Without a doubt, turn-based gaming has given me my best gameplay memories. Am I the only one? Jagged Alliance. Silent Storm. Master of orion. Panzer General. X-COM. I would put this bunch against anyone's list any day.

Actually, in the original thread on this Chris posted here, saying JA in real time was an idea he originally enjoyed.

He's not so sure now.



I never thought it was good. JA was always a chess game, all about absolute control over your decisions. Real-time makes you a spectator as AI takes over. I can't stand it. As I've said a few hundred times, Freedom Force was on my PC for about 10 minutes before I had to uninstall in frustration over the control.

its just more name-drop garbage... did anyone think that "UFO aftermath" was going to be like Xcom?? its just a way to tap into whats called an "established fan base" - but they probably didnt realize what kinds of fans they would be getting on this one

so much money, where does it all come from? we're paying for democracy, never mind the bomb... so much money, what does it do? it puts them in power where they shit on you

- Subhumans

But Ian Currie was the man behind the entire series. Its all a moot point though, i bet Chris's design wasnt even passed to the new developers since the new design is pure real time which will alienate all the fans of the series. And i am sure Chris would not have designed that.

Funny that Sf would break soo much from the original idea to try to gain extra market... but the fans of the original series most likely wont want to have anything to do with this one.

Thats suits for ya..

No one on the team will be working on the new game, so, they might as well call the game something else, it will have nothing to do with the original classics.

It makes a huge difference monetarily for Strategy First to call the game something else other than Jagged Alliance. For instance, the amount of money SFI gets per copy sold is much lower for a 3rd party product (like COPS 2170 or Etherlords) than for one of it's internally developed licenses (Disciples) where most of the proceeds are kept (minus distribution and return fees, roughly 20-30%). Also, for it's own titles SFI is able to pocket money from international deals or in this case, give over rights to certain territiories to another publisher and consider that as payment for the development costs. That's pretty much the deal going on with Mistland and another publisher. That's also the reason Misland is involved with Disciples 3, but I won't go into that story just yet. Anybody who's followed SFI's publishing practices over the last few years, will notice the strong pattern of repackaging old games as Gold Editions and later bundling the Gold Editions together and selling them as 6-packs for 20 bucks. Well for internally developed products or owned IP's SFI is able to "legally" keep the money from those products. I say legally, because SFI has a record of keeping all the cash for 3rd party developed titles and getting sued after, but that's a whole other story.

Now that SilverStar recently purchased SFI, I suspect things are likely to get worse for the consumer.

Linda Currie and Chris Camfield did some of the initial design. That's the extent of their connection to these new JAs.

Having them do the initial design means nothing, too, without them overseeing it.

The ENTIRE JA2 team was sacked by strategy first.

No one on the team will be working on the new game, so, they might as well call the game something else, it will have nothing to do with the original classics.

I'm wary of game advertising in general.

Aside from the point you mentioned (which is creepy), and that most advertisers would prefer their ads be noticed (aka distracting) and takes art direction away from the team, I just don't trust where the money would be going.

With network TV the ads are kept apart from the entertainment, and funds the entertainment. With Hollywood the ads often distract (usually?) and the money tends to go into pockets rather than subsidize production.


In games, would the ads be putting money into pockets, or would the money be used to fund an extra month of development to assure quality?

I somehow doubt the latter.

I can already see the day where, after booting up the next GTA or NFS or whatever for some single-player action, you are unable to, since the STEAM-like servers are down and therefore unable to load that day's commercials into the game.

Realtime, yet the owner of the rights and US publisher, Strategy First, has been maintaining that it isn't a real-time game.

Richard is the owner of SF:
http://www.strategyfirst.com/forum/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=47;t=000134#000002



Mistland works cheap. Their products have been awful, without exception. And the only man standing by the potential quality of JA3 and JA3D seems to have no knowledge of the design docs.

Bad news.



Anyone know what happened to the JA2 team? About two years ago they put out a PR announcing their availability. I haven't heard much since, so I somewhat doubt they are still intact.