Keeping Space Combat Alive

[robwright]

It's been eight years since the last X-Wing game, and a decade since the last Wing Commander. What happened? We look at why major developers are no longer making space combat games, and what the mod community is doing to keep the genre alive.

 

[predaking]

i'm confused as to the inclusion of wing commander for xbox 360 in the slideshow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander_Arena

Relation to previous Wing Commander games

Arena's gameplay differs from previous Wing Commander installments. Rather than a first person perspective used throughout the series Arena will be played from a top down perspective on a 2D plane with the third axis reserved for special maneuvers.

While some fans have been vocal about the departure from previous games the developers of Arena have designed the game with long time Wing Commander fans in mind. The producer, Sean Penney, is himself a long time fan of the franchise. [3] and that early in the development, he had tried to seek input from members of the original Wing Commander development team, such as Chris Roberts. [4]

*edit

and while i do miss the genre not having a good joystick or place to put the joystic imo makes these games less fun.

keyboard and mouse never did it for me with space sims.

 

[tmeacham]

In the article I mentioned that while a new Wing Commander game is coming out, it is not the new Wing Commander game we want. I thought the screenshots would further support that point.

 

[gm0n3y]

You guys forgot to mention Wing Commander Prophecy (featuring the stellar (joke) acting of Mark Hamill). That game was pretty good. Looking on Wikipedia, there was also Wing Commander: Secret Ops.

I wholeheartedly agree that there are not enough good space sims out there. When Freelancer came out I thought it might be the one, but the game ended up being pretty bland. The game that I would really like to see is another Wing Commander: Privateer game. The first one was definitely my favorite space sim of all time.

 

[Luscious]

Not sure if this deserves mention, but I did get a while ago a game called Nexus - The Jupiter Incident.

I haven't had much of a chance to play it yet so I won't say whether it is good or not.

That BSG BtRL looks really good. I'm a big fan of the series, so I definitely hope the full game release comes soon.

 

[Remonster]

Space Cowboy Online

not perfect, but something.

 

[cmrayer]

X, X2, X3

Or am i mistaken?

 

[cmrayer]

X, X2, X3

Or am I mistaken?

 

[rfoote]

cmrayer-

I agree!!!! X2, X3 by Egosoft are great games. I am in my eighth or nineth game at present. Each game is somewhat different, Space Combat is alive and well!!!

Wish there was more though!

rfoote

 

[rfoote]

cmrayer-

I agree!!!! X2, X3 by Egosoft are great games. I am in my eighth or nineth game at present. Each game is somewhat different, Space Combat is alive and well!!!

Wish there was more though!

rfoote

 

[The_Abyss]

X, X2, X3

Or am i mistaken?

An absolutely criminal oversight, especially considering Toms has been using the X3 Reunion benchmark for well over a year when testing it's hardware.

 

[tmeacham]

I'm well aware of the X series.

The article isn't a bullet list of great space combat games, it's a look at why the big franchises aren't being published anymore.

Are the X games great? Sure.

Have they sold well enough to get the bigger publishers to look for more space combat games? No.

Just because "a" space combat game comes out and "some" people buy it does not mean the genre is alive and well. It's a niche market and I want a return to the boomtown days.

Having said that, please continue to list the great space games that have come out recently (past 5 years?) that you guys love. I'm certain there are many I've never heard of.

 

[kingius]

It's funny that this article should come up on here as I just started to code a remake of Elite in Flash recently. My aim is to recreate the spirit of the Elite universe but in 2D, combining the trading and missions with a parallax scrolling engine that is accessible to anyone that has the flash player running in the browser. You can see how far I have got with the flight engine here if you are interested...
http://www.spectresoftware.com/db/oae/public/fs.aspx

 

[llama_man]

I'm not convinced "boomtown" is what I want though. The quality of this "niche" market has actually been pretty good - I can't remember playing a really bad space combat for a long time. If only the same could be said for FPS and RTS, where a large proportion of releases should have been drowned at birth.

The open-ended nature of the Elite-style games (X series being the prime example) means these games have a low-turnover rate compared to, say, an FPS where many players will abandon it after completing the games. As such, there is less demand for new games every few months. I wouldn't buy an X game every 3 months because they'd never get played. I've had X3 for over a year now and there's still some things I haven't done - so I'm a long way from abandoning my empire and starting on a new game - even if there was a decent competitor on the market.

 

[Pehrs]

Sadly space sims seems to be a dying breed... But some survive thanks to the communities. The freespace 2 project is very nice and has been a good distraction during long evenings.

I just think it's a shame Allegiance wasn't mentioned. Originally a Microsoft project that was abandoned and handed over to the community, and in my opinion the best space sim around.

It can be found at http://www.freeallegiance.org/ , free to download and play.

PS. I am a developer of Allegiance, so I am partial. D.S.

 

[Aaron McKenna]

Space sims are a bit like flight sims, really - it's a niche genre. But as has been alluded to here, a niche genre in which pretty much 100% of the titles are of a very high quality. They have to be, in order to corner any of the niche market whatsoever... From games like X3 through Eve: Online (one might argue...), the genre is alive and well, continuing under the surface. Sure there isn't a hit every six months, but this just gives gamers more of a chance to digest the big games that these space sims tend to be.

We can all dream and hope for a better tomorrow, but right now I think the space sim genre is quite healthy, all things taken into consideration.

