King's Quest Fan Project The Silver Lining Is Back 61
LoTonah writes "After eight years of development and a Cease & Desist from Vivendi, King's Quest fan project The Silver Lining is back in action. From the website: 'We are extremely happy to announce that our project, The Silver Lining, will definitely see the light of day! In a wonderful turn of events, Activision reached out to the Phoenix Online team a few months ago with a desire to revisit their decision regarding The Silver Lining. After negotiations, the C&D has been officially rescinded, and Phoenix Online has been granted a non-commercial license to release The Silver Lining! Our team is ecstatic about this, and as hard as we've worked for eight years, it's the tireless belief and support of you, our fans, that has made this possible.' The first episode of the project is due to be released on July 10."
I can't believe I'm saying this, but... (Score:3, Informative)
One company (on one issue) down, a few million more to go!
Re:I can't believe I'm saying this, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are people here up in arms about new Mario games, or new Final Fantasy titles?
Honestly, the PC adventure genre is all but non-existant these days. If Activision were going to release a classic PC adventure, it might make the Slashdot crowd squeal with delight. However, Activision would probably screw it all up, and try to turn it into more of a 3D action title.
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Actually, it is starting to look like there is a bit of a revival for adventure games. :)
New Monkey Islands, new Sam & Max-es, etc.
Even a few new franchises.
Things are looking up
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Yes, because Activision would certainly charge money for a project which is a labor of love for the fans.
There's a fundamental, qualitative difference between a game for $49 and the exact same game for free. There's also a significant difference between a game made by a huge corporation and one made by a bunch of geeks. Even if the results are identica
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures.
As you or others may not be aware, Tales of Monkey Island [telltalegames.com] is thoroughly enjoyable. Telltale Games is doing a good job on this "long-dead" game formula with other games like the Sam & Max franchise as well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures
There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.
Try browsing around at Adventuregamers [adventuregamers.com] or MobyGames [mobygames.com] for a while.
Some examples:
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
So why is it that it's bad that EA or Activision makes constant sequels and remakes to games but then everyone has these orgasms over fan-made games that are just remaking and rehashing old games?
Because, it's clearly out of love that a fanmade project is finished. Fans are rabid and serious about doing a sequel justice.
When big companies often make remakes and sequels, it's { often } just a cash grab. You can feel that the title is lifeless. I could give you a long list if you were really interested.
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Sequels aren't a problem at all (and I personally haven't heard any complaining about remakes). The problem is cheap sequels that don't add anything substantial, but which just try to make you pay twice (trice, ...) for the same damn game.
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It's not JUST that they're made by fans (although that's part of it - see below). It's the style of the actual original game.
These kinds of old adventure games actually came up with new, innovative, refreshing, and comedic CHARACTER INTERACTION (i.e. STORIES).
"Aliens are invading, and you must kill them or all mankind is lost" gets kind of old after the 5th... no make that the 1st, iteration.
As to why fan-made remakes are often better:
Because they are made by fans, and fans often understand the lore, story
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So why is it that it's bad that EA or Activision makes constant sequels and remakes to games but then everyone has these orgasms over fan-made games that are just remaking and rehashing old games?
You don't have the gray matter to work out a reasonable answer?
Okay, fine, I'll give you a little hint: A reason exists, it's obvious, and it's not hypocritical. Can you find a good answer or are you dependent on somebody feeding you an answer that you're just going to argue with anyway?
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FYI,
You might have had a practical joker playing with your sig.
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Appreciated. But, no, that's a quote from a real comment I made that was modded as +5 insightful. :)
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Appreciated. But, no, that's a quote from a real comment I made that was modded as +5 insightful. :)
Looks like it was modded +5 Informative...
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Thank you, moderators, for realizing that this post was not insightful or interesting.
There is a particular brand of posting that frequently gets moderated up. These posts can be identified by the way that they appear to show hypocrisy in a group; often along the lines of "So, do we hate X today or love it?" or "Y is good sometimes, and bad sometimes. Got it."
I can never be sure if the poster is being serious (and is thus simply not very good at logical arguments) or trollish (and is thus simply an asshol
Peasant's Quest (Score:3, Interesting)
Peasant's Quest [homestarrunner.com]
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That's excellent!
and a walkthrough!
http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/Peasant's_Quest_Walkthrough [hrwiki.org]
I, for one, welcome our new Lords (Score:1)
Hail to the King's Quest !
Protecting IP (Score:5, Insightful)
In the early days of the web, Fox was trying to threaten every X-Files fan page for violating their trademark. Lucas threatened to sue every Star Wars page out there. Companies felt it was their duty to protect the IP. They didn't realize these fan pages weren't stealing money from them, but rather were adding value to their brands.
Fan pages and fan projects are free advertising. Any company who sues a non-commercial fan project is idiotic at best, and doesn't like receiving money from their customers.
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Don't know if I'd call that free. He did pay to have those clothes made, didn't he?
Does he sell retail? (I have no idea.) If not, then he's not the one bearing the cost of the shoplifted item -- the retailer is.
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... Any company who sues a non-commercial fan project is idiotic at best, and doesn't like receiving money from their customers.
Years ago someone here on Slashdot (props, whoever you are, I don't remember) explained the seemingly psychotic behavior of television executives choking the life out of or outright canceling wildly popular TV shows:
It's all about power and control - money is, at best, a secondary concern.
Once you realize that this applies to most entertainment companies, it all makes sense, like a kind of nightmare logic.
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I read a post like that here last year, something to do with the execs wanting to make a name for themselves so they cancel their predecessor's project and start their own. Can't remember why the jobs have such a high turnover rate - either these people get promoted or just want to move on for some other reason..
