Space Games That FAILED: The Stories Behind Their Downfall
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- Опубліковано 25 чер 2024
- Over the years, numerous space games have come and gone, many of them were highly respected. Here's a look at a few of them along with the events that led to their downfall.
0:00 Intro
0:49 Kerbal Space Program 2
6:38 Jumpgate Evolution
8:14 Star Wars Galaxies
11:16 Earth & Beyond
13:56 Black Prophecy
Shadowzone on KSP2 - • "Doomed from the start...
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It always felt like Star Wars: Galaxies had a controlled demolition so that people would move over to The Old Republic
They pretty much said as much. Considering SWToR was aiming for WoW player numbers, but got barely more than peak SWG player numbers, I assume that was the nail in the coffin for SWG.
@@Anachroschism I quit playing SWTOR when it went free to play.. THe game just went massively downhill from there for me.
Yeah it did not fail, it was well beloved until termination. Somehow EA thought we play Galaxies for the Star Wars and would just go to SWTOR but we actually played it for everything else and the Star Wars flavour was just a bonus.
@@ZethisVA I really loved SWG before the "Combat Upgrade", that eliminated the skill trees in favor of classes. It lost a major part of what made it special and unique.
@seanlelanddunn For me it was the NGE that ruined it.
Anyone remember Fractured Space? Was a cool game that never really took off. Went dead and is now retired from the Steam Store
Yep, I remember. My steam avatar is still that dog with the bubble helmet, "Boo."
It's my most played game on Steam.
Loved the game. Wish it was popular enough to stay alive.
You can still play it thanks to a community patch, but its not the same.
I loved Fractured Space, bought the Vanguard veteran pack and a new keyboard with n-key rollover to be able to move in all axes at the same time. It was fantastic, my favourite multiplayer game of all time. I was really looking forward to completing my ship collection (of all the classics at least). There was so much variety in the ships, I had my favourites but loved trying my hand at the more difficult ones. It really meant something if you could pull your weight in a Destroyer, Displacer, Infiltrator, Ranger, Raider, Disruptor, or even Gladiator. What I was most looking forward to was unlocking the Raven, but it shut down first.
Every match was a story, with the fantastically immersive crew lines as a running commentary. The game design was a stroke of genius. Look at the three starter ships, for example: each one had a different way to main aiming easier on new players. The Pioneer had splash damage, so you didn't need to hit your target directly. The Venturer had hitscan lasers, so all you had to grapple with was the turret tracking speed. And the Sentinel had smartguns, with their semi-homing projectiles. All of these starter ships had complete coverage as well: only the more advanced ships had limited firing arcs.
Sadly, when the game hit beta, they sacrificed the one thing I liked most about it: the weighty feel of the ships. In an attempt to gain a wider audience, they increased the speed of every ship. It made me less interested, and didn't seem to bring in any significant newcomers. Then they started doing more changes in the same vein, apparently going for the DotA-clone audience. Specifically the addition of NPC ships flying from one end of the map to another: lifted directly from typical DotA games. It's a real shame that all the work behind it has been discarded forever. What's more, the next best substitute met the same fate: Dreadnought only lasted a year or two longer.
@@foodomanthemagnificent2650 Boo was the dog of the UA-camr the Mighty Jingles. He was friends with one of the devs IIRC and was put in the game. Sadly Boo passed a few years ago.
Limit Theory really deserves an honourable mention.
+1
Felt bad for the guy developing it.
This came to mind also, I was all over this back in the day
Fractured Space :( Miss that game
Can still play it. There are unofficial servers now, but playerbase is understandably small
ooohhh yeah i miss that game very much.
That was a brilliant game.
Man, I feel you. A spaceship MOBA that the world needs. I got only 30 hours in it but it was such a blast.
I played Earth & Beyond as a Jenquai Explorer. It was my first MMO. Played from about release until the servers shut down. One of the memories from it is when the Christmas event didn't work as intended so one of the devs had to manually control the ship for a time.
I have fond memories of finding one of the 5-10 crafters on the server capable of building the top tier high quality weapons for my class. Was a pain coordinating, but really satisfying connecting to a specialized crafter
Wow I had forgotten about Earth and Beyond. I played it for a bit back in the day but never really got into it (same with Black Prophecy)
Earth & Beyond can still be played today. Look up enb emulator. Might also show up in search results as Net-7.
