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King's Quest Fan Project The Silver Lining Is Back
LoTonah writes "After eight years of development and a Cease & Desist from Vivendi, King's Quest fan project The Silver Lining is back in action. From the website: 'We are extremely happy to announce that our project, The Silver Lining, will definitely see the light of day! In a wonderful turn of events, Activision reached out to the Phoenix Online team a few months ago with a desire to revisit their decision regarding The Silver Lining. After negotiations, the C&D has been officially rescinded, and Phoenix Online has been granted a non-commercial license to release The Silver Lining! Our team is ecstatic about this, and as hard as we've worked for eight years, it's the tireless belief and support of you, our fans, that has made this possible.' The first episode of the project is due to be released on July 10."
Good on Vivendi. It's good to see they realized they made a mistake, that this wasn't hurting them (Quite the opposite, probably), and correcting the issue.
One company (on one issue) down, a few million more to go!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Probably a combination of not having to pay for the fan-made remake, nostalgia from when we played these games as children, and delight at seeing a long-dead game formula we loved revived. Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures. It's not EA or Activision stepping in to give us what we want. It's the indies. That's why people love indies.
So why is it that it's bad that EA or Activision makes constant sequels and remakes to games but then everyone has these orgasms over fan-made games that are just remaking and rehashing old games?
Because, it's clearly out of love that a fanmade project is finished. Fans are rabid and serious about doing a sequel justice.
When big companies often make remakes and sequels, it's { often } just a cash grab. You can feel that the title is lifeless. I could give you a long list if you were really interested.
No I wouldn't. People only whine about franchise milking when they're secretly not getting what they wanted. Nobody complains about getting what they want. The "franchise milk" people are the ones who are pissed off because they didn't get what they wanted, can't put their finger on why, and want something to bitch about.
Peasant's Quest
If they were to do so for a commercial gain, yes. If they were to release it for free, no.
Hail to the King's Quest !
-- Rastignac was here.
Sequels aren't a problem at all (and I personally haven't heard any complaining about remakes). The problem is cheap sequels that don't add anything substantial, but which just try to make you pay twice (trice, ...) for the same damn game.
It's not JUST that they're made by fans (although that's part of it - see below). It's the style of the actual original game.
These kinds of old adventure games actually came up with new, innovative, refreshing, and comedic CHARACTER INTERACTION (i.e. STORIES).
"Aliens are invading, and you must kill them or all mankind is lost" gets kind of old after the 5th... no make that the 1st, iteration.
As to why fan-made remakes are often better:
Because they are made by fans, and fans often understand the lore, storylines, plots, and nuances of the series better than any one individual developer or project manager at the company even does.
If you don't believe me, go find some die-hard Star Trek fans...
In the early days of the web, Fox was trying to threaten every X-Files fan page for violating their trademark. Lucas threatened to sue every Star Wars page out there. Companies felt it was their duty to protect the IP. They didn't realize these fan pages weren't stealing money from them, but rather were adding value to their brands.
Fan pages and fan projects are free advertising. Any company who sues a non-commercial fan project is idiotic at best, and doesn't like receiving money from their customers.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
OH MY GOD!! So excited!
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/petition/petition.php
I love Activision right now. Would that they let TFB have access to Star Control license ...
Are people here up in arms about new Mario games, or new Final Fantasy titles?
Honestly, the PC adventure genre is all but non-existant these days. If Activision were going to release a classic PC adventure, it might make the Slashdot crowd squeal with delight. However, Activision would probably screw it all up, and try to turn it into more of a 3D action title.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures.
As you or others may not be aware, Tales of Monkey Island is thoroughly enjoyable. Telltale Games is doing a good job on this "long-dead" game formula with other games like the Sam & Max franchise as well.
Although really, they'd rather release shitty new games and duplicates of their old games on different systems.
Gotta keep killing those fan games. You can't really ruin a good video game franchise with fans jumping in there and making better stuff.
Wasn't there a Space Quest project in pretty much the same situation? Can it be bailed out too?
It is not that this is a remake by an indie vs major label. Major label makes sequels every year of the games they did last year. They are not doing a remake of donkey kong. And most of the time when the major label remakes a game, the game is nothing like the original (i.e. X-Com).
will there be a linux version?
Yes, because Activision would certainly charge money for a project which is a labor of love for the fans.
There's a fundamental, qualitative difference between a game for $49 and the exact same game for free. There's also a significant difference between a game made by a huge corporation and one made by a bunch of geeks. Even if the results are identical.
If someone gave you a cold beer on a hot day, you might well appreciate it more than the same beer for $12 at an overpriced restaurant.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Man, I miss that game.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
And I thought they were the essence of evil. There, got my on-topic statement in. Now to be slightly off-topic for people who want to get some ideas to get their adventure game fix before this thing gets released.
