Is your next game could to be called “Literally Every Way Possible To Kill Someone Else Conflict”

OK, did you guys check out the latest movie? And?

A master carpenter doesnt have to grow his own trees.

You see where I’m going with this… but you didnt type it!

Why don’t you just lease someone else’s engine. LOMAC (Lockon: Modern Air Combat) is in your media room and has realistic flight, weapons and ballistics because it was Russia’s combat flight simulator and Eagle Dynamics bought it when Russia collapsed. This engine will do what you want as a flight simulator, weapons engine and graphic tools. Just throw in the towel on maintaining your engine even though there is a lot of pride and ownership in it gamers would like to play your games.

The time it takes for you to keep your engine up to date and make a game are too much. If you were a John Carmack then you would have 100+ people working on your game while you tweak the engine but your not. Lease someone else’s engine, put the pride aside for one game and make the dream come true for your fans.

You are definitely good at what you do and have a lot of respect even though negativity comes out in these posts. Look at the time and what you are actually producing because the product is not enough for the time invested. I bought the first BC and had problems but I played it. It was a marvel concept that still hasnt seen its potential. But, by focusing on your game and not your engine (lease someone’s engine) then your game will progress greatly. It is a serious matter to look at your competition and consider people value good looking games on affordable systems. We still want the galaxy at our fingertips and long for depth but not if it is hard to play or appears to be out dated. Overcome these challenges and just lease an engine. Sure it cost money and its not “yours” but there is nothing wrong with doing this for ONE game.

My biggest mistake occured many years ago with my first game. It is no big secret (it has been covered in many industy publications) that I wanted to roll everything that I liked about space combat games, into my first game. The ill-fated original (which, to do this day can be found in most top download charts) Battlecruiser game ended up being what it was simply because I was too ambitious. Couple that with a trigger finger publisher (Take 2, who went on to be who they are today – with everyone forgetting that my first game was actually one of those in their original SEC filing and did generate quite a sum for them.) – and you have a recipe for disaster.

But once I just ignored everyone and stuck to my vision and did what I wanted to do, it was easy from that point on.

My goal has always been to nurture – and reward – those like-minded gamers who stuck with my team and I through those difficult years. This is the reason why I continued with the Battlecruiser/Universal Combat series and never strayed from the original vision regardless of the [un-founded] abuse I’ve taken.

In an industry where many – MANY – big names have literally pissed away other people’s (publishers, investors, VC etc) money, crashed and burned – in some cases disappeared – it is only my money that I’ve burned. Never taking advances that I couldn’t pay back. I do what I say I can. Hence the reason you will never – ever – see anything posted about my company or myself related to the usual financial publisher shenanigans. In fact, in my entire history, I have never – ever – taken publisher advances at any time before my game hits a playable Alpha state. And even then, my deals are carefully structured so that advances are recouped earlier on so as not to leave me indebted to anyone at any time. It is is this philosophy that allows me to release all my games for free once the rights expire. I have done this with all my games thus far, and yet another [legacy] one will be released later this year for free.

Even with times changing and when the going gets tough and everyone changing the direction, my goal remains to design and develop games that a select group of people want to play. Some people get it from one perspective or another.

At the end of the day, this is not rocket science. People who have the ability to do what they love and believe in, will do just that – regardless of what obstacles or challenges they might face. I could have given up the ghost a long time ago, sought a job in the industry and *gasp* working for someone else. Or better yet, gone back to IT consulting work and getting a regular [obscenely large] paycheck. But what would be the fun in that? To go bouncing from gig to gig when uppper management screws up and subsequently gives me a pink slip (and severance pay that won’t even see my through Winter) for my troubles? Then how would I get to make the games that I want to make and play? In my spare time? With XNA, Linux, a browser?

The math of what I do is very simple and straightforward. It goes something like this:

Find 10 people who are going to pay for your game. If 10 of them end up paying you $10 a pop, go make a game in which you spend no more than $50 on. Be certain to make a game that at least 8 of those 10 people will buy again down the road. Rinse. Repeat.

Along the way, I have been fortunate that more people buy my games than I planned. So, I get to make those games for those like minded people because they keep me in business. I don’t give a toss about anyone else.