Same! Loved that game. I remember making the wormholes for friends. Such a great game!
I remember making 3 different characters, each a pure class most related to its race: Jenquai Explorer, Terran Trader and Progen Warrior.
The game had some pretty interesting ideas for its time, though it fell short of what it could have achieved given the scope of the game.
There was just something special about many games and MMOs in the early 2000s era that's hard to emulate, not that many devs/publishers these days seem at all eager to try...
The problem with the talentless, empty suits that destroyed KSP is that they will learn nothing, blame others and continue to wreak havok in future
Owl
And people wonder why i boycott Take-Two. They destroy lives, and ruin everything they touch.
If they'd just left Star Theory alone, things might have taken a bit longer, but the game would have turned out fine. Granted, i still wouldn't have bought it, because Take-Two... but still.. Instead, they destroy Star Theory, and now they're shutting down the studio they destroyed Star Theory with, ruining who knows how many lives in the process.. on top of ruining KSP.. Shit's unbelievable.
I had a soft spot for Limit Theory, especially since the sole developer Josh was such a talented guy who genuinely wanted to make his dream game. Ultimately he became mentally burned out after 8 years of ever increasing engine complexity, but he did release the source code so others could pick up the torch. Hope he at least found a place for his talents as he dropped out out of university to make the game.
Many people forget, but it says a lot that LT was contemporaneous with both ED and Star Citizen’s original Kickstarters, yet I never felt the slightest shred of ill will towards the dev after he closed up shop since it was the right thing to do.
Yep watched that development closely too and its a real shame because there was some beauty in there. Ant, maybe include this in a future episode.
ohhh... black prophecy, that brings up some memories. I actually played it for a time.
Same, i liked it. Looked amazing.
never got into BP, but I played NC2 (Neocron 2) a lot back then (and still today on occasion)
Such a huge disappointment that one, followed developement, looked so good, got hands on and it was a horrible mess.
I miss Hellion and what it could have been.
I am surprised he didn't mention Hellion. That game has SO MUCH potential...
Oh yeah. Hellion! That's a case where i'm sad i missed out and glad at the same time, because of the abandonment...
They ran of money, and the game was way too ambitious for the unity engine. Too bad, wad a fun take on a Space Sim.
On a side note if you own the game you can still play it in single player. Also there was a modding community that was trying to resurrect it.
The Holocron Grind changes and the WoWification of Star Wars Galaxy was such a kick in the Jawas.
I miss SWG, Even after the NGE. There still hasn't been any game like it. If it was spooled up again exactly how it was in 2011 I'd pick it up in an instant, I'd even pay a sub 😁
Emulators have the game in different states. Even if it's a gray area since they're rogue servers, you have options to play Pre-NGE or NGE versions of the game, some even with JTL for space content. But yes, the way SOE handled it was messy. I play Legends because it feels better than SWTOR when I was level-locked in order to get into the second chapter for the Imp Spy story. I already beat KOTOR 1 and 2, so I don't feel like I'm missing too much by going back to SWG Legends for a while lol.
@@InquisitorEuro Hasn't it? It's called Star Wars Galaxies Restoration. I'm playing it.
@@Cramblit It's hanging on by its teeth, Reliant on donations.
@@InquisitorEuro Ah I see.
I am surprised that when people talk about KSP2, they very rarely mention the lies, the misinformation, the deflecting and the bullsh1tt1ng. Yes, there were circumstances that made development a lot harder and that weren't fault of the devs themselves at all, but the lies - that's on the devs, and ONLY on the devs.
KSP2 was announced in late autumn of 2019, seemingly out of nowhere. It was clearly said, that the work on KSP2 just started. The only thing finished at that time was animation made in Unreal engine, the cute little teaser that sadly had nothing to do with the game development itself. It was just a promo.
KSP2 itself was in pre-alpha state, barely a tech demo, and from the few peeks at developers' monitors, you can clearly see that the framerate was in single digits, maybe more, but definitely deep below 20fps.
