A New Entry in the “Elite” Genre: Elite?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 6, 2012

Dave Braben is kickstarting a new Elite game, entitled Elite: Dangerous.

The original Elite was not available on my Commodore 64 for a long time, so I never ended up playing it until it was old, old news. However, when Frontier: Elite II came out, I was a hardcore addict.  For two or three months, I didn’t play computer games so much as I played Frontier. My neighbor was also hooked, and we’d swap information and trade routes. The game was “sandbox” writ large. I did about everything I could figure out to do in that game. I tried (successfully) to make money scooping fuel from a gas giant. I had a bad hyperdrive throw me into the far-flung reaches of the galaxy, and tried (unsuccessfully) to make my way back to civilized space before my ship’s engines gave out entirely for lack of maintenance. I battled pirates (and some of the worst, most annoyingly suicidal AI ever) to achieve an “Elite” rating. I became a pirate myself at one point. I owned every ship in the game (and there were dozens).

I was super-excited about “Frontier: First Encounters,” the sequel a couple of years later, but it was a horrendous, buggy mess that I didn’t have fun playing and never played for long.

Later, I played many of its spiritual descendents – and enjoyed some of them quite a bit. Wing Commander: Privateer was a favorite, though far too short and limited by comparison (but at least the combat sucked a lot less). The “X” series was a lot of fun, and pretty dang amazing in its scope. I played Freelancer through to completion twice, plus some heavily modded games.  And I’ve played a bit of several open source space mercenary sims, and though I haven’t played much of ’em, Star Wraith’s Evochron Mercenary and other games are pretty dang impressive indie titles. The list goes on, with many games (primarily indie) that I haven’t played.

And then there’s the weird cult phenomenon that is Eve Online.

So I guess this brings me to the big question: Is there room in the “Elite” space-mercenary genre for a literal Elite sequel?

I’ve frequently considered revisiting the whole space-sim genre as a developer. But each time I do, I look at how the genre has progressed since the glory days of Wing Commander, Freespace, Tie Fighter, Frontier, and the like… and I think, “Holy crap. What could I possibly add to the genre today, as a largely lone-wolf indie?”  Guys like Star Wraith are already doing that. And EgoSoft, 3000 AD, and others are really kicking some serious butt on the whole sci-fi sandbox thing. I’m sure if I were to really dwell on it, I’d come up with something (like the recent awesome indie space-combat roguelike FTL did), but right now it feels like anything I’d do would be really be more of a “me, too” effort. And I’ve got very strong feelings about that. I had some interesting ideas I explored with Void War, but that’s done.

And that’s what I’m wondering about the proposal for Elite: Dangerous, now, too. I mean, he’s looking for about $2 million in funding (exchanging British pounds to U.S. dollars) for… what? The fact that it’s created by the guy who started it all? That’s nice, but… I’m still not seeing the vision. I’m not sure what Braben really wants to bring to the genre in 2014 that’s not already being served by these other games and developers.  I mean, a more realistic universe – as existed in the earlier games – does make an interesting variation, but based on the pitch, that’s all I’m really seeing.

Is that enough? Is there room in the “Elite” genre for another Elite? Or have we already moved way past that by now?

 

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