Old Ideas, New Blood
Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 7, 2012
I will reluctantly admit that I’m as much a sucker for licenses as anybody else. While I probably would have contributed to the Kickstarter anyway, I got a little more glee contributing to “Wasteland 2” than the same game by any other name. I’m more inclined to buy a game that is named after a beloved franchise than otherwise. I probably would have played Ultima Underworld even if it wasn’t called “Ultima,” but I completely ignored Arx Fatalis when it was first released, which was created as a spiritual successor to the Ultima Underworld series.
So I may be a little hypocritical when I say this, but screw licenses.
I saw an article in Kotaku last week about a guy who created some new bike concepts for a Jet Moto remake. If anybody is working on a new / remake Jet Moto, I’ve not heard about it. I may have been on the original team to develop it once upon a time, but now I’m “just some guy” as far as any of that is concerned. So my thought is, “Dang it, forget Jet Moto – getting the license would be too much of a pain. You should just get together with some like-minded folks and make a totally new game inspired by Jet Moto. That ought to be good enough.”
I feel the same way about Legend of Grimrock. I’m just as happy that it is its own game, and not carrying around any of the old baggage from one of the games that inspired it. They were able to borrow what they wanted to use, and discard the rest. As a result, Grimrock may not overshadow its predecessors, but I think it can at least stand proudly equal with those classics.
What licenses bring to the table is marketing. Wasteland isn’t a multi-million dollar franchise or anything, but a Wasteland 2 still brings a number of fans and press to the table that “A Generic Post-Apocalyptic RPG” would not. Again, I would have bought Arx Fatalis on the day it was released if it had been named “Ultima Underworld III.” With so many games (and bad games) out there, players will gravitate towards those that they already have a familiarity with and feel they can have some measure of trust. Without the name, there’s very little to draw attention to a game and make it stand out from the flood of competition.
That’s a big deal. Probably too big of a deal for anybody to ignore. But hey, I’m dreaming here, so I might as well dream big. I wish that we could get away from the licenses, from the sequels, and instead somehow – magically, I guess – pay more attention to new properties, especially those that are inspired by classics and manage to recapture that feel, but are still their own game. Borrow the essence, but create an experience that is refreshingly new but still resonates with some familiar echoes.
Yeah, I know. That describes a great number of indie games already. Many are perhaps too slavishly following the footsteps of their predecessors, and most aren’t nearly of the quality of the classics that inspired them.
So what am I really saying? I guess I’m saying that I would love, LOVE, to see what’s been happening with Legend of Grimrock repeated for many other classic games. To heck with the licenses. We’ve got some great games in development right now that are inspired by the old classics, and I’d love to see them get the kind of attention they deserve without having to have a licensed property to hitch onto for attention. I know this is swimming upstream against very human nature, so there may not be much that can be done about it, especially when there are legal implications that come with citing your inspirations with too much detail. But I hope to see this story repeated. A lot.
Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read
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NWegener said,
I am really conflicted on the topic.
On one Hand I always feel down when a talented team makes a remake of an old game, especially if that gets taken down by the Copyright-Holders. Using original Graphics and a different title would have made just as good if not better a Game without all the Legal issues. But I guess making a fanwork gives those people more Motivation then working on an original IP and I found Motivation to be an incredibly scarce Ressource in my own struggle.
On the Other Hand we have all those Freeware Games that rip Graphics or even Engines from Games and do something new with it. I mean, look at what Romhackers can make out of the old Super Mario World for the SNES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYbJWmmxBTo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-LtPXxWLsk
It is almost a different Game.
Or the awesome Distorted Travesty which takes Graphics from other Games and makes a different Action-Platformer out of it. Yes those are different Beasts but they do go in the same Direction, and it is a lot easier to make a great Game that way.
Like I said I’m conflicted about that and I’m just as easily influenced by Licenses as everybody else :).
Felix Pleșoianu said,
I dream of the day when a free culture franchise becomes as big as Star Wars or Harry Potter, so that people can create new stuff based on it without fear of lawsuit while still enjoying the advantages of working with a big name. But as they say, you can’t create a classic work on purpose…
BBrenesal said,
The legal issues are the real problem for at least some indies who want to look into older games. The story of Stardock’s attempt to remake MoM and their fun with Ubisoft’s legal department is so well known I won’t even repeat it, but others have faced similar issues with Darklands, Covert Action, etc. The sad thing is that these games will never be remade if the title holders insist on draconian conditions–but them’s the breaks.
Rampant Coyote said,
Yeah, there’s often a problem that small studios undervalue their I.P., while publishers over-value it. (But they are really, really happy to acquire it from the studios for what the studios think it’s worth). But while I am thrilled to see some old classics get modern revisits, I think sometimes the obnoxiousness of the I.P. holders may work to our advantage. We need new blood, new I.P. (not that there’s any shortage of that).
Case in point – or at least my biggest – as much as I loved the Ultima series, and wouldn’t mind a revisit to Britania in a new single-player game, I think what I’d love even more is a return to a game world of the style, flavor, and approach of Ultima 6/7 in a well-written series. Familiar approach, but an all-new (but equally compelling) world.
BBrenesal said,
Agreed. I just think many developers are frankly scared off from doing anything even remotely like, say, Ultima 6 or 7, Darklands, etc, if the Games Industry’s big legal guns put down so many conditions for sequels. I know from at least one developer that they’re concerned the lawyers are looking for games that can be traced back to something-like-X. It combines a fear of having to defend against expensive legal firms, plus defending their innocence of all knowledge of a previous game, in front of a judge who probably has little understanding of what the field is like.
FrankieD said,
Given the size of the ultima series i can see why youd want a fresher approach in a similar setting…. but how many other series have been explored so completely already?
For me, i buy into a series because i want to see a continuation of the story, what happens after my epic struggle against xxxxx.
Anyone here remember Bioforge? now that was a game that deserved a sequel.