That didn't bother me too much. Optimization is usually done late in the dev cycle. But claiming release in just 4-5 months knowing full well that that's all you got?
Yet, despite all of that, Nate announced release in Q2 2020. He knew EXACTLY what was and what wasn't ready at that time.
Then, the corporate takeover happened, yet Nate lied again, that the game is being delayed BECAUSE OF COVID.
I think it's important to mention that this announcement of "corona delay" came around the end of February/start of March 2020. I.E.The time when coronavirus only started to spread in the West, and the social distancing, the quarantines - none of that was a thing yet. So, yeah. Lie.
Granted, this happened before the leak, and Nate and all the devs were under NDAs, but still, it's better to not say anything than to come up with a completely made up reason for something. Yeah corona delayed quite a few things, but that Q2 of 2020 release of KSP2 wasn't really one of them.
To anyone who pays attention to gaming/game development, it was painfully obvious that a game built from scratch, game that's this complex, cannot be announced in late autumn of first year and released in early spring of the second year. Small dev teams usually don't pull that off. There are exceptions, but they are very rare, and usually it's much simpler games so it's barely even relevant.
And just for the sake of argument - even if it was corona that "delayed" the originally announced release, why the hell it took three more years to an Early Access release? And for 50bucks at THAT state? That was just adding insult to injury.
KSP2 Is a typical case of horrible mishandling of a beloved IP. Seriously, whoever ruins IP this badly, shouldn't be able to keep it.
Screw you Take Two for your bad choices. And shame on you Nate for the serial bullshitting.
Thanks to the ridiculous start of it all, i had zero trust in the developer.
But no matter my distrust, i obviously still WANTED them to succeed. Because i love KSP. I wished with all of my heart that they're somehow gonna pull it off.
We all wanted KSP2 to be great, after all. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to happen. And i think more and more that it was actually impossible with this combination of people involved.
Luckily, modded KSP1 is still a lot of fun to play, and for people who want something newer, something different, i highly recommend Juno: New Origins.
Juno is pretty excellent.
Not on the list but Fractured Space was a very sad loss, could have been a great game if handeled by a competent company and its IP is not held by a company that wants to have nothing to do with it
Thankfully KSP still exists.
Black Prophecy.... I was very hardcore into that one. The reason it failed had little to do with what you stated. It was due to the awful pay2win model which the publisher Gamigo kept trying to push (and I admit the dev studio Reakktor is also at fault for cooperating with them on that). Really good gameplay, had a lot of potential, but ruined by a terrible publisher.
Huge potential but terrible balance and terrible servers.
Surprised Limit Theory was not on this list, I remember the controversy surrounding that games development
I was a beta tester for Earth and Beyond. I remember thinking the warp effect was pretty cool but not a lot else :)
Yeah same here. Was my first mmo experience
Not on the list but I don't like what happened with Mass Effect. A very decent game was ruined by the need of satisfying the shareholders by releasing sequels almost annually. I had some xp with Motion Capture and love how seriously fluid and accurate animations were in this series. Ps. You almost saw me as Leon in these new Resident Evil games :)
Mass Effect doesn't actually count because it is a single player game in the first place and also the franchise itself is a massive success, and if Bioware launch a Mass Effect 4 (or would be 5?) today, it would sell like water in the desert, people will definatelly criticise the game in the end, but it will still sell.
@@efxnews4776facts. the last one wasn't well received, but people LOVE Mass Effect.
I want to see this annual Mass Effect release you are talking about. Even "Almost annually" seems excessive, and factually wrong.
mass effect andromeda came out in 2017 lol. All the other games were good. Besides 3’s ending still a fantastic game.
Mass Effect was great, but it seemed not to be popular enough for them. So instead of making a sequel, they stripped out the RPG mechanics, and replaced the gunplay with a reskin of Call of Duty. You can still find bits of a *real* thermal clip system in ME2, which would have made it far more interesting to play. I never managed to get those working, unfortunately.
My first MMO was the original Jumpgate TRI back in 2001. It only had about 1000 concurrent players at once and it was fiercely competitive no nonsense space combat with realistic physics.
I was so bummed when they cancelled Jumpgate Evolution. Would have loved to get my hands on that!
