Shadowrun Finds a New Home

After the disastrous Xbox Shadowrun title and the closing of FASA Studios, it's not surprising to see Microsoft pushing the rights to videogames made in the Shadowrun IP off to greener pastures. Their new place of residence, though, is a bit of a pleasant shock: a new company founded by Jordan 'Zapper' Weisman. Gamasutra reports: "FASA, WizKids and 42 Entertainment founder Jordan Weisman has announced, via the website of his newest venture-backed startup Smith & Tinker, that he has licensed the 'electronic entertainment' rights to his MechWarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies properties back from Microsoft ... It is unclear as of yet what form Weisman's plans for these franchises might take. But given the transmedia nature of his recent ventures, and job advertisements asking for experts with Web 2.0 and online game expertise, online world/MMO elements to the company's projects seem likely." Simon Carless has a few extra comments on the news over at GameSetWatch.

Comments

A New Mech Warrior or Shadowrun MMO?

[RingDev]

Where do I sign up? Is there a fan boi bus yet? Can I drive?

-Rick

Re:A New Mech Warrior or Shadowrun MMO?

[GroeFaZ]

As much as I would love to agree, I think a MechWarrior MMO would suffer the same basic problem as any StarWars MMO with the Jedi trait: Nearly everyone would play the game to become a Mech jockey, and people would (perhaps rightfully) cry foul if they were to pay for a MechWarrior game and be unable (or only after epic grinding) to pilot a Mech. What else is there? Elementals on the Clan side maybe, but other than that...

A Shadowrun MMO on the other hand would make perfect sense. The game offers classic magic as well as high-tech weapons, character customization out of the box (implants and magic buffs), a stronger focus on non-fighting professions than the BattleTech universe, different races, cyberspace and hacking, politics, etc. pp. ad infinitum. It's all there already, waiting to be implemented.

Shadowrun WoW

[dave562]

Shadowrun could own WoW if they come up with a decent game engine that can handle ranged combat. It has all of the elements that would attract huge portions of the gaming world. It has the fantasy of elves and trolls and dragons and vampirse and all of that. It has the high tech angle with the cyberware and bioware and matrix. It has guns and magic. It also has a diverse enough setting to cater to casual and hard core players. It has the kind of enviroment where people can play as fixers or Johnsons or weaponsmiths or whatever.

The big problem that I see is generating a credible world. WoW works because it is a fantasy world and so they can have these huge open spaces and towns that are comprised of a couple of buildings. Shadowrun on the other hand is all about the urban sprawl and dense urban environments. I could be wrong but I don't think that there is game engine out there that can handle all of the NPCs, plus a bunch of players, plus all of the various vehicles operating both on the street and in the air. The WoW model when you are dead and running back to your corpse could be expanded upon to create the seperation between the astral space and the physical world.

What do you guys think? Can a model be created using the current hardware that could accurate recreate an urban game world that would be required for Shadowrun?

Easy Money

[SlashdotOgre]

Shadowrun is a perfect franchise for making a modern sandbox RPG. Heck, I'd be thrilled if someone just remakes a 3D version of the fantastic Genesis Shadowrun title. The whole time I've been playing Mass Effect, I keep thinking how easy it would be for someone to use that engine for Shadowrun (in fact, a lot of ME's elements are similar to Shadowrun on the Genesis, it's mainly just a different setting and calling magic "technology"). A good Shadowrun game would be enough motivation for me to buy a console for it if it were exclusive.

Re:Shadowrun WoW

[SirLurksAlot]

Shadowrun could own WoW if they come up with a decent game engine that can handle ranged combat.

Whatever system they come up with would have to take cover, etc into account. As much as I hate to say it, it would necessarily have to have elements of a FPS.

The big problem that I see is generating a credible world. WoW works because it is a fantasy world and so they can have these huge open spaces and towns that are comprised of a couple of buildings. Shadowrun on the other hand is all about the urban sprawl and dense urban environments. I could be wrong but I don't think that there is game engine out there that can handle all of the NPCs, plus a bunch of players, plus all of the various vehicles operating both on the street and in the air. The WoW model when you are dead and running back to your corpse could be expanded upon to create the seperation between the astral space and the physical world.

I don't really see your point about generating a credible world, what makes WoW any more or less credible than any other fictional setting? City of Heroes is in an urban setting and it seemed to handle numerous NPC, vehicles and all sorts of PCs running around just fine. Zoning makes a lot of that easier, and in that sense Shadowrun would probably operate like 99% of all the other MMOs out there right now. I don't think body runs would necessarily work that well, waking up in a hospital (or DocWagon as the case may be) seems much more likely.

Irony

[NightRain]

Wow, I thought that damned Xbox game was going to sink any hope of seeing a decent Shadowrun computer game at any point in the future. Who'd have thought the thing sucking so much would turn out to be the thing that now gives me hope of a decent game being made :)