Dreamland Chronicles - Can Someone Save This Game?

Mr.Obsidian asks: "I have recently followed the Dreamland Chronicles dilemma. If you aren't familiar, there is a good recap of the happenings here. I guess I should point out that my first gaming obsession was X-COM: UFO Defense, and I am sure you are familiar with the title. I would just like to say XCOM was a very innovative and well designed tactical turn based strategy game, and Dreamland is what it could be if it were in development today. I am sure that you have seen great game projects moth balled, run out of funding, or suffer some similar fate. I would like to ask you if there is anything anyone can do to save this title? This game has 2 years of development behind it and a team of excellent designers, programmers, and artists, even a representative from Fishtank Interactive (German publisher, titles such as Evil Islands) has posted interest in the title. There has and always will be a strong community for XCOM and Mythos. I just feel that at least once, maybe us lowly gamers can band together around a devloper and determine what game is worth developing, rather than a publisher determining which one might be profitable. Maybe... Maybe I am just being idealistic."

Re:http://orion.spaceports.com/~mfiles/main.html

[gavinhall]

Posted by king-manic:

it would be nice to have the source to play with. Like how id releases quake/doom sources after a year. With the sources the community could imporve the game and add features we always wanted (ie multiplayer X-com that doesn't suck like apacolypse). Unfortunatly not many companies do that. off hand I can only remember id doing that...

Steps needed for fans to save this.

[Christopher Thomas]

If you want the fans themselves to save this game, you're going to have to do something along the lines of the following:

• Find about 100,000 people willing to buy the game (as in, committing to buying it).
  
• Get them all to pay $30 *now* for it to be delivered a year from now.
  
• Take this big whack of money, and walk to the gaming company's door with it. Have a lawyer-produced contract in your other hand.
  
• Contract them to finish the game, within fixed time and budget limits (de-scoping if necessary to meet the limits, as they *must* deliver something).
  

The first two steps are the hard part. It might be do-able, but won't be easy. Good luck.

Don't forget to start a shell company and jump through all of the legal hoops for this as you proceed. This will make the contract-signing part of the deal much easier.

Make sure that, no matter what, your contracts (both with the company and with people paying you) say that *you* aren't on the hook if the game fails to materialize. You can't afford to pay back all of the gamers if you've already spent their money paying the development house for a year.

The way these revivals work in practice is that a venture capitalist, bank, or parent company will give the gaming house money if they think that there are enough customers to repay the investment. Their judgement seems to be "no" here.

Gamer Sponsored Development

[TheInterloper]

It would be a marvelous interaction. Imagine a clearinghouse where gamers could make donations to games that interest them. Each game project would provide details on planned features, progress, and team composition. In return for the "donation" the gamer would get exclusive access to development areas (ala Sourceforge) where they could interact with developers and comment on progress (forums, regular chats, team meetings). Of course, there would have to be clear rules that outline that the donation is given in confidence. The gamer could suggest and interact, but would understand that the donation doesn't guaruntee the developer's will listen to them. The clearinghouse company would hold the developers to certain contractual deliverables present in the design document, however. Could this work? The clearinghouse company could manage hundreds of these little projects and help the developers network. They would provide web space and design to present the games to the public and handle the donations.
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X-Com

[Darkness Productions]

I remember X-Com as well. That was a pretty good game, if I remember correctly. I can't remember much of anything about it, other than that it was pretty good.

I miss X-COM too

[danpbrowning]

Who will make an abandonware proposal to Microprose? Freeware would be good if we couldn't get the source. But if we did get the source I know I would do backflips.

http://orion.spaceports.com/~mfiles/main.html

[danpbrowning]

http://orion.spaceports.com/~mfiles/main.html has X-COM 1 and X-COM 2 (Ufo defense) for download.

Where has X-Com gone?

[Mossfoot]

It's strange. But X-Com was one of the best games to come out in its day. It didn't have state-of-the-art graphics, but it had a concept and execution that has never really been repeated since.

It also suffrered from that stranges of computer animals: DEevolution. X-com2 was graphically worse than the original, and Apocolypse was just a worse game with sharper graphics. That doesn't happen all that often. At the very least sequals maintain the status quo because programers or company executives are too afraid to try something different when something works well.

Anyways, it would be nice to see something like this game return. In an age of RTS games, a good turn based stategy is hard to come by.