Kokul’s World

Recently, a game called Darkstar One was released. It was the most recent addition to the space-sim genre that sees release after release that always seems to be the same game, except repackaged with new graphics, sound and story. Gameplay essentially feels the same. Well Darkstar One seemed like a very promising games (like others released before it), and it was a beacon of light and hope for fans of the space-sim genre that perhaps we could revive it after all.

Ever since the big publishers and developers such as EA stopped developing games for the genre and left it up to smaller, mostly European developers to carry on the torch of the genre, the genre has seen a decline ratings such games receive. The games that came out after the big publishers pulled out have the same gameplay elements, and a serious lack of variety from previous games. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t games that broke the mold; however they were plagued with other problems that prevented them from being one of those great games.

Then, in 2003, Microsoft came aboard the space-sim genre’s ship and promised to deliver a new game that would be innovative in terms of gameplay. That game was Freelancer. It was another beacon of light for the space-sim genre because finally a big publisher has decided to dip its toes in the seas of games in the genre. However, Freelancer wasn’t as innovative as promised, but it still kept the genre alive by providing a great storyline, and making the game easy for modders to create mods for, thus prolonging its life even to this day. 

Two years later, Egosoft released their third space-sim game X3: Reunion. The game has a lot of innovative gameplay techniques that expand on the open-ended gameplay established by previous games - trading, taking on missions, exploration, piracy, etc. These expansions on gameplay include the ability to own multiple stations, own multiple ships, have a fleet of ships following you, build factories to make goods and equipment, and establish satellites to monitor areas for you. It was a very promising game like others, however in the end, it was also crippled by other problems. The largest problem was that X3 had a very steep learning curve, about the angle of 70 degrees. There is no in-game tutorial to teach you the controls. The manual is very skimpy and lacks enough information to teach newcomers anything about how to play the game. Such lack of support for newcomers is what drove many away from the game.

So what does this mean for the space-sim genre? Well, it means that we need the big publishers and developers to come back to the genre. Smaller European developers are fine, but most of them don’t like to stray away from the gameplay that is already in previous games. Many European developers in the genre such as Ascaron Entertainment just like to copy what older games had to offer in hopes that maybe what made that older game a classic will make their game better (and they are completely wrong, it just makes it more boring).