Gearbox and Homeworld, Stardock and Star Control...

[tuftears]

When THQ went bankrupt, they sold all their IP off. Gearbox, makers of Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines, acquired the Homeworld license.

Now Atari is out of the picture... and Stardock, makers of Sins of a Solar Empire and Fallen Enchantress, has acquired the Star Control license.

Both are quite competent developers, but neither are the group of developers that originally authored the IPs. For Homeworld, that would be Relic, or maybe Blackbird Interactive, created by Homeworld developers out of Relic. For Star Control, that would be Toys for Bob. So it's going to be interesting to see what both developers make out of these highly celebrated and yet long fallow epic space game trademarks.

I'll certainly be keeping an eye on them both!

Comments

[octantis.livejournal.com]

It depends on a lot of factors. Gearbox did a great job with Borderlands, which was, I think, an original IP. Aliens: Colonial Marines was an unmitigated disaster. In both cases, however, they exhibit an approach with DLC that I don't feel would mesh well with Homeworld's style. If they're smart, they'll get the people who worked on the original and possibly those that worked on Cataclysm (Which was Naughty Dog I think). One of the huge things about Homeworld was the feel it evoked, which was accomplished with a very spare approach, and Gearbox seems pretty heavy handed in the best of circumstances. Still, if they can't equal Homeworld 1 or Cataclysm, topping Homeworld 2's writing and balance might not be that tall an order. I don't know how many of Homeworld's original creators were in on that project, but the fantasy styled quest for the magical cores to find Excalibur and slay the generically aggressive Vagyr did not seem like their style.

I only know Stardock for Sins of a Solar Empire, but with that sci-fi background, and the age of the Star Control series, I think they may stand a decent chance of producing something that steps up. Still, it's a daunting prospect, since Star Control 2 was such an unusual alchemy of great writing and creativity. This'll be interesting to watch.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

We do know Gearbox is going to start out by doing a HD remake of Homeworld and Homeworld 2, which is a step in the right direction-- it's a good sign that they are going to immerse themselves in the aesthetics of the original games, rather than start out immediately with a massive reboot and direction change.

At least some of the original people who worked on Homeworld are working at Blackbird Interactive on a new project, 'Hardware: Shipbreakers' (http://blackbirdinteractive.com/) which greatly resembles Homeworld in terms of mechanical aesthetics, though it's situated on a desert planet rather than in space. Thus, those people may be just plain unavailable. Also, they didn't get any rights to the Cataclysm IP, as no one really knows who has that now. IP law is so weird.

Stardock is definitely planning a reboot of Star Control. I saw a forum post suggest that they only had the IP, they didn't get the rights to the Star Control 2 content (i.e. artwork/races) so if that's true, the new Stardock Star Control game would have some pretty hard ground to break in order to win hearts.

But, I don't really see how that works. Sure, the art itself may be copyrighted, but one can't really trademark races and designs.