Dear Mr. Smart,
In response to your question, would I purchase Freespace 3? In a word: maybe. If it was produced by a competent, proven developer, on a reasonable timeframe, and respected the style and content of the Freespace universe, yes, I would purchase Freespace 3. However, if you developed Freespace 3, I almost certainly would not purchase the game. I have nothing personal against you; it is a simple matter of history.
Mr. Smart, your personal history in the games industry has consistently confirmed your complete lack of talent as a game developer. As a designer, you are unparalleled in your sense of grandeur and scale, but you have never, in your multi-decade career, proven that you have the capability to produce an even mediocre product. You have consistently produced inferior, incomplete products that are broken on multiple levels and have never garnered more than "merely adequate" ratings. You describe a potential Freespace 3 title as "totally BELOW my current skill levels and experience," but a quick glance at the overall reception of the Freespace Games by the gaming community (
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/197099.asp?q=freespace ) (
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/188670.asp?q=freespace ) will reveal that your own "talents" are actually far below the talents of the developers of the original Freespace games (
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/561677.asp?q=universal%20combat ) (
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/468719.asp?q=battlecruiser ) (
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/196719.asp?q=battlecruiser ).
Despite your inability to actually produce anything near as grand as you concieve of, you are undeniably a dreamer, and in that regard you are an artist. I loved the concepts behind BC:3K, BC:M, and UC, but the horrendous problems that have plagued your entire developmental career are too many and too prolific to ignore. Speaking to you as a fellow artist (I'm an animator) I believe that your single greatest problem is that you absolutely lack the ability to accept criticism of your work, especially when it is well-founded, and this had led to the constant repitition of problems with every single game you have ever released. The same problems keep rearing their heads in every game you produce: awkward interfaces, broken and missing features, dated graphics, low production values in general, fatal bugs, and generally too much vision and too little realization.
Every time criticism is leveled at you, rather than acknowledge the criticism and adapt your product to it, you ignore, discredit, or belittle the individual criticising you. In fact, as recently as in your UC:EtE press release you seek to discredit your critics' understanding of "the way things work" with your statement: "A lot of people criticized the graphics engine in our previous game, not realizing that with a game of such size and scope, several sacrifices have to be made or the game would be unplayable." Rather than acknowledging that "yes, our graphics are dated, we're going to update them," you attempt to paint your critics as people who "don't get it."
This and your perchant for stretching the truth, your constant generation of excessive hype, your resorting to personal attacks on your critics, and your general lack of humility and acceptance of your limitations as a developer have made you a poor candidate to bear the Freespace torch.
Also, Mr. Smart, in reference to your comment:
"As for the mods, of course they HAVE NO RIGHT to exist and cut from the copyright holders profits. No business would succeed that way."
You are correct in one sense: the mods definately have no right to exist. However, the second half of your statement, the claim that "no buisness would succeed" if mods were widely created and distributed, and that mods "cut from the copyright holders profits" is a blatant falsehood. Given that mods can extend the life of a game far beyond its initial shelf-life and can, in some cases, make a great game far more successful than it ever deserved to be (for example, Desert Combat and Counterstrike). It has never - nor, I believe, will it ever be - proven that mods eat into the revenue of a game.
In summary, Mr. Smart, you are not the right developer for the Freespace franchise, and - based on your history in the industry that you tout so much experience in - any product you produce will be an ambitious but hopelessly flawed piece of garbage.
Respectfully,
-A gamer.