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Star Trek: Infinite Space: Gameforge Cancels Upcoming Title
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Develop is reporting that Gameforge has announced the cancellation of Star Trek: Infinite Space. According to Gameforge, the title did not gain enough traction with publishing and marketing forces.
"Since Autumn 2011 we've been trying hard to find a publishing partner for Star Trek - Infinite Spacel, unfortunately our efforts did not result in success," read a statement on the game's website.
"Therefore we made the difficult decision to cancel this project completely. Cancelling this project is a very sad thing for us to do as well. Unfortunately sometimes a good concept for a game cannot be realisd according to plan in a successful way."
Comments
Unfortunate to hear, but not surprising. The game has been dead in the water since last November - they haven't said a word about it since that time.
It didn't look like it was breaking much new ground with what they had planned, so I guess I'm not surprised.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
yep there is only so much room in th market for big IP MMORPGs
I am dissapointed. This game had excellent potential.
For those of you that didnt see the game, it was basically a modern version of Star Fleet Battles. It was built on the unity engine, and could be played in a browser, or mobile device.
Yea, you people defending STO are just ludicrous. Cryptic MANGLED that game horribly.
Galaxies died because LA wouldn't renew the rights. Not because the playerbase. It all depends on the contracts but it IS very possible for multiple developers to hold rights to IPs but in general the contracts specify their use.
This game was doomed for multiple reasons. Mostly it doesn't tie in with the money making side of Trek. It's all about $$$. If there was SOMEONE out there who figured they could make money from this, it would have been financed. For all the talk about the F2P model, I have to wonder what their ACTUAL margins are.
Game development has simply gotten out of hand. It's way too damn expensive now.
100 million to create the APB? The 200+ to create SWTOR?
People who play PC games these days don't need a boxed copy or cd. Downloading the game is the future. So that saves bundles of cash right there.
Story / Quest Writers? Dime a dozen. You can these cheap - almost free. Anyone with a high school diploma can whip up some interesting story via imagination.
Coders and Graphic Artists? There are endless pools of these guys out there. ENDLESS.
Concept Artists? You can go to deviantart.com and find some of the most breath-taking artists that will work for very little.
Marketing? A superior and innovative product doesn't need much of it. A simple booth at E3, YouTube video, or even some news coverage at sites like this is all they need. If a game is good, people will hear about it and play it.
I think there's room for more than one game if the IP is large enough. With Star Wars and Star Trek, they give us games set far in the future or past while ignoring what is most familiar and beloved of the shows. They further torpedo themselves by designing claustrophobic, repetitive level design and sub par programming.
I give props to STO for continuing to develop the game and introduce things like player created content though. The episodic content is also pretty cool.
@ing frustration that is STO.
I really do not think the cost different is that big. A boxed copy only happens once for a limited amount of time. A download has to be on your server for a long long time and you need to have the bandwith to let people download and the engineers to keep the download server running. True I guess at the end it's cheaper especially with the fuel cost being damn expensive, but you should not underestimate the cost of having your download server running 24/7.
There is also not a endless pool of coders and artist and especially not skilled artist. Yes everyone these days seems to be thinking they know how to program becuase they know some HTML or Java. Being a skilled programmer just aint that easy. True they could recruit some cheap people who drop out of university, but considering that when a programmer makes a mistake it could potentially cost a lot of money having some skilled team is really worth it.
and `A simple booth at E3` still will cost a lot of money :P, but I agree I think marketingwise there is a lot that people can save on, but still marketing is importend. Take Coca Cola, they do not advertise to let people know they excist. People know that by now, they just marketing to get there name out there so people do not forget.
Overall the procces should be more steamlined and cheaper. I mean a cheaper brand of engery drink will most likely reduce the cost of an MMO production by 20%!