Missing fractured space and dreadnought
I still remember the apocalyptic 2.0 patch that cratered the player population & dreadnought's future of being a success.
Dreadnought is already dead? LOL, i had it among those "check it when finished" category of games. I had no clue it already peaked and died...
Then there are series like Freespace and Independence War that didn't fail, they just never got anymore games after the second game, and I really wish they did cause I loved those series.
Was looking for a comment mentioning I-War/I-War 2! Like you said, they probably didn't fail exactly, but the studios disappeared 😢 If I could get IW2: Edge of Chaos running properly on current tech, I'd probably still be space pirating today!
Freespace 2's source code was released, and the game still has a running open source project.
I can't believe you remembered Black Prophecy, that game, the graphics still are insane... I miss that game so much. Too bad...
Wheres Hellion? T_T Best e.v.a. experience I've ever felt in a game
Earth & Beyond was awesome.
It was a bit on the silly side compared to later games, but that just made it fun. Like, how many games could you go harvest space beetle dung and turn it into missiles?
Earth and Beyond introduced me to online gaming, which I found to be an unbelievable technical achievement at the time. Compare the 2-3 secs latency in older transatlantic phone calls to the
I'm glad you pointed out Rings of Saturn. Can't stop playing it!
Wow, Jumpgate and Star Wars Galaxies... haven't thought of those in years. Both were fantastic! :/ I miss those kinda community space games.
Disappointing Dual Universe spluttered out of the gates also a new community space game. Coulda/shoulda...
I'll always remember Earth and Beyond as the one space game I've ever played that had genuinely FUN mining content.
Still have my copy of Earth & Beyond and yes I'm 69 years old and play Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen plus others.
Star Wars Galaxies Restoration is a thing. I see many people in the comments saying "I wish I could play it again" You can.
just not the same. Without my old characters I poured so much of myself into, it just adds to the pain.
@@baneblackguard584 I fully understand that honestly. Being an old FFXI player, going back just isn't the same, even on the free servers that mimic the old days.
I remember being so stoked for Jumpgate Evolution back in the day...
How did Elite Dangerous not make the list after they pushed out Odyssey ahead of schedule to satisfy shareholders?
Cause it isn't failed.
It's frontiers biggest money maker. How is that failed?
@@rwentfordable that's what I'm saying
I remembered being BORED OUT OF MY MIND when Black Prophecy came out.
I enjoy these longer videos, especially on space games. Not really interested in KSP or KSP 2 myself, but the story driven Freelancer styled Sci Fi games are a must for me.
Will add before it fades from memory again, The Mandate. A space opera game that was on Kickstarter. It never left early development.
if you ever make a part 2 of this series, Dual Universe would be a good one to profile. Bascially a tech demo with a single persistent universe for all players but no real missions/quests and poorly regulated player economy.
I remember Earth & Beyond! Loved it greatly
You can still play Earth & Beyond on a private server :)
Yep I still play it occasionally
played Earth and Beyond, thanks for covering it
Ant, i just want to say, I love your video's, your narration is brilliant, and very nice to listen to, i hope you see this. I really enjoy watching your vids and i love space games! Thank you for all your hard work making these video's, we all GREATLY appreciate it!
Limit Theory was a game that had huge potential, and it even replaced Half Life 3 as my most wished for title.
The game was looking stunning, but it was just one guy doing everything. In the end it was just too much. I'm sure any studio would have picked it up, I'm glad they didn't though. His vlogs sounded so passionate about the development that I would've waited twice as long as Start Citizen.
Omg I remember Jumpgate a decade ago and being so excited for it for YEARS but it never came out.
I remember in the very late 1990's getting into the beta test of a space MMO game. Those of us in the beta even received a decal for our ships that denoted us as a "Founder" or something like that. I remember it involving travelling in your ship, but I don't recall what exactly I ever did. I also have vague memories of docking at a space station and walking around to visit merchants and engage in crafting. I thought it had potential but I can't remember if it ever actually went live or not. I don't even remember what it was called. Also, I was playing Everquest at the time and was in a guild with some really fun people, so it was holding my attention quite well.
I am surprised you didn't talk about Hellion. Everyone I knew was so excited for that game.
