As in, “come on, that’s just dumb” rather than a racy bit of textspeak. It’s not like “XCOM, SchmeXCOM” would really have sounded much better, though.
Aaaaanyway, Gamasutra (sheesh, another innuendo-laced term) has a pair of blurbish articles up from the guys making a modern iteration of the X-COM IP. (In finest literary form, they dropped the hyphen from the original, since that’s so BOLD and EDGY!) Apparently, it’s supposed to be a shooter/strategy hybrid.
I had about the same reaction as Shamus. It’s not quite a Darth Vaderish “Noooooooo!”, but pretty close.
Y’see, the original X-COM is a brilliant game from the golden age of MicroProse games. (The era that brought us Master of Magic, MoO and MoO2.) Even stuffy “journalist” types think it’s a great game, better than Half Life 2, the media darling. To be completely honest, I played the sequel, X-COM, Terror from the Deep first and for longer, but it’s pretty much the same game anyway. It’s a rock solid strategy game setting the player as an intrepid disembodied commander of a band of elite cowards enlisted to save the Earth from little grey aliens and their nasty attendants and technology. In many ways, it still hasn’t been topped (again, like MoM and MoO) by modern games, largely because the gameplay is brilliant. (Despite the severe lack of pixel shaders and polygons.)
So, naturally, when making a sequel using the IP, what do you do?
You focus on the “emotions” of the IP, “while changing the game fundamentally“. (Quote ripped directly from the article, my emphasis.)
Newsflash, guys: X-COM Interceptor didn’t do to well, and that was from MicroProse. X-COM Alliance (Looky! A first person shooter!) got cancelled. Fans of the original don’t want a totally new game, they want a bigger, better version of the original. That said, the original is still playable, so topping it is a tall order… especially if you don’t know what made it tick in the first place. Those were the days when gameplay was what made a game great, and the visuals were icing on the cake. Things have changed a little, both in the market penetration of careful strategy games (no, StarCraft 2 doesn’t count; “Strategy” and “Real Time Strategy” are different animals) and a bit more “style over substance” in the market.
So on the one hand, I almost feel bad for these guys. I can almost look past the cash grab in using a beloved IP. New ideas really do tend to be less sticky, and the X-COM name still carries weight. I can almost look past the “look, another shooter!” mentality, since everyone else is doing it. That’s not a good reason to do something, but that rarely stops people. I can almost sympathize with wanting to do something other than what the original did, wanting to carve out a name for themselves. I can almost sympathize with the devs not wanting to go too far out of their own skill set, having done BioShock and BS2, games that have met with some success and critical brownie points. (Though, does that make them one trick ponies? Ah, the balance between playing to strengths and getting stuck in a rut.)
And yet, if you’re adopting an IP to bootstrap your development and hype engine, hijacking it and running in a different direction isn’t really the way to either honor the IP or pull in the established fan base. It might be more fun to develop, and it might be wise if you’re chasing market trends (itself a dubious idea, but it does look less risky than “blue ocean” strategies), but it’s not always good for the IP.
(Tangentially, this is why I loathed the Tom Cruise-infested Mission Impossible movie. It took a beloved license then proceeded to stomp it into the ground in the first act, flirt with the fans in the middle, then spit on the corpse in the finale. It could have worked as a nifty spy movie, but specifically as a Mission Impossible movie, it was a kick to the groin of the IP. Working with an established franchise is a dual edged sword.)
On another hand, it really can be wise sometimes to spread an IP across multiple genres and even mediums. (See: WoW TCG, WoW Minis and WoW board games.) That has a way of building a cohesive universe rather than a single-shot story, which allows for inertia to build in the IP, and opens doors for more projects and monetization. All in all, that’s a solid long-term strategy, especially if quality can be maintained across the board.
