
Elite video game reboot hits funding target - SeanDav
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20897768
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macavity23
The sound effects in the video clip attached to that article make the hairs on
the back of my neck stand up!

The level of coding chops in the original game is hard to comprehend by modern
standards. It had a (wireframe) 3d engine, eight galaxies each with hundreds
of worlds, a dozen or so ship types and lots of different equipment and
engines - and an awesome surprise endgame where after scores of hours trading
and battling pirates, suddenly out of nowhere (with no warning in the early
game or manual) the galactic navy appeared and sent you on a series of
missions.

The RAM footprint of this game? 22KB. KILOBYTES. All written in machine code:
that's even lower-level than assembler! Something to think about next time
you're tempted to brag about your coding l33tness :-)

I'm enormously glad that this game has hit its target, and very, very excited
that David B will have the opportunity to make the game he wants without a
publisher exerting pressure on him (which was what ruined Elite II).

This game and Obsidian's Project Eternity (also on KS) are being eagerly
watched by many people. If they succeed, this will be a massive turning point
in the games industry, just as the original Elite was.

~~~
SeanDav
In ye olde days, machine language and assembler/assembly language were often
referred to as the same thing although of course they are different. Assembly
language is translated to machine language by the assembler. I believe (but
may be wrong) that Elite was written in assembly language as one would have to
be a masochist to write directly in machine language.

~~~
waqf
The Elite source code can be downloaded at Ian Bell (the other original
author)'s site, <http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/archive/index.htm>. It
is indeed written in assembly language (using the BBC BASIC assembler).

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hcarvalhoalves
I really hope they succeed, but sadly, I'm seeing all the typical signals of
games that fail to launch, due to gigantic scope and feature creep. When you
focus so much on technology and your answers about the game are all "we plan
to support that", that's a bad signal.

You start a game with rock solid game design - throwing procedural generation,
multiplayer code, and other cool features together gives you a tech demo, not
a game. The smallest changes in game mechanics deeply affect things like
networking code. Mix this with a crowdfunded project (where everyone who
pledged is a stakeholder and wants a different thing) that's a recipe for
disaster.

~~~
chris_j
I think it's been quite encouraging that, while they are talking about a whole
load of features that they'd like to include in the future, they're being
pretty clear about the things that they won't support in the first release
(landing on planets and so on) and that the pledgers will only influence the
game, rather than dictate that any feature must be done a particular way.

The things that I worry about are things that were not a part of previous
Elite games like networking, the multiplayer element and, above all else,
making the economics and politics work. If other massively multiplayer games
are anything to go by, a few large alliances will figure out how to game the
rules so as to be able to dominate the game and I bet that the developers will
always be playing catch up to that.

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zandor
Make sure to check out this great post mortem of Elite from GDC 2011:

<http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014628/Classic-Game-Postmortem>

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WhaleBiologist
Geez, it's been almost a decade since the last good space sim, Freelancer.

I wonder why no one has made a mainstream space sim game since (X3 is a
notable exception, though the learning curve is quite steep). Between this and
Star Citizen, there seems to be legions of space nerds like myself, ready to
throw money at even the possibility of a good game.

~~~
outworlder
There you go: 'legions of space nerds' is probably still a fraction of the
total market - and the studios are not aiming for that.

That should not prevent smaller operations from succeeding. The 'space' theme
is still used (see SPAZ, FTL even if they are indies).

I think that the 'simulation' genre is not as popular as before, flight
simulators (combat or otherwise) have become rarer.

~~~
talmand
Actually this is a common problem caused by the large publishers. They don't
seem to do much market research other than every once in a while they throw a
bunch of small budget stuff out there and whatever genre sells decently gets
spammed to hell and back. The other genres are essentially ignored until the
selling genre is played out. Then we get the small projects again to repeat
the process.

It's an old argument: publishers say "we won't make that game because it won't
sell" and the market says "we can't buy that game because you won't make it".

But it's understandable, most of these companies have to show quarterly
profits so they are adverse to risk. Creating a game that will cost millions
of dollars and years to make for a genre that has stagnated, for whatever
reason, is a huge risk.

The small developers are the key to filling this niche. Things like the recent
indie resurgence and Kickstarter have made this more evident. The problem is
often the large publishers buy these small developers and then proceed to
destroy what made them special.

A few space sims, so to speak since SPAZ and FTL aren't quite the same, are
out now and there are a few with big names attached in development by
independents. If these have decent returns, on small developer terms at least,
then I expect the large publishers to follow along spamming the genre.

But only if they can figure out how to get them to be fun on consoles. Which
is another side of the problem of stagnating genres but that's a different
discussion.

~~~
teamonkey
> They don't seem to do much market research other than every once in a while
> they throw a bunch of small budget stuff out there and whatever genre sells
> decently gets spammed to hell and back.

Actually they do a massive amount of market research. It's not that they're
ignorant of what the market wants, it's that the type of game _you_ want is
unprofitably niche.