I was a beta tester for Earth & Beyond! Genuinely enjoyed it, back in the day
Master of Orion 3 should have been on the list, it was an train wreck.
Nearly 30 years later and developers still haven’t managed to recapture the elegant simplicity and addictive nature of MOO2. Always losing themselves with gimmicks and excess systems. I’d honestly just love a 1:1 remake with HD graphics, but then I still play the original few times a year.
Earth and Beyond. I was smitten with this from the moment I saw the sizzle trailer featured in the video here on a PC Gamer cover DVD. I really wanted to play it but didn't get internet access until after it was already dead. EVE Online became my first MMO instead for a few years and then over to Star Trek Online as soon as that became free to play.
RIP Fractured Space and Dreadnought.
I was there for the server shutdown in earth and beyond....and started playing it in beta. Loved it.
I'm still really sad I never got to play E&B. I was so hyped for that game back in the day but never got around to playing it because a) I couldn't get my hands on a copy and b) I didn't have access to a credit card. And by the time I did, the game was long gone.
I was invited to the Beta of Earth and Beyond. When it went live I proudly displayed my Founders Federation decal on my ship I got for participating in the Beta. I loved the game. Very disappointed when it was shut down. The travel times could be tedious, but no more so than Elite Dangerous, Eve or Star Citizen. Especially on the most lucrative trade route that went from one end of the Galaxy map to the other.
For me the travel times weren't the problem, the game was just boring. Ran into a similar problem with Elite: Dangerous. Should have been a great game, but in practice it was just boring. Eve had me interested for quite a while, but eventually the fun wore off and just became a job. the X series has kept me interested throughout the years, but it's single player. only online space game that kept me interested over a long period the way SWG did would be Space Engineers, but it's not the same kind of online game.
I had completely forgotten that I even played E&B for over a year until I watched this video. What I do remember now though is E&B being transitioned to EA and then subsequently shut down is why I have never played another EA game since.
X-Rebirth comes to mind. Egosoft's massive misstep in between X3 and X4. X4: Foundations is everything that X-Rebirth should have been, and was not.
My first MMO was Space and Beyond. I left it when it ended to play Eve Online for the next 10 years. The Space and Beyond emulator is still active from the looks of it. Their team reverse engineered the server software and created a patch for the client. I don't know if they ever got everything working. Their website is still up and active.
I was really looking forward to Limit Theory. A shame the developer burned out.
SWG's pre-NGE Jedi made sense. It was hard to become a Jedi. You needed another player to train you. If you died during your leveling you lost the EXP toward that level. After you became a Jedi, if you died 3 times you lost your lightsaber. You were no longer a Jedi.
Jedi were POWERFUL. If you had a Jedi on your team in a PVP match you were probably going to win.
If you were a Jedi and got caught as one by an Imperial it was open season on your head.
I loved both Star Wars: Galaxies AND Earth & Beyond - Played both from the moment they came out. I really enjoyed Earth & Beyond and was REALLY sad when they killed it :(
Show my age? Alright. When Earth&Beyond and a couple other space games I was looking forward to failed, I became a Beta player for Eve Online and was one of the first batch of people ever online in Eve at launch. My player portrait so far predated the first graphical update that it looked like it was from another game entirely. I played for ten years and was on for alot of milestones that players would think unimpressive today but I remember it fondly. Can you imagine what that game looked like when there were just 1000 people online at any time because I can. When my first corp moved to null sec, we didn't see anyone else for a week. :)
Hello, former Earth and Beyond player 😂. Loved it at the time that it came out.
Man I loved Earth and Beyond! One of my favorites MMOs. Wish someone would make a remake.
Never played jumpgate, earth & beyond or black prophecy but I remember all the trailers for these games, SWG though I played for years, was my first mmo and I loved it.
Oooo, Earth & Beyond! I loved that game, was even in the beta and helped test. Wish it had survived!
Allegiance was a damn masterpiece of a game that never quite caught on. You can still play it today and it still has a very small but VERY dedicated player base.
I loved Earth and Beyond. My first MMO. I think I have a screenshot somewhere of my old guild.
Is there a word for painful nostalgia? Because I'm feeling that with mention of Star Wars Galaxies and Earth & Beyond.