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Well, the old-school trademark|copyright|patent enforcement meant that if you didn't have complete control of "intellectual property", you will lose control. The music and movie industries still by and large operate under this ethos, as evidenced by their continued efforts to try to intimidate ordinary Internet users. It's also the same ethos that compels record labels to force new artists to sign away all their copyrights, and movie studios to use crafty accounting to avoid paying movie casts and crews the
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You only care about Spock and Kirk having sex if you care about Star Trek. When you post that slash-fic, you're keeping Star Trek alive in the minds of other fans. Perpetuating the brand does add value to the brand.
Can Star Control Be Next!?! (Score:2, Interesting)
OH MY GOD!! So excited!
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/petition/petition.php
I love Activision right now. Would that they let TFB have access to Star Control license ...
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The petition to get a new Star Control made has generated quite a bit of response, but more can be done. I would like to direct your attention to a cunning plan that Alex Ness from Toys for Bob has come up with. In his own words (from the Toys for Bob website):
First We Hit Them With Letters, Next Arts and Crafts.
After that, they won't know what hit 'em. Activision, I mean. As part of my multi-pronged strategy to convince Activision to insist that our next project be a Star Control one, I have come up with idea to harness the powers of arts and crafts as well as fans everywhere.
What I want to do is this: Make a giant map of the Earth. Maybe I should just buy one. I'm not map maker. If I were, I'd probably be instantly fired for my alternative spelling of the nation known as Uruguay as well as the fabrication of non-existent countries like Nutsack Kingdom and Nutsack Kingdom II. As a matter of fact, I have already been fired from previous jobs for these exact same reasons, even though none of those jobs involved making a map. So anyway, I'm going to buy a map. A real big one. Then I'm going to prominently display it somewhere in our office. Phase one of my plan will then be complete.
Phase two is where I once again, ask you wonderful community of fans for support. What I want is to put pictures of you guys up on this map. Not everybody but at least one from every country. This may be a problem for the magical isle of Greenland but who knows? There couldn't be all that much to do in Greenland, especially if you're unemployed like Andre the Giant's character in the Princess Bride used to be, so maybe someone who lives there has played a little Star Control. Anyway, what I'll do then is post your picture up over the respective country you live in. The idea being to show the fan base all over the globe. Will this help convince Activision to let us do another Star Control? I can't predict the future but I can tell you that if it's big and displayed prominently, it will help remind them every time they come to visit and be a real conversation piece. Plus it will just generally brighten our spirits. In Paul's case, this could lead to a level of congeniality rarely exhibited by man or machine. He's quite a bubbly figure, in case you don't know.
So if you've got the notion and a camera, can you send me a picture of yourself either playing SCII or at least standing near something SCII-related? Just send it right to old alexness@toysforbob.com. Or, if you really want the picture to get there extra fast, use my new other email address: nutsack@toysforbob.com. Somehow just the word "nutsack" does make things faster and better.
Thanks,
Alex
If only Square/Enix would do this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Although really, they'd rather release shitty new games and duplicates of their old games on different systems.
Gotta keep killing those fan games. You can't really ruin a good video game franchise with fans jumping in there and making better stuff.
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Gotta keep killing those fan games. You can't really ruin a good video game franchise with fans jumping in there and making better stuff.
No joke. The "partnership" with Square killed Supreme Commander 2. I never saw a game drop fro 59.99 to 7.50 (Discount off Stream) in under 3 months.
It just seems that these company's can't balance good game play WITH a wider audience. A RTS game is incredibly difficult to get the mainstream to play, but dumbing down the system for faster game play won't make it sell more.
Hell, I don't think I have seen a main stream developer make an adventure game in the last 5 years.
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"Gotta keep killing those fan games"
http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/ava/index.php?content=inc_download.htm [telefragged.com]
http://www.velv.net/FFEN.html [velv.net]
Say what? Do you even bother LOOKING for these things?
Space Quest? (Score:2)
Wasn't there a Space Quest project in pretty much the same situation? Can it be bailed out too?
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There have been a couple other fan made games linked over at spacequest.net [spacequest.net] and a remake of SQ2 in the works at IA [infamous-adventures.com]
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will there be a linux version?
Probably not but it will work fine with WINE.
Quest for Glory was better.... (Score:1)
Man, I miss that game.
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Damn straight, I loved that game. I remember the first (and only the first) game in that series (actually, it was a remake of the first) was available for the Macintosh, which was all I was using back then. The rest of the series was only available for Windows.
I'm not sure why that was the case, but that pretty much caused me to dump the Mac for Windows 95 as soon as I could.
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I guess Activision can't be 100% all the time (Score:2)
Like being happy of getting tax rebate (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not forget some other unsung heroes. (Score:2, Informative)
You guys are going to love this.
http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html [agdinteractive.com]
Not sure how these guys pulled it off (probably got permission before Vivendi ate Sierra), but they've been doing Sierra remakes for a long time.
Lets hope this apples to Space Quest 7 also (Score:2)
Lets hope Activision will allow the fan-made Space Quest sequel Space Quest 7 to continue as well, its another fan-made follow-on to a Sierra adventure game that was shut down by Vivendi.
And in a totally unrelated old gamer query (Score:1)
Reboots please (Score:1, Interesting)
We're allowed reboots with movies and comics, why not games?
It is not a bad thing to reboot a series, nor is it a bad thing to remake a game for updated technology.
The reason old games (Sierra and Lucasarts Point and Click games) keep being remade and revived is because the companies who made them prematurely terminated the series (eg Sierra selling out, Origin selling out, I'm not even sure why lucasarts stopped making games they had rights to.)
Look at other fan projects that have been crushed (Zelda games