 

[andybird123]

From games like X3 through Eve: Online (one might argue...), the genre is alive and well, continuing under the surface.

But they aren't combat sims in the vein of the greats like Wing Commander and X-Wing, they're much more about trading than combat... I don't know about anyone else but I want to play at being a fighter pilot, not a garbage hauler.

Dark Star One was ok...ish, but considering the polish of something like freelancer it was a massive let down, and I'm not holding out much hope for Spaceforce: Rogue Universe either.

As the article says, what we really need is a Tie Fighter 2

 

[Crispy]

Well, the bulk of the space enthusiast play eve online, its the only space game ive ever played that makes u feel like ur in space, me and my corporation travel thru a giant universe trying to pirate the over 30000 active players on the 1 server, and with over 200000 suscribers its not hard to find. It takes a month to learn the game before your not a nub anymore. This is not a simple game, it is for true enthusiast and people with a little time on their hands. Be warned, you will lose your loved ones playing this game ; )

 

[andybird123]

Well, the bulk of the space enthusiast play eve online, its the only space game ive ever played that makes u feel like ur in space, me and my corporation travel thru a giant universe trying to pirate the over 30000 active players on the 1 server, and with over 2000000 suscribers its not hard to find. It takes a month to learn the game before your not a nub anymore. This is not a simple game, it is for true enthusiast and people with a little time on their hands. Be warned, you will lose your loved ones playing this game ; )

LMAO, the only numbers I can find anywhere list EVE hitting one hundred thousand subscribers, that's somewhat far off being 2 million, and if one hundred thousand is "the bulk" of space combat enthusiasts then I can see why no one is making space combat games anymore... not that eve IS a space combat game anyway, clicking "gun on" and then waiting 5 mins for a server to calculate the result of combat is not my idea of fun.

Calling EVE a space combat sim is like calling Chess a first person shooter.

 

[Crispy]

sorry, added an extra 0, edited it. But eve is about choice, you can either trade, industrialize, mine or pirate, sounds like you started out industrial, i wouldnt touch that with a 10 foot pole. There are more factors to combat than just clicking a gun, unless your a nub, its all about strategy, quick reflexes, good piloting skill and being aware of your surroundings, the first month is slow, but if u find a good group of guys to fly with, the adrenaline rush is unmatched by anything outside of real life

 

[andybird123]

sorry, added an extra 0, edited it. But eve is about choice, you can either trade, industrialize, mine or pirate, sounds like you started out industrial, i wouldnt touch that with a 10 foot pole. There are more factors to combat than just clicking a gun, unless your a nub, its all about strategy, quick reflexes, good piloting skill and being aware of your surroundings, the first month is slow, but if u find a good group of guys to fly with, the adrenaline rush is unmatched by anything outside of real life

nope, I started out pure combat... the combat missions suck arse and are purely a case of training the skills to use the right equipment.
I played for around 6 months... when I say "played" I mean skilled up, I had a raven with a full set of tech 2 cruises and decent shields blah blah etc.

Combat flight sims are about feeling the joystick (fnar) in your hands and playing with skill... EVE is about having more money and time in the game to be able to use better equipment.

Seriously, if you get an adrenaline rush from EVE then you really need to get out more. From my experience, you really have to have no life and nothing better to do to get any enjoyment out of EVE, driving my mum's nissan micra is more fun, and a fairly good analogy for most of the ships in EVE.

How is EVE about having quick reflexes? Everything takes 3 years to happen. Oh look at that, I clicked shield recharge... then I clicked all my missiles to "on"... oh everything is dead... *YAWN*

now I'll spend 2 hours collecting pitiful loot, just to do it all over again, oh what a surprise, one of the same 4 missions over and over again...

 

[Sinto]

I'm surprised Jumpgate wasn't mentioned. It's kind of alone in the MMO space-sim genre, but it's a good example of how commercially difficult it is for games like this to survive. In fact it is only alive today because of one man's refusal to let it shut down. But it maintains a loyal following, and the developer has made several comments recently about some significant changes in the works, including a long overdue graphics update. So there is some life in the genre outside the open-source community.

 

[benjamin]

I'd love to dig into a space sim of the quality of the old Colony Wars series, but I've just not found anything. Last one I played was B5: IFH, whose control scheme was so appallingly complicated, I gave up. Twice.

 

[stefx]

I have been a strong fan of the space sim genre. Among my favorite all-time games are X-Wing alliance, Tie Fighter, Freespace 2... I have been hoping to see a modern title with a similar game play.

I tried X3 but somehow that didn't click. I gave Free Allegiance a try, but I had to wait weeks before I could enter one of their "classes". During that time I dowloaded Eve and gave it a try.

Since I tried Eve (Feb 07), I have played no other game. I'm really having fun in this game. It isn't a fast-paced simulator (like said above)... in terms of speed I think it is closer to Starfleet Command III.

I would like it if there was a mod of Eve engine in which the camera could be placed from the cockpit's point of view, and if the ship could take directional commands for manoeuvring (I would leave the targetting and firing up to the current commans).

If keeping the same engine (without joystick input and cockpit point of view) it would be interesting to keep the engine as is, but make a shard of Eve with Star Trek ships

 

[Aaron McKenna]

Well, I guess everyone is right in pointing out that there are sub-genres within the space-sim genre. Personally I'd love to see X-Wing vs Tie Fighter 2 and I-War 3 in the combat end.