By "unprofitable" I mean it's a matter of where to invest their money. It's
not that niche titles would be unprofitable, it's that other options will
always have a better risk-reward balance.

~~~
talmand
If they do massive amounts of market research then I would say the response to
Kickstarter projects and the indie titles shows that they suck at it. It may
be a niche game that I want to play but if there's enough buzz out there for a
game in that genre then there's profit to be made if one can be bothered to
make a game that meets what the market wants.

The rest of your statement seems to support what I was saying about their
needs of showing quarterly profits which prevents risky projects.

There's nothing stopping them from going into niche markets if they wanted,
just budget accordingly. There is money to be made in the long tail but the
large publishers are just unable to see it that way. But the thing is, some of
the "niche" markets are potentially huge but they'll never know because they'd
rather push out the upteenth version of sports games and military shooters. A
number of genres are stagnating right now not because no one wants to play
them but because no one is making them.

~~~
teamonkey
No publisher is looking at Elite: Dangerous (or pretty much any other game
kickstarter) and wishing that they'd have funded it first. Even Frontier
couldn't justify funding it by normal means and they own the IP.

The game will probably cost at least $5M to make. The kickstarter just scraped
$1.25M by calling on the core market. The game still needs to sell at least
another 250k at full retail price to break even, and that's after many of the
core audience have already bought it through kickstarter. Under perfect
conditions, that level of sales on PC alone would already put in in risky
territory.

As for indies, well yes, publishers already fund those as part of their
portfolios. The ones that look like they're going to break even, at least.

~~~
talmand
I think I stated that the large publishers are not wishing to fund such titles
and that I think they do so for the wrong reasons. It's just my opinion and I
don't see how your statement is much different than what I've been saying.

The potential problems you describe sound like budget and project scale
problems to me, not that the genre couldn't make money. If one wishes to spend
5 million plus on a game that only maybe 250k will actually pay for then you
are destined for failure. I don't believe I stated otherwise.

If you have a large publisher funding your project, then you aren't an indie
title. Plus I pointed out that they do these small projects from time to time
to see if there's a chance a genre will be popular again for them to spam the
crap out of. I didn't say that these projects were intended to make money.

~~~
teamonkey
> If one wishes to spend 5 million plus on a game that only maybe 250k will
> actually pay for then you are destined for failure.

Correct. But given that large, complex software projects take time and
manpower to create, there is a subset of games and genres that simply cannot
be developed and hope to break even.

It's not just the publishers 'at fault'. Developers don't want to downsize or
go bankrupt, therefore they won't tend to develop games that won't let them
pay wages in future.

There are alternative funding methods, but before kickstarter it was mostly
arts grants and the like. Tale of Tales have developed several small art games
on art grants, IIRC.

> If you have a large publisher funding your project, then you aren't an indie
> title.

No, not at all. ThatGameCompany are an indie company but Journey was
bankrolled by Sony. Does that mean that it's not an indie title? Fez was
created by Polytron, published by Trapdoor and distributed by Microsoft. I
wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft at least partially funded the XBLA version
of Minecraft. DoubleFine's Brutal Legend was paid for by Activision, then
dropped and picked up by EA (a big court case ensued). As I mentioned above,
Tale of Tales have developed games using government money. The list goes on
and on, because it's a very common way of working.

~~~
talmand
I'm not saying that every possible genre out there can be developed for and
make money. I'm saying that there are genres out there that can make money
that the big publishers are ignoring because it doesn't fit within their no
risk taking mindset. I don't think we're necessarily disagreeing with each
other here.

If Journey was bankrolled by Sony, then no, it is not an indie title. But then
"indie title" can mean different things to different people. My definition is
the thought that a major publisher was not directly involved in the
development of the title. Fez is an indie title despite being "distributed" by
Microsoft; I wouldn't give Microsoft much credit as a distributor just because
it was on XBLA. Minecraft is clearly an indie title whether Microsoft
partially funded the port for their system or not because that was not the
original game. There could be debate whether the XBox version is an indie
title at that point though. Brutal Legend is not an indie title if funded by
first Activision and then EA.

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guard-of-terra
That's interesting, but what about a nice turn-based (or otherwise think-
bound) strategy or at least an RPG?

It seems to me that all the modern gaming is about running around with guns.
Boring and no food for thoughts. I've switched to Roguelikes, but still mourn
for a good strategy.

~~~
qznc
What do you consider a good (old) strategy game?

Imho single-player strategy is usually just a puzzle game.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Master of Magic. Alpha Centauri. Civilization & Colonization. Master of Orion.
In that order.

What makes MoM special? It's PvE. It's so much more replayable than anything
else. What makes Alpha Centauri special? There are no things about Alpha
Centauri that aren't special.

Also, to the lesser extent, Heroes of Might and Magic series. Hex grid
wargames (Battle Isle, Fantasy General, Battle for Wesnoth) are nice too but,
having no economy, aren't so interesting.

I don't know what do you mean by puzzle games and why is that a bad thing.

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Yuioup
Here's David Braben talking about the Raspberry Pi at the BBC:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13292450>

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moneypenny
_stunned_

 _may have to eat socks_ (See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4748382>)

~~~
dexter313
I was always wondering how do you do that in real life?

~~~
anigbrowl
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Herzog_Eats_His_Shoe>

