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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."

6 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 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".

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

      --
      This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
  2. 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.

  3. 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.