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David Braben Kickstarts an Elite Reboot
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC report that David Braben has launched a Kickstarter for a remake of Elite, the classic space trading game that he co-wrote in the 1980s. It has already received £122,000 in less than a day."
Look, I know the guy did the original and kudos to him for it (I was a huge fan myself of the C64 version, back in the day). But with modern games like X3 and even EVE Online, the genre has come a LONG way since the early 80's. It's not going to be enough just to re-skin the original. A modern project like that is a HUGE undertaking. I just hope this guy understands that going in. I would hate to see a remake that couldn't even live up to the many successors it inspired.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Without Ian Bell either on the team nor getting credit, count me as disinterested.
Games are a lot cheaper if you don't hire Hollywood actors to record cut-scene dialogue that I just skip anyway.
Ask yourself why, with 20 years and a 235-strong development staff, he can't either fund this himself, or get a publisher to do so.
A developer of Braben's esteem could get publisher funding (as they have done for many other games), but he probably wants to retain creative freedom, which he can do with KS. When you have a publisher funding your project, they call the shots. If they want you to add more blood, explosions, zombies or whatever they think they'd like - it's their call and the studio must do what they're told. If they want it shipping 6 months before it's ready - it's their call. You want to add an innovative, but potentially risky feature? If the publisher isn't convinced, forget it! With KS, I'd say there's much more chance of Frontier shipping a quality game that pushes the boundaries, and won't be ruined by the type of dumbing down that dominates so much of the current crop of publisher-funded games.
Sent from my Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2).