What ever happened to spaceflight sims?

[Eudaemonian]

Honestly, when I was growing up, you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a spaceflight sim: Wing Commander, all the Star Wars titles, and the Freespace series, just to name a few. And that barely scratches the surface, ignoring cut-rate knockoffs and more obscure titles.

Now, I'm not nearly as vigilant a game-hawk as I used to be, so maybe there have been some that just slipped beneath my notice, but for the most part I haven't seen a single one in years. I can still distinctly remember the Christmas when I received Freespace 2 and loved every second of it. Since then, the game has gone open source and there have been some projects on it, but that seems to have been the death knell of the genre.

This comes as a huge surprise to me, because usually when game developers decide something is over, it goes out with a wimper of horrible games as the vultures of the gaming industry descend to make 19.99 piles of garbage out of the carcass of an idea. That's not what happened here. Freespace 2 was one of the best games I ever played. It wasn't supremely innovative, it wasn't a leap forward in gaming, but it was a very polished very fun example of the genre.

Now, maybe it's just that people aren't enamored with the idea anymore. There have been a lot of fads that have come and gone, but I haven't seen any go away so completely. There do seem to be some kind of cosmic waves of escapism that vassilate between fantasy and sci-fi, granting a boon to one at the expense of the other, but neither ever dies. Hell, I suspect they'll be making World War II games till the day I die, and if that isn't an IP that's been beaten to death, what is?

There's still a lot of head room in the genre of spaceflight sims, I think. I mean, the gameplay is little different from Ace Combat and they're still cranking one of those out every three seconds. With the new machines we're packing, we could create some truly impressive experiences.


Happy to hear what other people think. Happy to hear I'm completely wrong and that X Y and Z game have come out that I could be playing. Also, interested to hear that spaceflight sims suck and I am a moron, if only to understand the logic that evidently prevails in the development community.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

Gone the way of Mechwarrior and other more hardcore type games, I'm sorry to say.

My guess is probably because as games get more and more expensive to produce and market, coupled with need many developers feel to do a multiplatformer (PC and 360 launches) that games that appeal to a more hardcore PC audience cannot justify their costs. So you tend to see World War II or Paranormal/Monster type shooters, fantasy RPGs and many run of the mill strategy, all of which appeal to a fairly broad audience.

Space games in general haven't been too common anymore, really you ask about space games and usually Eve gets brought up and that's about it.

Nearly everything comes in trends and waves, though. I have hope that sometime (hopefully soon) a new game will show up and reinvigorate some of the more neglected genres.

 

[raankh]

The space sim is out of vogue, but I'm sure it will return one day. The latest attempts, like X3 or even EVE, don't really do it for me.

There are some mods for Freespace 2 and Independence War 2 that are worth checking out, but as for titles in the current or next gen, I don't really think there are any interesting.

The Torn Stars mod for IWar 2 has lost it's key dev, but the project seems to be plodding along anyhow. That's an ambitious free roaming mod for IWar 2, and worth checking out if you like Elite and Frontier.

I have flightstick and throttle, but haven't played any new games with it. I'm still waiting for that exo- to atmospheric sim where you can do computer assisted reentries and skipping aerobraking. A game that captures single stage to orbit mechanics.

 

[Frybird]

I seriously miss this Genre, cause i do not like the open-ended-"Space Simulators" like X3.

I even bought last year's Project Sylpheed for the 360, and although it looks and sometimes feels like the good old days, Square Enix hasn't really nailed the feeling of a Freespace, Wing Commander or even Colony War.

Somehow strange that, with all the Hype around Battlestar Galactica, no one gets the idea that a high quality Spaceflight-Shooter might be something that sells well

 

[Lance Icarus]

Oh, Freespace! Such a good game, definitely had those "Oh crap" hopeless feelings that space sims were so good at. Still remember in Tie Fighter when you went on a practice flight with your squadron when suddenly your entire squadron started trying to kill you. Nothing sucks more than an old school betrayal.

The most you see of space comes from FPS and RTS games. How I long for the days of being able to hop in a cockpit of a space fighter and take down half the alien armada by myself.

 

[Niccolo]

Hahaha... a friend of mine is building a bottoms-up spaceflight sim game. I'll tell him there's definitely a market for it.