So, while I do not have any interest in actually playing this new iteration of X-COM, I am at least academically interested in what it winds up doing. If it’s a solid game, and it may well be, it might resurrect the X-COM brand, eventually paving the way for a real sequel to the beloved classics. (X-COM Apocalypse was passable, but also easily passed up.) If it winds up awful, it still won’t really tarnish the original and TFTD, and I can go back and play them.
I choose, then, to view this as a Good Thing, at least until proven otherwise. It takes some effort to do so, since my reflexive reaction is one of incredulity and annoyance… but I think I’ll give them a chance.
…at least it’s not a 4X game, I guess. That would have overloaded the innuendo meter.
But I still want a great turn-based strategic/tactical sequel.
Strategy? Shooter?
Both does not go together well. I fear they just need the honored name to produce something that would not stir much interest otherwise. And I smell it won’t stir much interest even with the X-Com sticker attached.
I’m with you on the original X-HYPHENDAMMIT-COM games.
As for IP-fidelity – there’s no such thing these days. It’s come down to using the name and hoping you can fool the existing fan base just long enough for them to buy the box (or movie ticket).
In which vein (and much as I like Rob Downey Jr): Sherlock Holmes my ass.
Look for Northstar by Kerberos productions for squad-based tactical play in a sci-fi setting.
Problem is, they don’t yet have a release date. It will probably be published by Paradox. But Kerberos has to finish Sword of the Stars 2 first, so realistically Northstar is still a long long ways out.
If you do want a good 4X game to tide you over in the meantime, though, Sword of the Stars is a great series (with 2.5 expansions) and Sword of the Stars 2 is due out next year.
Exactly, Longasc. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the rather sizable doubt, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
Ysh, indeed. Sherlock Holmes was a fun show, but definitely rather… creative about the IP. I’m ambivalent about that, too, since I like the resurgence in interest in the real Sherlock, but when it’s not the real thing, well… harrumph.
Zed, I’ve heard good of Sword of the Stars… I keep meaning to pick it up. Thanks for reminding me! There’s also Laser Squad Nemesis from the original X-Com guys.
You seem to be focusing on the emotions of the IP as well, but simply in opposition?
I was going to say this is like fallout 3 compared to fallout 2 & 1. I liked fallout 3, but at a mechanical level (looking past the emotional), it wasn’t the same.
Honour the IP?
If you liked the earlier X-com, you enjoyed the mechanics. It’s not the IP that you were engaging as you played. If they’d brought out X-com with unpleasant to engage mechanics to begin with I bet you wouldn’t be thinking about it at all today. But your talking about the IP as if it’s the crucial thing?
I would agree turning it into a first person shooter is using a entirely different set of mechanics. It might even be fun, but it’s not the same and trying to label X-com all over it wont change that. I thought you were arguing that at first so I’ll just agree with what I thought you were arguing….
No, you’ve got it about right, Callan. I harp a bit on the IP here because it’s an interesting phenomena in game development at large and I wanted to chase down some of the ramifications and considerations, for good or for ill.
In the case of X-Com specifically, though, you’re right, I loved it on a mechanical level. The lore and such of the IP was fun, but not really what made the game stick. Slapping the X-Com label on a wholly different game doesn’t draw me in at all, and in fact, annoys me a fair bit.
I’m just choosing to find hope that they might resurrect the IP’s popularity and give us a real sequel in the same mechanical vein. It’s an outside shot at best, but that’s my silver lining and I’m sticking to it. 😉
And, well, I don’t really wish ill on these intrepid devs, clueless as I believe them to be. I shake my head at the decision making process, but I can understand it a bit, and certainly don’t want them to go die in a fire or something.
I don’t know why slapping on the x-com label annoys you? If it’s an attempt to trick – well, it still comes down to judging the game for what it is, rather than the label on it’s skin (it’s what’s inside that counts 🙂 ).
Do you feel they were trying to yank at a heartstring? Was that really their intent? I’ll grant at an advertising level often people will do anything if it means a sale. But at an artistic integrity level were they trying to yank, or do they just have an excentric passion for making it into a FPS?
