Elite Looks Set To Make a Comeback

realxmp writes "After many years in the wilderness, the BBC is reporting that the next sequel to Elite is in the works. After a long Kickstarter campaign, which squeaked through to its target in the last two days, the project was funded and soon many old gamers will be able to relive the joys of exploring the galaxy in what was one of the earliest space trading games."

Re:Procedural Magick

[Sockatume]

To be fair, a decent number of the "big game publishers of the time" were just guys like him who had been sufficiently successful selling their own games to publish those of others. It wasn't a David-and-Goliath scenario: the world of mainstream gaming at that time had more in common with today's indie gaming.

Which is, of course, the great thing about indie gaming today.

Re:Procedural Magick

[Joehonkie]

Are you trying to say R-Type, which came out in 1987 in the arcade, was the model that Elite, which came out in 1984 for a home computer, had to compete with?

Re:What kind of game is it?

[Daetrin]

"Turn in your geek card RIGHT NOW"

Ahh yes, it's not enough to have played Tradewars 2002, SRE, BRE, Legend of the Red Dragon, Star Control 2, SimCity, Civilization, MoO, MoM, X-Wing, Ultima, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu, and more other series than i care to list at this point (or can even really remember.) The fact that i haven't played this one single 20+ year old game means that i have irretrievably lost all geek credibility. And having publicly admitted to the lack, instead of encouraging me to make up for that gap in my experience clearly the only possible course of action is to tell me to get the hell out of the club. And one wonders why geeks have a less than sterling reputation in some circles?

Re:What kind of game is it?

[Daetrin]

First of all, i actually started out loading up the wikipedia article on Elite. I spent about 30 seconds skimming it without seeing anything that obviously said "real time sim" vs "turn based sim" before deciding i could instead, i dunno, start a discussion about it with the other people on slashdot. I'm sure i would have found what i was looking for if i'd spent longer at it, but aside from the first AC and yourself everyone else here has been polite and informative and i (and anyone else who had the same question and came across the thread after me) have learned far more from them than i would have learned from just reading the full wikipedia page.

As for the rest, really? You think there's some different set of games that _is_ especially impressive? If i'd played more obscure things and less popular stuff i would have more geek cred in your eyes? That's... rather sad actually.

What i've played isn't impressive, and i'm sure isn't really any more or less geeky than what anyone else here has likely played. All my list "proves" is that i've played a number of games, so by any reasonable standard whether any one particular game is in the list or not ought to be entirely irrelevant.

The whole "turn in your geek card" thing was kind of amusing back at the beginning, when people just used it for things like Star Wars and Star Trek. But the idea has become much more insidious since then. People are actually grading people on their geekiness in real life on a pass/fail basis. Most recently a lot of males have been trying to eject female geeks from geekdom because they supposedly don't measure up. The geeky things they do aren't geeky enough because of... reasons.

You yourself are aptly demonstrating the trait. Have you considered the possibility that maybe your grandma _is_ a geek? I don't know her so i can't say, but just from what you've said she already sounds a lot geekier than a lot of the other grandmas i've heard about. But on the other hand even if she clearly isn't a geek, how does her having played a game in the Civilization genre make that genre less geeky? Did it get grandma-cooties when she touched it? Despite your claims Civilization is pretty damn geeky. Take a look at Sullla's pages about Civilization [garath.net] and the incredibly complex succession and internet games he's participated in, and his rants about the failings of Civilization 5 [garath.net] and just try to claim that he and the other people like him aren't geeks.

Or is the problem less with your grandma and more with it being "immensely popular"? But you know what? The Avengers movie was pretty immensely popular too. Has that made the Avengers, or comics in general, less geeky than they were before? Or are you just cherry-picking attributes so you can deny geekdom to whoever you happen to disagree with? Are you viewing geekdom, whether consciously or not, as some kind of private club whose value only increases the smaller the membership is, necessitating you do your best to keep all the "noobs" out?

Maybe it's not a conscious process, but i've seen the same thing happening to a lot of geeky conventions. Many of the old SF conventions are starting to die out. In at least one of those cases i know for a fact that it's because a decade ago or so a decision was made to purposefully demphasize anime, ie "that new fangled stuff those damn young whippersnappers watch." So those "damn kids" went and started their own con (with anime, and hookers, and blackjack! Okay, maybe just the anime) which has gotten bigger every year, while the original con has gotten smaller, and the demographics noticeably older, every year since.

Being elitist and alienating new fans (whether intentional or not) only just hurts the group in the long run. Other conventions (ComicCon and DragonCon being pretty prominent examples) have said "you kids have some new thing you are geeeky about? Why don't you show us, and we'll show you the things th