So why is it that it's bad that EA or Activision makes constant sequels and remakes to games but then everyone has these orgasms over fan-made games that are just remaking and rehashing old games?
You don't have the gray matter to work out a reasonable answer?
Okay, fine, I'll give you a little hint: A reason exists, it's obvious, and it's not hypocritical. Can you find a good answer or are you dependent on somebody feeding you an answer that you're just going to argue with anyway?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but this seems sort of like people who get happy over a tax rebate. IP is an unjust usurping of what you can do with your own real, physical property. In this case, the fan team simply gets to do what they should have been able to do in the first place.
Thank you, moderators, for realizing that this post was not insightful or interesting.
There is a particular brand of posting that frequently gets moderated up. These posts can be identified by the way that they appear to show hypocrisy in a group; often along the lines of "So, do we hate X today or love it?" or "Y is good sometimes, and bad sometimes. Got it."
I can never be sure if the poster is being serious (and is thus simply not very good at logical arguments) or trollish (and is thus simply an asshole).
To those of you in the former group, here is why this is not (always) hypocrisy: the world is more complex than you seem to understand. It is probably not a good idea to take a stand on something and then never budge. Simple-minded people do admire this, but it's a terrible way to go through life. The present topic has been discussed by other posters, but let's take another example. Google does something good/bad, and is praised/condemned. Someone like the OP says "So we like/hate Google today?" Here's the thing: it's entirely possible to like Google's tools but be wary of their privacy issues, for example. Thus when something cool comes out, it's OK to appreciate it, the same way it's OK to criticize Google when they do something you don't like. You are not required to take a position such as "Google is always good" or "always bad". Substitute Apple, Microsoft, etc. for Google as you like. Feel free to apply this elsewhere. It works great in politics, where you might learn that disagreeing with somebody on a particular topic doesn't mean you're mortal enemies who oppose each other at all turns.
To those of you in the latter group, go fuck yourselves.
Don't forget Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People! http://www.telltalegames.com/strongbad
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
You guys are going to love this.
http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html
Not sure how these guys pulled it off (probably got permission before Vivendi ate Sierra), but they've been doing Sierra remakes for a long time.
FYI,
You might have had a practical joker playing with your sig.
Appreciated. But, no, that's a quote from a real comment I made that was modded as +5 insightful. :)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"Fan pages and fan projects are free advertising."
Indeed, so how does depicting Spock and Kirk as a love interest help Paramount sell more Star Trek?
Lets hope Activision will allow the fan-made Space Quest sequel Space Quest 7 to continue as well, its another fan-made follow-on to a Sierra adventure game that was shut down by Vivendi.
Appreciated. But, no, that's a quote from a real comment I made that was modded as +5 insightful. :)
Looks like it was modded +5 Informative...
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Actually, it is starting to look like there is a bit of a revival for adventure games. :)
New Monkey Islands, new Sam & Max-es, etc.
Even a few new franchises.
Things are looking up
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Does anyone remeber GAC on the Amiga(i think it was on Amiga(so many old computers, so many memories(I can still play strek on my PDP-11!))).
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Congrats to the team for receiving the license.. It does show however that you shouldn't just start a fan-based game without having the proper licenses (I think they had aproval before the takeover, but I'm not certain).
Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures
There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.
Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.
Some examples:
Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
We're allowed reboots with movies and comics, why not games?
It is not a bad thing to reboot a series, nor is it a bad thing to remake a game for updated technology.
The reason old games (Sierra and Lucasarts Point and Click games) keep being remade and revived is because the companies who made them prematurely terminated the series (eg Sierra selling out, Origin selling out, I'm not even sure why lucasarts stopped making games they had rights to.)
Look at other fan projects that have been crushed (Zelda games, Chrono trigger games, Final Fantasy games) these are current IP... well Chrono Trigger isn't anymore, and square barely recognizes the potential for remakes. They have remade the games ever so slightly so they run on newer equipment and add a bit to it, but they've only remade FF3 and FF4 to date using different technology. (FF1 and 2 don't count as they're barely more than a graphic and music update.)
It would make more sense for the IP holders to embrace the fan community a little more. We're sick of crappy licensed games... why not let the fan communities make their own games with some strict guidelines like "You can not call the game an official sequel, and can not use title the game using *name-of-ip-here*" and then, if any of those fan games pick up popularity, offer to distribute the game for DLC along side the official games.
Nintendo should reboot Mario, not replace the existing Mario series with a new Mario, but actually release a storyline version of Mario with with new character designs and self-consistent plot between episodes. I like Mario, but for once I'd like to see a game that explains how Mario wound up in the Mushroom Kingdom, and only rescuing Princess Peach once. SMW2 and Paper Mario/Mario+Luigi series have only established that there are multiple "kingdoms" all with food themes, yet Peach, Daisy and Rosetta/Rosalina are the only humanoid people in all of these kingdoms.