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Court Returns Stolen Stargate MMO To Founder

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the chevron-six-encoded dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has ended a bitter dispute over control of a Mesa video game company's assets, effectively giving the online combat game Stargate Resistance and the long-delayed MMORPG Stargate Worlds back to Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. Fresh Start tried to remove all of Cheyenne Mountain's assets from its offices on Feb. 24, but was prevented from doing so when the police arrived. Networking cords had been cut and left to hang loose, and PC cases were empty shells that had been gutted of components such as hard drives. But time may finally have run out for Worlds, Cheyenne Mountain's signature project: The ruling comes as MGM Studios has apparently terminated the license it granted in 2006 for the Arizona company to produce video games based on the Stargate movies and TV shows."

14 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. I mourn the loss by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Star Trek was awesome in its day. Some will say that it still is. But what it had was not just a vision of the future, but a hope for the future. Star Wars gave us a new way look at things as well, but I can't say that it offered much more than intense entertainment. Stargate sought to engage the mind by tying old mysteries with new ones creating a galaxy and even a universe of awe and wonder that continued to expand beyond limits that were not imagined previously. Very few other sci-fi themes contained the qualities contained within Star Trek, Star Wars, Battle Star Galactica, Firefly and others, but Stargate, while it did seem to run its course, maintained those qualities in intense amounts. Had greed, politics and myopia had not taken its destructive toll, the potential of Stargate could have set a new standard for the genre.

    I mourn the loss... but it was lost long ago. We're just seeing the aftermath of some really crappy people.

    1. Re:I mourn the loss by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Had greed, politics and myopia had not taken its destructive toll, the potential of Stargate could have set a new standard for the genre.

      I can't speak to the "greed and greed", but Stargate did set a "new standard" for the genre, to some degree. The show ran for a decade with (mostly) the same cast throughout. They were able to sustain essentially the same format for that entire time, without degrading the quality too substantially, and introduce new content throughout.

      Granted, this only really works with episodic fiction, but they still managed to maintain a degree of continuity and character progression from season to season (and episode to episode). Contrast that to ST:TNG, where by the 3rd or so season, things were starting to get a bit dull and repetitive.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    2. Re:I mourn the loss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      (posting anon as I already modded)

      FWIW B5 was the first science fiction show to have any kind of scientific realism when it comes to space battles, not to mention the fact that not all races had artifical gravity, hence the rotating station/ships. As for the story, B5 is about the only TV show to date, no matter what genre, with a well defined plot beforehand. The beginning, middle and end were all written before a single episode was filmed - due to issues with networks though, the fourth season feels very rushed, and the first half of the fifth is quite irrelevant. There are great episodes on the latter half though, Fall of Centauri Prime is one of my favourites of all seasons.

      Compare this to the re-imagined BSG, where the Cylons might have had a plan, but it became very evident they weren't letting the writers in on it. After what was the lamest and literally the most deux ex machina ending ever that was the final episode I didn't think I could ever be as infuriated after watching a show (well, Lost proved me wrong, but I digress).

      I'll grant that B5 certainly looks dated, and some of the acting is less than stellar (G'kar and Londo make totally up for it though in my opinion), but it certainly has been a much more influential series than BSG ever will, in promoting the whole "series as an arc"-concept beyond the realm of soap operas. BSG's contribution seems to be "despite a big budget, we can't afford camera stands".

    3. Re:I mourn the loss by g4b · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, opinions stay opinions.
      Don't get me wrong, I am a very open person, but reading BSG next to the other (really great) shows made me shiver.

      You are right, some actors were very bad in B5 - but some were genius (Katsulas, e.g.).
      Well this mostly also has to do with budget.

      Also, the storyarcs of B5 are still one of the best writings (in terms of WRITING) for any space opera, creating a very epic feeling until the show unfolds into season 5. Many things could have been done better, but we can tell that about every sci-fi show. I do not talk about Crusader or most of the silly movies.

      It was an experiment to slightly plan forward 5 Seasons of story and holding that promise, unveiling things which were planted seasons before. Some things of course did not work without some patchwork, like the unexpected change of captains and their meaning being "the one" in season 2/3.
      You do not have this in DS9 until S3. (I love both shows)

      To the question, which came first: It is very likely that Paramount used Straczynski's ideas to influence or even develop DS9 (since they had his first 22 episodes as writing already in '89), however Straczynski never wanted to sue them. You can read about that on wikipedia.

      Scientific ideas about how ships, stations, weapons, governments and societies work were very well made in B5. The choice to focus on 4 races was a good one. Of course, it was heavily LotR influenced storytelling, but it worked out.

      BSG on the other hand was sometimes terrible to watch - too much obvious but claiming-to-be-very-philosophical dialogues (the philosophical questions thrown up in a sci-fi-show should be between the lines), too much new age hypertheories, terrible nausea while watching space scenes, and again only a few actors were good - however none were as terrible as some in B5, I must admit.

      BSG deserves its credit to be a fine show. But it does not deserve to stand beside Firefly, Star Trek or Star Wars at all. B5 in my opinion does.
      I would add it to the second bestest, where Stargate Atlantis, Farscape, Earth2 and so on can be found.

      Well and there is Andromeda. We can agree about that one, I hope.