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

I remember playing one of those before, I was a shuttle, but I always crashed it.

 

[deftune]

Had to comment on this! It feels awesome to not be alone! Ive always loved Freespace, actually one of the best games ever. The atmosphere was so extremly tense and you actually felt what you saw on screen. Ive tested out IWAR2 and a couple of others but none of them felt thesame as Fresspace 1&2. Bollocks!! was my response and then I hid the memories of the game in the farthest corner of my mind so It wouldnt be so painful( NERD!).
Well then came the new series of Battlestar Galactica and the need for a spacesim crept into focus again. I somehow ended up with KOTOR2 and enjoyed it while trying to forget how i ended up playing a Starwars game in the first place. I should mention that Im no StarWars fan.
Nuff said, I hope the market swings back into favor for us who really like games like these and it actually feels like its time soon. The games nowdays look all thesame and most of them are linear and youll have to put your brain in a coma to actually enjoy them.
Finally to this post is the reason to why i registered. Need to tell you guys & girls ;D some good news! The Mechwarrior franchise has been bought out from Microsoft. So you guys should expect a game coming up somewhere in the future. It might take awhile but it feels good anyways. I remember when Microsoft decided not to make anywmore MW games to PC, that was a black day indeed. But suit up ppl, Mechwarrior is back and the hard days might soon be forgotten.

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

It's a genre that never should have died. I think more than a few refugees from this dead genre are playing Eve Online, but I've tried that, and it just isn't the same. The fact nobody seems to be making them anymore is exacerbated by how good they could look with shiny new graphics.

 

[Ricky_Rio]

Freespace2 memorabilia: 15 minutes till we change our shorts

"mission briefing.... top secret mission...."

"loadout.... easy *drops trebs into secondaries* Ooook lets get this movin"

"load screen... de do... de do.... ahhhhhh here we go"

*jump-in*

hey whats tha-

DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT!!!!!

clasic

 

[ilves7]

Freespace one and two were awesome. I've also played all of the wing commander games (starting from numero uno) which were awesome, except for some of the later ones just got corny. I also loved privateer (wing commander universe). There was a game a few years ago, I don't recall teh title, I think it had the word Star (lancer? maybe) in it, that was a space fighting sim. It was more of a human vs human (two factions) fighting, but it had awesome cap ship fighting and decent story going alongside your fighter. Anyway, that was one game that I thought was great although it wasn't very heralded. But I do wish for more good ones to come along. What the next step would probably be is to make a space sim where you can literally dock on board enemy ships and start fighting like a first person shooter. Multi-player game like that would rock. Sort of like Alliegence but with fighting on the actual bases/ships.

 

[MrKeroChan]

i miss space flight sims......

 

[TomBeraha]

ilives7 is thinking of Starlancer, which I never played, but I did play Freelancer, it's sequel, produced by microsoft which is surprisingly good considering how under the radar it went for most people. I'd definitely be excited about a new high quality space sim. For that matter, I want a spiritual successor to Ascendancy, slightly more (as in additional) stylized units, add multiplayer, (tis turn based, shouldn't be too hard.), and just keep the rest mostly as it is. Update the graphics, but thats about it. The 4X games are all too ... complex, they lack the simplicity that made some of the other ones more pick up and play friendly.

 

[Eudaemonian]

ilives7 is thinking of Starlancer, which I never played, but I did play Freelancer, it's sequel, produced by microsoft which is surprisingly good considering how under the radar it went for most people. I'd definitely be excited about a new high quality space sim. For that matter, I want a spiritual successor to Ascendancy, slightly more (as in additional) stylized units, add multiplayer, (tis turn based, shouldn't be too hard.), and just keep the rest mostly as it is. Update the graphics, but thats about it. The 4X games are all too ... complex, they lack the simplicity that made some of the other ones more pick up and play friendly.

Wow, not only has this thread dredged up some interest in the genre, but I've found another person who played Ascendancy and appreciated its atmosphere.


In any event, it's nice that there are at least some people out there holding out hope. I've read EVE over and over when I mention space, and I think so far everyone has agreed it's not at all the same thing. My understanding of it is much more of a grindy MMO. Honestly, I can't say I know much about it. A friend of mine was trying to convert me to it a while ago largely because he was terrible at WoW, our group's MMO of choice.