Earth & Beyond was the first game that came to mind when I saw this video's title, hah. Dumped many hours into that one, and was sorely disappointed when it shut down.
Earth & Beyond is the only one on this list that I actually played and fondly remember!
I played E&B for 6 months with many friends. The atmosphere and feel was awesome. It was my first MMO game and we loved it.. at first ;)
For us EveOnline and FFXI replaced that game without questions.
if you do this sort of video again have a look at Hellion from Zero Gravity, Space Survival Game Newtonian physics
such a shame that Black Prophecy died. i had fun with the game but, at least back then, i didn't see any way to progress besides doing the mentioned repetitive missions. the game needed a story, some way to guide the player around, at least that's how i felt back then. i was also quite hyped for Jumpgate Evolution. we definitely need more spacegames around, hell i'm even thinking about taking a look again at elite dangerous...
A few other examples that are still in my Steam library are Hellion, Cosmonautica, and most recently Jumplight Odyssey.
All were released as early access that were a lot of fun from studios that went under before finishing them.
While it's not officially dead, Celestial Command development is so slow that it seems like the game is circling the drain.
And of course who can forget 1313?
Nexus the Jupiter Incident...
Failed by lack of marketing more than anything
Yeah, that’s an interesting one since it was essentially born out of an earlier failure of what would have been Imperium Galactica 3. I still have this downloaded though and it was a fun little title despite its obscurity.
My uncle, and therefore myself to an extent, were alpha/beta testers for Earth & Beyond. That game was so damn cool for it's time! Last I heard, there are fan-run servers still up and a group updating bits of the game so people can still play.
What about Battlecruiser 3000? That was a clusterf$&k!
I do not know if you know this game but Tachyon from Novalogic was The best multi-player game in the history of the internet. Single-player was not something but MP was amazing, It's shame they didn't continue to develop this game
This reminds me of the Babylon 5 Star Fury combat game. It was a bunch of the way through then development stopped during refinement and voice acting because Sierra Online fell through.
I remember trying out Earth and Beyond. I was able to play it for all of 2 days. I was limited to dial up, so the experience wasn't great, and I didn't have a second phone line at the time. I remember wanting to play more, but was frustrated with the always online nature, and my connection speed, and it taking up my phone. Sure, I had a 56k modem, but most of the time I was limited to connecting at 33.6k.
Hellion was one of these. Great promise. But you should make a video on old games that are still alive!
It's really more of a Kickstarter failure story since we never even got a beta iirc, but The Mandate was SO promising I think it still deserves a mention, if you can dig up any details.
Earth and beyond, my first MMO, even have a t shirt and baeball cap from some community guild event we won in it, RIP westwood :( they did make an unofficial server eventualy for it but was never quite the same.
You forgot to mention Microsoft's Allegiance from 2000, a brilliant PVP space-combat-sim-meets-RTS that was far ahead of its time but failed spectacularly, earning the Gamespot Award "Best Game No One Played". I played it a lot back then and it was an amazing multiplayer PVP game, but oh boy, did it have a steep learning curve. Playing as the Commander and overseeing the RTS part, you could literally screw over your whole team on a dime and was extremely stressful.
Surprised you didn't mention Babylon 5: Into the Fire. That was cancelled mere weeks before release by Sierra. But everyone was looking forward to it, and it had voice performances by all the cast - many of whom are no longer with us.
Add Empyrion to that list! It had the potential to rule them all, but sat in development limbo for years until being bought by some bigger company that wants to turn it in to a cash grab live service with undercooked "DLC" that's really just game patches that cost money.
Starfield should be on the list
How has it failed when it made it dev costs many times over, reacived an update months later and paid dlc on the way?
Earth and Beyond was what turned me off of MMO's for years. First, I wasn't an original E&B player. They had offered it as a replacement for Motor City online when that folded. After that shit show, I was already reluctant to play another MMO. Then after transitioning to E&B, it only lasted another year. Having not one but two games you were invested in shut down within that time frame soured me.
Earth and beyond was a great game and was always crowded with players, travel was never an issue amd it wasnt even close to the amount of travel time in eve online. EA closed it to concentrate on The sims and its expansions. Them saying it was failing was total crap, they just knew the sims could make more money.
