{"id":6792,"date":"2012-05-11T07:57:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T11:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/?p=6792"},"modified":"2013-07-03T11:47:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T15:47:24","slug":"master-of-orion-4-cause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/master-of-orion-4-cause\/","title":{"rendered":"Master of Orion 4 Cause"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6793\" title=\"Master of Orion\" src=\"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/master_of_orion.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/master_of_orion.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/master_of_orion-300x135.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There is no Master of Orion 4 in kickstarter, at least not yet to my knowledge. Yes, projects seem to open every 5 secs :)<\/p>\n<p>The reason for this post is to explore what the community thinks of the possibility to have a new Master of Orion sequel come to life in the near future. Would you support such cause? If someone showed up on kickstarter proposing to make Master of Orion 4, with or without the IP rights (without it would be renamed to something else) would you back that up?<\/p>\n<p>The question has been asked many times. &#8220;Why is there no Master of Orion 4 yet? Or even not planned?&#8221; The reasons are probably multiple. A combination of IP issues with lack of interest of the big publishers and the consensual conclusion that Master of Orion 3 was not that successful. And probably the understandable fear of not being up to the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>A blog member said this today, in a of challenge to the community:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It obviously became popular to ask the community for support and it feels like the site is full of those. <strong>I wonder why the community doesnt start a project on their own \u2013 paying a group to do what we like them to do.<\/strong> that would be the step that would make me pay aswell.<\/p>\n<p>I want my real master of orion 3 with turn based combat which is the leading vote option for combat mechanics here aswell and it doesnt matter if everything is renamed due to copyright problems but i guess that would have a lot of followers.<\/p>\n<p>this board might be the place to start something like that cause i am pretty sure everybody waits for the next moo2 for years now.&#8221; ~Cristo (SS blog member)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a passionate thought. Wouldn&#8217;t it be great to have a new Master of Orion?<\/p>\n<p>In a poll I run a year ago, people expressed their desire for a new Master of Orion to come to life. The question was &#8220;Is this how you feel about a next 4x sci-fi game? &#8220;Really, I just want Master of Orion 2 with better AI, graphics and LAN support&#8221;&#8221;. There was a total of 133 votes. The answers were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Absolutely! Give me Master of Orion IV or similar, quick! (99 votes)<\/li>\n<li>Not at all. Done MOO2. Give me something different (15 votes)<\/li>\n<li>I didn&#8217;t play\u00a0MOO2 (10 votes)<\/li>\n<li>I have mixed feelings about that. If it comes great if it doesn&#8217;t great also (9 votes)<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m not familiarized with MOO2 (3 votes)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a tiny sample but it showed how the community felt back then (April 19, 2011 to be precise).<br \/>\nNote: The text of the question is from zigzag, a member here. That&#8217;s where I took the inspiration to make the poll in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>And, there is already something like this called <a  title=\"FreeOrion\" href=\"http:\/\/www.freeorion.org\/index.php\/Main_Page\" target=\"_blank\">FreeOrion<\/a>. These guys have a tight community that decided to make a new (free) Master of Orion type game. But, they are taking a long time to make progress (although good progress) because organization is difficult and money (and time) is a big problem.<\/p>\n<p>So, what would be the right kind of model for making a MoO4 happen in the sort term? Is this a dream? A fantasy?<\/p>\n<p>I imagine that one possibility (thrown by Zptr forum member) was to &#8220;call&#8221; Steve Barcia (Simtex founder and Master of Orion lead designer) to see if he&#8217;s interested in doing something. This is probably the best thing to do first since Master of Orion is his baby.<\/p>\n<p>Or perhaps some should contact Atari to see what are the possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Or, the community gets together\u00a0under the same roof and decides to launch a fund-raising campaign of some sort and then recruit a dev team to make the work? We could use space sector for this.<\/p>\n<p>There are certainly positive and negative aspects to consider in this kind of endeavor. Here are a few examples:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Positive aspects<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Benefit from today&#8217;s better technology<\/li>\n<li>Take\u00a0advantage\u00a0from today&#8217;s new paradigm of games funding through crowdfunding platforms such as kickstarter or Indiegogo<\/li>\n<li>Experience a new Master of Orion experience with all the mechanics and game design principles that Simtex used to make it great in the first place (such as deep customization, lots of trade-offs, ship design model, simple and clean UI, charismatic races, leaders and so many other great principles)<\/li>\n<li>Benefit from the nostalgia effect (this one more on the marketing aspects)<\/li>\n<li>Big community and fan-base<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Negative aspects<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IP aspects. Atari owns the rights and seems very reserved about them. Would the new game be successul without being a pure MoO? Something like XCOM: Enemy Unknown vs Xenonauts?<\/li>\n<li>Organization aspects. If the community starts the project, &#8220;who is gonna decide what constitutes a worthy successor,\u00a03D engine, 2D engine, realtime combat, turn based combat, ground combat, no ground combat, everybody will have different opinion&#8221;~Smight (blog user)<\/li>\n<li>There is a substantial amount of space 4X games on the market of recent (Armada 2526, Star Ruler, Distant Worlds),\u00a0and to come (Endless Space, Legends of Pegasus and StarDrive) And other indie titles on the making that we don&#8217;t know yet. Is it\u00a0worthwhile to push for a new Master of Orion when practically everybody takes MoO as an inspiration to design new space 4X games?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what do you say?<\/p>\n<p>Would you, in principle, support a cause to produce a true Master of Orion new sequel or a reimagined remake through a kickstarter campaign or any other type of fund-raising campaign?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Designer &#8211; Steve Barcia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here is the great Steve Barcia (Simtex founder and Master of Orion lead designer)\u00a0interview to IE PC Game designer to put you on the mood (thanks to Zptr for the find) where Steve talks about Master of Orion and other things.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z5DD0zPOB-A\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"450\" height=\"330\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Community driven Master of Orion 4 fund-raising project idea. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[935,876,726,67,934,936,937],"class_list":["post-6792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-strategy-games","tag-cause","tag-indiegogo","tag-kickstarter","tag-master-of-orion","tag-master-of-orion-4","tag-simtex","tag-steve-barcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}