Most of what he said came down to "it does stuff while you aren't there, so you don't have to grind". That sounded interesting. What didn't sound interesting was just about everything else about it.

One of the last space games I played was the first MMO I ever really tried. Back then I found the idea of paying for a game more than once to be preposterous, but I decided to give this one a shot. It was Earth: Above and Beyond, and it was kinda neat, but ultimately very unimpressive. It didn't help that I was playing it on clunky dialup.

Just having a game set amongst the stars isn't going to do it for me. I need something that can capture the really visceral experiences of Freepsace: The first time the Shivans show up and they have shields and you don't; Fighting the Lucifer in Hyperspace; All the Secret missions infiltrating the Neo-Terran Front; and many more.

I actually tried to download the open source version of it late last year, but I had some technical difficulties getting it to work and ultimately gave up.

I don't even know where my numerous flight sticks are anymore... and that really says it all.

 

[Roalith]

I can't believe there has been no mention of the Elite series in this thread... or are we carefully avoiding the subject?

Question for you: Which is the greater vapourware, Duke Nukem Forever or Elite 4?

 

[jedikv]

I have been recently thinking the same thing - My favourite was X-Wing Alliance that was damn fun doing co-op or dogfighting with my bro over LAN.

I tried X3 and slowly getting into it, however it feels too much like a grind.

I have thought about getting a new joystick but unfortunately there aren't really any games (AFAIK)that have been released to jsutify it.

 

[propertyofcobra]

Freespace was a wonderful series, that really made you feel extremely tiny and insignificant at times, just like spaceflight sims should.

Just like someone above said, the spaceflight sims died with Mechwarrior. Any game that has a thick bitchin' instruction manual is almost automatically stillborn if you need ten million sales to justify the costs of production nowadays.

 

[Mithridates]

I have the Xwing collector series, but I can't get any of them to work any more...

And I loved the Freelancer demo, I just didn't ever get round to getting the whole thing.

I am regularly amazed that Lucas Arts don't try to make another space combat sim, it's not like they need to find a source of inspiration about it, and they do like kicking the starwars cash cow....

Come to think of it, I have played starwars Starfighter on the PS2 with a friend, that was ok, and I thought that they brought out another Rouge Squadron a few years back....
So maybe I wasn't paying attention.

 

[Eudaemonian]

Freespace was a wonderful series, that really made you feel extremely tiny and insignificant at times, just like spaceflight sims should.

Just like someone above said, the spaceflight sims died with Mechwarrior. Any game that has a thick bitchin' instruction manual is almost automatically stillborn if you need ten million sales to justify the costs of production nowadays.

Now that I've heard this agreed with a few times, I have to address it.

What is so complicated about Freespace? There are a lot of keys? To be honest, most of them are unnecessary or could be simplified. Yes, just about every key on the keyboard is mapped to do something, but I bet I could put a very playable version of Freespace's controls onto an Xbox controller.

Honestly, I don't even remember a big instruction manual with the Mech games or the Freespace series. Most of what you needed to learn, you could learn in-game. Weapons do different things... shock.

The only commands (besides such things as SHOOT) that you often needed were "target nearest enemy" and "match speed". You might occasionally use "tell wingmen to go fuck themselves" and "find that bomber that is raping your cap-ship" but to be honest, most of this could be implimented through radials.

To blame this disappearance on anything relating to the game's complexity or difficulty in production is ridiculous. There is nothing about modeling a few ships and rendering some background graphics that necessitates particularly high production values. There's no overly complex physics engine to produce, you don't have to render your girly main character's hair flapping lovingly in the breeze, you don't have to make sure that the water reflects the vista of the rising sun oh so perfectly... it's just ships, objects which are by definition largely geometric and relatively simple to model. The models can be used repetitively with no complaints. I cannot believe that a spaceflight sim would have production values radically different from any shooter or rpg in production today.

I'm happy to hear an explanation that proves me wrong, but I'm just not seeing one.

 

[ChrisP.Lettuce]

I was able to satisfy some of my hunger for this with SW Battlefront with the space missions where you have to sabotage the enemy carrier, I thought that was a good idea.