description
Sympathy For The Devil
Posted March 16th, 2008 at 03:58 PM by S.R. Krol
Over the weekend I reinstalled Homeworld 1 and 2, which was spurred by At All Costs. I have this habit of getting into gaming “moods” based on books, or movies, or whathaveyou. Heck, in the past I suddenly had an urge to get some flight sim gaming in just based on the fact I was working on a plastic aircraft model.
It’s surprising how well the original Homeworld has held up. It’s almost nine years old and yet it still looks and plays like something that could have been released last week. Oh sure, if it was released last week it would have to include something like physics based starship destruction, or tesselating pixel voxel specular transfiguration explosions, which would then make it unplayable in another year due to changing graphic card drivers, so I guess we should be happy it wasn’t.
Since the game seems perfect for a Honorverse mod the first thing I did was start searching for one. Much to my disappointment there was one in the works back in 2005 but it was shut down by Weber. Oh well.
Mods based on an already established IP being shut down is a fairly common tale to the point that anyone beginning work on one might as well either make sure it’s always kept private, or don’t even start on one to begin with; you’ll only end up having to terminate it. While from a gamer’s standpoint this is always frustrating from a company’s IP standpoint it makes sense. After all, it’s a lot easier to simply eliminate all potential IP infringement en masse, rather than sort through what may be a positive thing (a total conversion for a popular computer game) and what would be quite negative (furry porn fanfic). But does it have to be this way?
When an IP infringing mod (or even game, see the recent Space Hulk freeware title by Teardown…although you can’t really “see” it since Games Workshop seems to have killed it…) is done right, and is faithful to its source material, it can be quite a boon to said material. Gamers who may not have been aware of the original IP may then pursue interest in it. Essentially, it’s free marketing and brand awareness.
So why can’t we have a mod licensing agreement between IP holders and mod makers? Surely there are enough lawyers around that creating one shouldn’t be much of a problem. Let mod makers sign a release form promising to not make a profit, make people aware it’s not official, and allow the project to be shut down if the original IP holder has a problem with it. Everyone would benefit: mod makers, IP holders, and gamers. We could get cool mods, and IP holders could keep the freaks at bay.
In the meantime, what are the best Homeworld mods out there?
It’s surprising how well the original Homeworld has held up. It’s almost nine years old and yet it still looks and plays like something that could have been released last week. Oh sure, if it was released last week it would have to include something like physics based starship destruction, or tesselating pixel voxel specular transfiguration explosions, which would then make it unplayable in another year due to changing graphic card drivers, so I guess we should be happy it wasn’t.
Since the game seems perfect for a Honorverse mod the first thing I did was start searching for one. Much to my disappointment there was one in the works back in 2005 but it was shut down by Weber. Oh well.
Mods based on an already established IP being shut down is a fairly common tale to the point that anyone beginning work on one might as well either make sure it’s always kept private, or don’t even start on one to begin with; you’ll only end up having to terminate it. While from a gamer’s standpoint this is always frustrating from a company’s IP standpoint it makes sense. After all, it’s a lot easier to simply eliminate all potential IP infringement en masse, rather than sort through what may be a positive thing (a total conversion for a popular computer game) and what would be quite negative (furry porn fanfic). But does it have to be this way?
When an IP infringing mod (or even game, see the recent Space Hulk freeware title by Teardown…although you can’t really “see” it since Games Workshop seems to have killed it…) is done right, and is faithful to its source material, it can be quite a boon to said material. Gamers who may not have been aware of the original IP may then pursue interest in it. Essentially, it’s free marketing and brand awareness.
So why can’t we have a mod licensing agreement between IP holders and mod makers? Surely there are enough lawyers around that creating one shouldn’t be much of a problem. Let mod makers sign a release form promising to not make a profit, make people aware it’s not official, and allow the project to be shut down if the original IP holder has a problem with it. Everyone would benefit: mod makers, IP holders, and gamers. We could get cool mods, and IP holders could keep the freaks at bay.
In the meantime, what are the best Homeworld mods out there?
Total Comments 1
Comments
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Old post, I know, but I wanna hint to the fact that Teardowns Space Hulk game has changed name, removed the Warhammer 40k references and is still available under the name Alien Assault.
http://www.teardown.se/ Check it out, they've refined it pretty much, I think. |
Posted July 15th, 2011 at 06:06 AM by spillblood
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