How Steam Revived a Dead Game

Ask Stenum writes "Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting write-up about how Unreal Tournament 3 has risen from the dead after Epic Games patched it, made a deal with Valve to put it on Steam and making it available for free for a weekend. It's interesting to see how a multiplayer game that's almost one and a half years old suddenly has become what it never could be; a game with multiple players. What other (maybe older?) online multiplayer games would you like to see make a comeback?" UT3's resurgence was mentioned here briefly last week as part of our discussion on the future of game pricing.

Comments

Re:Advertising

[Kelbear]

Further to the above, a lot of really mediocre games get great sales through advertising...

XvT ported to Linux!

[erroneus]

I want that game back!!! All time most favorite and addicting game ever. I found myself calling in sick to work so I could finish a mission.

Re:XvT ported to Linux!

[Rennt]

I just discovered the FreeSpace Open project, its not Starwars, but with the beam weapons and laser fire and HEAPS of shit going on at once it often reminds me of the epic Reaver space battle in Serenity

Get the original game files from GOG for $5.95 then upgrade to the open-sourced engine with modern resolutions and stunning effects.

There is even a Starwars full conversion in progress. The models being created look amazing - they could almost be used to make a film - and one of the aims is to make it "look and play like the Battle of Endor" how cool it that!

Re:Worms!

[AKAImBatman]

I would love to play worms again!

They're still making Worms games, you know. There's even a downloadable version on XBox Live with online multiplayer.

Of course, us Wii users got SCREWED when multiplayer was removed from Worms: A Space Oddity shortly before hitting the shelves. I was really looking forward to that game! But noooo. Yet another developer takes a dump on Wii players. And then the megacorp game companies wonder why third parties can't sell Wii games. (Here's a hint guys: It helps to make games that people want to buy.)

Not exactly looking good in the MP arena.

[nedwidek]

Still looks moribund.

http://www.game-monitor.com/search.php?game=ut3

700 servers and 361 players right now.

BF2 has over 5000 people playing right now.
CoD4 over 8000.
L4D over 6000.
TF2 7001.

And how is this for insult to injury. UT2004 currently has 641 players. Almost double UT3. UT3 just seemed like a tech demo. More to sell the engine to other game makers.

Re:Not exactly looking good in the MP arena.

[Endymion]

UT2004 was a perfect mix of many things.

- The graphics hit a point where things no longer looked blatantly texture-mapped (the DOOM/early-quake problem)
- The pacing was incredible
- The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point.
- Very customizable. (lots of FPS games have that, but it's still a point in UT2004's favor)
- A variety of modes, that were generally well done. Ok, "double dominate" blows, but I still find myself playing a Bombing Run match and such just because it's crazy and different.
- Very gameplay-oriented level design. Sure, some of the maps look totally absurd, but the look that way because they have specific choke-points, carefully designed flow, etc.
- An extra level of polish across the board. I never really found myself saying "if it only had this feature, it'd be perfect". Even the little stuff like settings to change the crosshairs on a per-weapon basis - it showed a level of caring about the gameplay (the "fun"!) that most games skimp on.

I can't speak to how customizable UT3 is, but it(and many other games sense then) skimped on many of these features. The engine is there, though. It is potentially something that could be solved by simply adding a bunch of polish, little features, and playtesting a LOT to get the pacing/balance/etc right.

Maybe we'll get lucky and see a "UT3.5" remake where they get it right... they did show they can "reboot" things once before.

Re:Freespace

[AKAImBatman]

Believe it or not, you can still purchase it:

http://www.gog.com/en/search/sort/search/freespace

$5.99 for the game + expansions. Same for FreeSpace 2.

Re:Master Servers Pulled

[TornCityVenz]

The work around really are not hat hard. If you want to play on Friday night fights it consists of registering your nick on a website, loading the game in LAN mode and then when listing the servers hitting "insert" and the valid IP of a server running it.(hint)208.101.7.64:28000 Complete Instructions can be found at http://www.elitewarriorsonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=137:t2-bouncer-authentication-via-lan

Re:Advertising

[bigstrat2003]

Except, y'know, for the fact that Halo was actually a damned excellent game by any sane standard. You may not think it's good, but many people do (more than think it's lame), and you don't have any more authority on the matter than them.

Re:Worms!

[Scuff]

You might want to check out the Worms: Open Warfare games for the DS, if you have one. The second one has online multiplayer and has more weapons and such than the XBox Live one.

Re:Worms!

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend Worms Armageddon instead. Bigger online community and it's actively being upgraded by team17. It also has more mods, and it's possible to make it run on XP, Vista and Windows 7 (may have some problems on that last one). Other than that, it has the exact same engine, with all the same weapons and capabilities. WWP may have more missons and special modes, but these can be reproduced in WA.

Re:Epic needs to fire its marketing staff

[PHPNerd]

I'd like to second this. I also consider myself a serious gamer and had no idea this game was even out. Wwhen UT3 hit Steam I told my friends "Hey, look! They finally released UT3!"

Re:Epic needs to fire its marketing staff

[mog007]

It gets worse, UT2004 is actually the THIRD UT game for the PC. The sequel to UT was UT2003, and it wasn't nearly as fun as the original. Instead of just bypassing that iteration of the Unreal Engine, Epic decided to remake UT2003 into the fun game that the original UT was, and they released UT2004. It had a lot of the same stuff from UT2003, but it was vastly improved.

UT3 is actually the FOURTH UT game.

Re:Freespace

[quanticle]

Best of all, Good Old Games sells their games completely DRM unencumbered, so its easy to play them with Wine on Linux.