    4. Re:I mourn the loss by powerlord · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Personally, the series that tried the "hardest" on aliens being alien was Farscape.

      Farscape:

      1) Bi-pedal humanoid seemed common, but a) the makeup for those bipedal humanoids sometimes got rather intense. b) they weren't always humanoid (Pilot for instance) and c) motivations weren't always similar (just 'cause it looked mostly "human" didn't mean it was, and vice-versa). (well, and d) explaining why the most human aliens DID look that way, and that was part of the plot ... but we had to wait for the movie to fill in the last season of story).

      2) They explained it away in Episode 1 (think Babel-Fish), and even came back to the idea a few times (with 'us' the audience seeing how things sounded "naturally").

      3) Sex is one thing, procreation is another.

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    5. Re:I mourn the loss by ultranova · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As all good science fiction does, current events and the human condition were examined, placing the characters in moral quandaries throughout the show.

      No, all good science fiction does not examine current events, the human condition, or moral quandaries. In fact I'd be thankful if less scifi writers felt the need to do so, especially since most of them aren't very good at it and even those who are tend to let the requirements of such examinations dictate the plot and the setting.

      I'd much rather see more examinations of possible futures and advanced super-tech.

      Religion, origins, etc. were explored while maintaining a reasonable level of scientific realism. Significantly, B5 had none of these things.

      Well, not much anyway, and that was its best feature. The parts that did examine them tended to be cringeworthy, just like they usually are anywhere.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    6. Re:I mourn the loss by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2, Interesting

      B5 gave you characters who you wanted to be.

      BSG gave real characters, all of which with their faults and strengths. Most of them (like most people) were unsavory to one degree or another, but

      Saul Tye, I disliked for the first several seasons. By the end, he was one of my favorites. Giaius Baltar was an outrageously unsavory character at the beginning, but by the end I could at least understand him, somewhat (even if I didn't "like" him, I could understand him.) The Chief is a 'constant' throughout the show, but he grows on your like a close friend; Adm. Adama, like a father. The opposite can be said for Kara Thrace.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    7. Re:I mourn the loss by quacking+duck · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I won't contest your assertions about the BSG finale because, frankly, I'm on the fence about it myself. However...

      (G'kar and Londo make totally up for it though in my opinion)

      Egads. They were the least believable characters! What's next: a gurgling puddle of slime in the staring role?

      Excuse me, but what!? I'll admit G'Kar became a little too comical in season 5, but watch season 2's "The Long Twilight Struggle", in particular the council chamber scene where G'Kar is forced to give up his seat after his race surrenders to the Centauri. His proud, defiant exit speech utterly robs Londo of any sense of victory, and you see it in Londo's face.

  2. What a story... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    First, I'd never heard of somebody so literally stealing intellectual property.

    Second, why is it that whenever I read of a flagrant disregard of the basic protocols of human interaction and the law, it seems to involve the phrase, "Maricopa County".

    Finally, "they left the network cords to hang" (spins up and Hulks out): "WHAT KIND OF A MAN LYNCHES AN ETHERNET CABLE!"

  3. Re:So stealing does pay. by Compholio · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not sure what Fresh Start Software's motive was, but if it was to block development of a Stargate videogame, they achieved their goal.

    If one of the quotes from TFA is to be believed then my hypothesis would be that they are offended by Stargate's treatment of religion:

    Whiting then expressed optimism that Dark Comet would end up returning Cheyenne Mountain’s assets to him. He compared his situation in the “hostile takeover” to that of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie, but said the motives for it were personal and even religious.

  4. Re:Damn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That was footage from this very MMO in the first episode of SGU by the way. They actually wrote something that resembled a game before imploding.

  5. Pitty - it was a good game by gravis777 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was in the early alpha and beta testing of Worlds, as I had a friend at Cheyenne Mountain. It was the first MMO I actually liked. It was a little buggy, but the game was almost done when bankruptcy hit. This was complicated by some freeze being put on the accounts where, even though the money was there, they were not able to pay their employees. Shoot, the game was in Beta, there were just a few bugs to work out, the server farms were going online - the game was pretty much READY - and the inside word was that they were weeks (about two months) from going live. Quite sad what became of it.

  6. Stargate MMO - Hah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Forget that old plagaristic Stargate MMO lame-ass-ity - Fringeworthy MMO FTW!!!

    It's coming bi'ches!!

    Seriously though a free MMO where Gates lead to new persistent server worlds - where user content servers are allowed - and could even contain parallel universes or lead back/forward in time - THAT is the future WoW Killer!

    (and hardcore role-players could opt-in to allowing characters to permanently die - and worlds permanently change - based on real player actions)

    I say - Make it So!

  7. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The cut network cords were simply where the server racks were removed. They weren't actually cut, just pulled out of punch down blocks. The reason for the apparent gutting was because the landlord was going to lock the company out of the building, so Dark Comet was trying to save as many assets before that happened. There wasn't enough space for all the computers, so the hard drives were taken to prevent the data from being misused by whomever the landlord brought in to sell off the equipment. Everything was done with permission from the receiver, and event when the cops were called was resolved in favor of the people with the equipment because it wasn't company property. There is a general lack of correct information about what happened with Cheyenne and Dark Comet, but overall the intentions were to save the games and not destroy them. The primary reason Dark Comet is giving back the assets is they ran out of money.