Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Edit: cos there are various theories flying around below about my perceived intent in posting this, I shall clarify my own feelings. I would really like to see contracts between publishers and developers more commonly include an arrangement whereby key (and ideally, but rather less plausibly, all) creatives on game projects continue to see some post-release royalties, as is the case in some other entertainment and publishing industries. That so many old games are being (apparently profitably) rereleased lately highlights this disparity. That is all.

There’s obviously a very good chance you already know this, but just in case: when a developer is bought out by a publisher, it’s usually the case that they then don’t see any ongoing royalties from the games they make for them, or indeed for any existing intellectual property that was swallowed up as part of the studio acquisition. It’s standard practice, knowingly agreed by both parties during the dark deal some studios made to ensure immediate financial viability and larger project budgets. But what it does mean is that a great many of the PC games we regularly celebrate around these parts are no longer bringing in any money for their creators, despite still being on sale. Whenever we excitedly see an old classic appear on Steam or GoG (such as Thief last week), chances are very high that whatever we pay for it goes purely to the publisher and the download service. And while it may well be right that these bodies profit from projects they funded and distribute, it’s sad that the men and women who toiled over that game’s creation won’t see another penny from it.
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Good Old Games are once again scooping up the games of the past, dusting off the cobwebs, teaching them about the future ways, and then setting them free into the internets, unfettered by leashes or DRM. And if you’ve been concerned that their definition of “Good” has been somewhat loose of late, this time they have some true classics. How classic? Pretty much as classic as classic gaming gets. They’ve finally got EA on board with some of the most famous names in PC gaming history. One of them is going to make Alec squeal like five girls. I’m teasing you. I’m making you want to click to carry on reading, and thus increasing our ad loads. No! Don’t look at the tags!

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So I guess I’ve written that this is a Dungeon Keeper clone in a whole bunch of places over the last few months.

Whoops.
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Blizzard (them again) have high hopes for Starcraft II’s editor. Increasingly, so do I. For instance, it’s enabled one enterprising chap sidestepping EA’s failure to make Dungeon Keeper 3 and instead creating his own functional DK prototype in SC2′s engine and universe…
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This I want to try. I want it try it bad. Oh, so bad, baby. Unfortunately I’m currently making zombies wear hats made of spinning drills in Dead Rising 2, but this fan-made fountain of youth for my beloved Dungeon Keeper is very much next on the agenda.

As its creator observes, a lot of game remakes never get off the ground – so instead Polish engineer Tomasz Lis has elected to update what already exists.
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So you know how you wanted Dungeon Keeper 3?
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It is a rare month that I don’t fondly wish for a resurrection of Dungeon Keeper. It is a rarer month still that I hear of a resurrection of Dungeon Keeper and then kinda wish I hadn’t. Details are squeaking out about EA’s mysterious (and possibly China-only) Dungeon Keeper MMO and, well, you’re not going to like them. That said, there are a few glimmers of promise, and enough that I’m fighting the fanboy urge to scream, hiss and make tastelessly overblown statements about what EA have done to my childhood.
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So Dungeon Keeper may be returning, as evidenced by not one but two trademark applications on EA’s part. My feelings on the matter are the very definition of ‘mixed’.
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Whenever I mourn the passing of the Dungeon Keeper games and their much-neglected sub-genre – which I seem to do far too often, like some sort of blogging Miss Havisham – someone always chastises me for overlooking Evil Genius. I’m not overlooking it, I’m just not mentioning it.

It’s certainly the closest to a true follow-up DK’s ever had, coming from Bullfrog splinter cell Elixir and employing exactly the same Bad Guy Base-Building concept. Trouble is, in its clear desperation to not simply be Dungeon Keeper with Austin Powers artwork, it piled on layer after layer of complexity intended to mask its stolen heart. When I originally played it back in 2004, I couldn’t stand it. Genuinely loathed the thing, which very much put me at odds with most other reviewers.

Time, they say, heals all wounds. Which is a patently ridiculous thing to say, otherwise my granddad wouldn’t have been so annoyed about the toe he lost in the war. But it does at least mean I can now approach Evil Genius with a clear head, no longer clouded by sad dreams of DK3.
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It’s interesting that everyone who mailed us about this (many thanks, by the way) immediately went for the Oh God No What Are They Thinking angle. Bullfrog fans are purists, perhaps understandably. Me, I’m not going to presume the worst yet, despite being a huge old geeky Dungeon Keeper fan myself.

Absolutely nothing is known about this shock DK sequel/rethink, bar its being an MMO and being handled by a Chinese developer you’ve never heard of. Yeah, ‘Asian MMO’ does set off a few alarm traps, as the Lineage model tends to impress us Westerners about as much as shadow puppetry impresses bears. Clearly, this won’t be Dungeon Keeper 3 – there’s not even a whiff of a single ex-Bullfrog guy around it for starters, and no talk of it being a direct follow-up, but rather of it just using names, themes and characters. Put that Pointy Stick Of Angry Pre-Judgement +3 vs EA down, though. There are hints that this will be much more like the DK of old than folk are presuming…
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It’s easy to fall into a routine dichotomy here. New games some days, retro games other days. Unfortunately, that rather ignores games from the last couple of years, which don’t fit neatly into either category. Let’s change that.

I find myself currently between games to really occupy me – an unfortunate hangover from the MMO mania of a couple of years back, which has left a part of my brain forever desiring a game I can utterly lose myself to for months at a time. With my third major bout of intense TF2 play, my most recent distraction, now behind me, I survey the landscape and there’s nothing huge I can imagine spending a few deep-seated weeks with, at least not until Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3. So, instead I turn to the very recent past. I’ve been snacking briefly on games I’ve wanted to replay or never got around to playing, and I suspect it’ll lead to a few posts like this. First, Overlord.
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