With AAW, I am straying a bit from the [game] formula because I want to evolve my ideas into other areas due to gaming trends (e.g. space combat sims are all but dead for now). Anyone reading about this [AAW] game and who will eventually play the Beta, will immediately see my fingerprint all over it. While not as complex as “A Battlecruiser game”, it is still not your average brainless game. In short, it is – first and foremost – a thinking man’s fps. There are enough brainless fps games out there filling that bill. Why on Earth would I want to compete with that when I can stick to what I can do and with what I have? Isn’t that why most games that try to compete in the same space, fail? Spectacularly? Quick! Name one innovative – or fun – thing in any recent memory fps that hasn’t already been done to death.

In the end, even if not all my core gamers buy AAW, we don’t have a lot to worry about because come 2011 or thereabouts, my biggest feat yet is coming. That being my epic all-encompassing space combat MMO (was in production, but halted in order to do AAW and KnightBlade and shore up our finances for that long haul) in the vein of my previous space combat games. Once again, it will be developed for those who like my games and who want to keep supporting it for the same reason that I upgrade my games consistently and for free.

Are we going to compete with the likes of Jumpgate, Eve, Star Trek Online? Probably not. But in the game space, what exactly is competition? While Eve is a spreadsheet in space, Jumpgate just a deliusional reboot and the jury being out on STO, the only thing we’re competing with is our ability to stick to our original vision for the game. Space combat? Check! Planetary combat? Check! Seamless spaceplanet transitional gameplay? Check! Cap ships? Check! fps action? Check! vehicular action? Check! Grind? Absolutely not.

…and the best part? We’ve done this ALL before – many times over in fact. Since the experience is already there, now we’re doing it on a much larger scale. In fact, my guess is that Galactic Command Online will be my very last game. That has been the plan all along. I started with the space combat genre and I intend to end my career with it.

Some have accused me of making the same game over and over. To them I say: take a look around at the games you’ve been playing.

I don’t like brainless games, that’s one of the reasons I don’t like consoles.
Nice you included all of these options for multiplayer. I hope the game be far better than Universal Combat.

Good luck

Mr. Derek… your game, what about multiplayer?. Is there multicrew and cooperative?.

There is multiplayer with four different game modes.

There is also 2 to 4 four player co-op for the single player campaign.

And yes, there is multi-crew in both multiplayer and single player.

e.g. in multiplayer, most assets have up to 16 passengers, a driver, gunner positions etc. So e.g. a pilot player (with the required XP) can hop into an assault gunship, while other players (pilots, marines etc) can “attach” to #gunner or #passenger positions in the same gunship. While the designated pilot is flying en-route to a strike area – littered with SAM (Surface to Air Missiles) and SAL (Surface to Air Laser guns), the gunners can be firing at air/ground targets; while the passengers just keep praying that the bastard actually makes the ten mins or so flight to the strike zone without getting them all killed. Of course if you have a jetpack and he does get shot badly – you can detach from your position and eject before the craft starts its death spiral to the ground. If you don’t have a jetpack, you’re fucked because you can either jump and hope you only break a leg (your armor protects you) from a jump from 5K AGL or you leave a mark on the terrain – and respawn.

Same thing in single player but your three NPC squad mates are smart enough to follow you into any asset (any with gunner or passenger positions) that you enter. So if you enter a vehicle as the #driver, one NPC will take a #gunner (if available) position, while the other two take up #passenger positions.

My upcoming ground combat movie shows all of this in action, since it focues on the ground combat aspects of the game, similar to how this latest movie focused on air combat.

As I said before, this is not your grand daddy’s fps game – and anyone expecting any thing North of braindead in this game, truly hasn’t played any of my games.

Good heavens, I wasn’t implying that videos are accurate. Videos are solely marketing (as are demos). A good trailer will make you want to buy a game, and become fired up by it prior to release. This was partly why I questioned whether releasing 17 minutes of raw gameplay footage was a good idea or not in terms of increasing your market (which is what selling games is about, after all).

Then again, tastes differ – for example, I usually hate developer commentary in trailers, whereas some people find it insightful.

Mr. Derek… your game, what about multiplayer?. Is there multicrew and cooperative?. I mean multicrew like Armed Assault, OFP…

@will: Been playing I-War 2 – managed to somehow become an ace pilot with keys only. Wotta fabulous game! I’m just into the main game proper, been to prison and stuff and am now kitted out with a genuine pirate crew (one of them even said “Arr”), and am having an absolute BLAST. This game is bloody brilliant! I salute you, sir, and all who crafted this with you! I’m one happy little space cadet!