, but my job is to still come up with good audio, somehow.

I can tell you from personal experience that's it's possible to come up with very good quality audio for cheap by tapping the "semi-professional" vein. Not just conscripting your friends, which usually has a very amateur sound, but going a step up in quality. Tapping local college drama departments, theater clubs, even using Craigslist will net you a huge step up from just casting your friends for only a small price increase. Most people will record for just a few dozen dollars and a free copy of the game to show their spouse/kids.

In our most recently released Flashbang game, Glow Worm, I asked a friend of the family who is an opera professor if he would be the voice of our magician mascot, and he was totally willing. I paid him $40 in Domino's Pizza coupons and some free copies of the game, he was happy. If I had paid ten times more for an industry voiceover specialist, would it have been ten times better? I sincerely doubt it. If you like, judge for yourself how it turned out:

http://www.flashbangstudios.com/downloads/glowworm /

I just lent my skills to my colleague Britney Brimhall across town at Himalaya Studios. She asked me for help adding 24 voices to her upcoming adventure game, Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine on a shoestring budget but didn't know how to go about doing it. I told her the same method I used myself- put out a call to local drama clubs and theater departments and see who you can rustle up. She did just that and the talent outpouring was amazing. We had hundreds of people turn out for the audition for the chance to be in the game- including some professionals ignoring their talent agetns and even a PhD in acting! They worked for between $25 and $45 for the entire session, plus a free copy of the game once it comes out. I'd say the talent of the people available in those auditions was excellent. She ended up castomg her programmer friend as the lead role instead of one of the actors who auditioned, regrettably- but she had the option to pick from a bevy of skilled actors at bargain prices. See some pictures of the range of voice actors willing to work for around $40/hr here at her site:

http://www.himalayastudios.com/designer_journals.h tm

On our next game, I asked a talent agency if I could hire one of their voice actresses (Jennifer Hale, the voice of Bastila in KOTOR and many more! 3 ) to be the Witch in our next game, PotionMotion. I probably have about half an hour's worth of lines on the mic, and I told them my total audio budget was $200. That's $400 an hour. They haven't gotten back to me in several days. So I've already gone to my backup- a middle-aged mother who works in a local cafe in town. Maybe they'll still get back to me, but maybe not. If my $200-$400/hr just isn't good enough to land me a professional voice actress, I know I have a lot of extremely affordable options at the semi-professional level. If they want to make it extremely difficult for me to hire their services, I know at least one alternate path to landing "good enough" level acting.

So for us semi-indy style studios, there is a cornucopia of talent waiting out there. The professional voice actors out there rebuff especially lower-end game makers at their own peril.