Everyone of them have failed at meeting our expectations. And those expectations have gotten very high!
Only one is still trying, and has never forced its players to pay more for expanded content. Even if it wasn't promised content. But is somehow the scam of the bunch.
Oh yeah, it doesn't have the word "released" attached to its title. Like that makes everything complete and perfect.
I think that at a time there was a major publisher involved with jumpgate:evolution, capcom I believe it was. But the developer was also adding more and more features to the game delaying it's launch and that publisher ended up giving up on the game also.
I was following it's development at the time, got real sad when it got canceled forever. Crowd funding at the time wasn't a popular thing, otherwise it could still have a chance if they went that route.
I recall playing a stand-alone risked Privateer years ago. Published by same group that published Win Commander. Don't know if it was a failure, but,liked it better than the version of Elite published about same time.
Close to 30yrs ago, maybe?
Starpoint gemini 3 might be worth taking a closer look at, they encountered considerable challenges (covid, earthquake) resulting in a poorly received 1.0. I think some of the issues were fundamental though and the result may have been the same without the extra challenges.
I suspect that being a developer is a date with insanity, and a life of sticky notes. It stands to reason that people do get burned out after a while so it makes sense many games won't reach the beta stage, and on top of this if you are part of a small team there would be people you just will not get along with so they disband, and walk away.
No point in discussing triple A companies because many of them are as crooked as a witches broomstick.
Oh I remember Earth and Beyond, I was in the last beta phase before the game launched. One factor that I remember in the game's failure was the sheer number of people pinning their hopes on EVE Online. EVE Online just looked far more promising to most people I saw discussing the two games online and people seemed more interested in waiting for it rather than buying an MMO that they ultimately didn't think was going to pan out.
Can I ask, What about the Eve online spinoffs like Dust514 and Valkyrie? I used to love playing Dust but it just seemed to get shutdown? Cheers, OA 👍🏻
You should talk about a space sim game called hellion, it had so much potential!
I remember fondly playing SWG after I left Everquest. I met friends in SWG I still know online. Earth & Beyond was fun, but I didn't play that for long.
There's always been a lack of really good space or science fiction MMOs compared to fantasy ones like Everquest, WoW and now Final Fantasy XIV.
I feel like Elite Dangerous is getting *dangerously* close to being added to this list. Unless Frontier start listening to their players more.
Earth & Beyond. My first MMO... gone too soon.
there are private servers of it out there though... still pretty enjoyable.
Starwars Galaxies: New Game Experience still riles me up though... the way they introduced the Jedi, killed the economy of every sinngle server. then they tried to emulate WOW, killing the feel of the game as well.
No coming back from that.
Earth & Beyond, got in the beta but couldn't partake since me and my parents were in the USA at the time (my dad was a world leading toxicologist at the time, he's since retired and their was a congress which he attended). When I was back home I discovered to my dismay that all ISP's in Belgium tended to keep the ports used by MMO's back then closed, so never go to play it.
Not sure if they count, but the multiple Stargate games that failed. Alliance, Worlds and Resistance come to mind.
I loved Earth and Beyond so much...i beta tested it but couldnt afford the monthly at first. didnt take long for it to fail sadly.
Can't remember it's name but there was a game from a solo dev (French Bloke?) around a decade ago that was early in development. Graphics looked reasonable for the time and Iirc it allowed you to fly pretty seamlessly from space to planet surface? Then everything went quiet? Last I heard was the dev was trying to hawk the engine alone to others in the business?
Are you thinking of Infinity Quest for Earth? Was a damn shame with that one. They eventually did come out with a game called Infinity Battlespace but it's just a PVPVE shooter across a few planets, nothing like what was discussed for Quest for Earth.
Sad that Homeworld 3 is also a failure, at least on launch (I hope)
I saw that coming. The Homeworld: Remastered project was such a let down (It's Homeworld2: Remastered with a crappy Homeworld mod attached) that I knew a third game would not be any good.
I did enjoy Deserts of Kharak, but that's not a space game.
They insisted on conflicting with all that was good about the originals. This was most unfortunate.