Granted, how often do you ever really know someones intent, for sure?
Love on a mechanical level? 🙂
I guess I get what you mean, the strategy and tactics parts and economy all went together very well, and the turn based combat was also really awesome.
Fallout 1+2 were also very tactical due to the point system, but nowadays it apparently must be realtime, or at least Bioware’s pause+order hybrid.
I must admit I also loved the scenario, “Ufo Defense” just rocked as a background.
That “emotions” line has to be the greatest load of bullshit I have heard in a long time.
Quote: “while players may not get the same exact gameplay, the team will still be able to invoke the same emotions in its audience”
Is he spoofing or does he actually believe that nonsense?
Callan, the root of my irritation is that it’s not a sequel to the original and a solid strategy game. The rest of my observations are rather generic ones that can apply to any use of an IP for a purpose it was not originally intended for. I don’t particularly mind that they are making this game, I’m annoyed they aren’t making what I think they *should* be making.
Longasc, aye, the UFO settings really worked well… but I really think I’d have had *almost* as much fun with the game if it were Care Bears vs. Unicorns or whatever, as long as the mechanics were the same.
mpb, I’m not sure… it seems like marketwonk spin to me, and a thin attempt at justification. And yet, if you tell yourself something enough, you start to believe it. I can’t quite read where he is on that spectrum.
Tesh, mmm, I’ll say that a name, like x-com for example, doesn’t particularly evoke to me that a certain game should be made. If someone made a FPS and called it ‘Chess’ it wouldn’t fuss me (unless they were trying to trick me that it really was chess, then they are just obvious charlatans……’charlatan’ – what a great set of sylables…hehe)
Longasc, pretty much love at a mechanical level. In real life, if you love strolling down a certain little path, that path actually exists. In a video game, no such path or alien invasion exists. Only the mechanics (the way the computer reacts while a certain program is running on it) really exist.
Indeed I’d even think that this programming team is making this mistake of where the love lies, and that’s why they think they can just take the idea of ‘x-com’ and paint it onto a FPS. They really think the emotion lies with the fiction.
Frankly if the emotion does lie purely with the idea of x-com, it’s frightening really – you could stick X-com and some of its world setting fiction on various objects like a table tennis set, or a harpsicorde and apparently the love just transfers on over? Bizarre.
Personally my favourite version was E-Mail X-COM, but Microprose’s servers for that are long gone and I haven’t been able to get it installed in Windows 7 regardless. =/
I know you sort of mentioned this Tesh, but I’m going to be forever bringing this up whenever someone mentions X-COM:
If you loved the game mechanics and it’s not really about the brandname, you should just follow Julian Gollop’s games. He’s the original designer and X-COM itself is a recreation of Laser Squad from 6 years earlier. Recreated as an online game with Laser Squad Nemesis in 2002.
I believe he’s working on a 3DS game in the same vein.
Rog, thanks for the name. I’ve been meaning to try out Laser Squad Nemesis, since I’ve heard a lot of good about it, but for whatever reason, Mr. Gollup’s name hadn’t found its way into my memory on this. It’s always good to keep these names alive. 🙂 I think LS:N is also playable via email, come to think of it.
Oh, and I’d also throw Rebelstar: Tactical Command in the mix. It’s a Game Boy Advance game that has a lot of the same flavor as X-Com. I played it for a while and really liked it. I ultimately had to take it back to the office before finishing it (we have a great library of games for borrowing and research), but I had a lot of fun with it.
If he’s doing a followup for the 3DS, I definitely need to look into it. Thanks!
There isn’t anything X-com about it. The trailers and gameplay bids look fun enough (I like FPS) but it’s a bit deceiving. It could be called anything else and still be a good game on it’s own, it just feels like a deceptive move.
Yes, you own an IP that still has legs. Yes, you want to leverage that investment. Yes, the name X-com still pulls at the heartstrings of older strategy gamers.
No, you don’t make a Major League baseball titled game that once loaded up is a Marbles simulation.