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Who owns the rights to System Shock, and why don't we have a System Shock 3?

I don't know who owns the rights, but in a major abandonware portal the IDSA didn't go after System Shock even though they went after a lot of other games. So it looks like Electronic Arts doesn't care about SS or overlooked it.

Brian

EA still holds the rights to the System Shock title, and you know that they'll hold onto a liscense forever, even if they never do anything with it.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:EA still holds the rights to the System Shock title, and you know that they'll hold onto a liscense forever, even if they never do anything with it.

Except that they didn't hold on to Thief, so that statement really isn't true.

Hotfoot wrote:

DPDarkPrimus wrote:EA still holds the rights to the System Shock title, and you know that they'll hold onto a liscense forever, even if they never do anything with it.

Except that they didn't hold on to Thief, so that statement really isn't true.

Except that Thief was owned by the company that actually made the game, IIRC.

And on the subject of Bioshock, there's a huge 6-page interview here on IGN.

brianeyci wrote:I don't know who owns the rights, but in a major abandonware portal the IDSA didn't go after System Shock even though they went after a lot of other games. So it looks like Electronic Arts doesn't care about SS or overlooked it.

Brian

You can (or could) actually get the original Shock from Through the Looking Glass.

Heh. System Shock 'inspired' game, on a 360? Recipe for crapness.

It looks sorta promising. The Art Deco style certainly catches my eye, and the promise of open ended levels and gameplay is tantilizing, but the interview makes it sound like you'll face but two varieties of enemies on any regular basis, and that sounds a bit two limited for me. I could, of course, be wrong.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Except that Thief was owned by the company that actually made the game, IIRC.

And on the subject of Bioshock, there's a huge 6-page interview here on IGN.

System Shock and Thief were made by the same company, and even used the same same engine for Thief and System Shock 2. If there was some difference between who owned the rights to the property, I've never heard of it.

So far, it looks good. To be honest, I'm rather glad they're not going back to System Shock proper. They really didn't work out the storyline for SS2 that well, and while they left it open to a sequel, the reality bending stuff was just messed up, and if they kept that, I'm not sure how seriously we could take it, but hey.

While I would very much like to see a good, believable, Sci-Fi survival horror game, this will do as well.

Well, it's still sci-fi, I think.

I'd like a remake of the original System Shock, personally. You could re-use all the voice, it's perfect already.

What made System Shock what it was? You wake up, and instantly you know something is terribly, terribly, wrong. You were all alone, it was kind of scary, SHODAN constantly taunted you. There's bodies, blood on the walls, cyborgs, mutants- and the all important logs of the dead lying around telling the story (in disjointed, out of time fragments) of what went wrong in the 6 months you've been recuperating from your surgery.

It was just freaking awesome, and SS2 managed the same, for the most part (the end got a little weird).

It seems much more steampunk than sci-fi, but that could just be me.

Stark wrote:Heh. System Shock 'inspired' game, on a 360? Recipe for crapness.

Actually, System Shock 'inspired' a game for PC. Bioshock is meant to be a spiritual sequel for the System Shock 2. It's been in the works since before people outside Microsoft knew about the 360. It being in a platform other than PC is new. Though seeing what focus on the console market did to Oblivion, I'm trying not to be too optimistic.

Hotfoot wrote:System Shock and Thief were made by the same company, and even used the same same engine for Thief and System Shock 2. If there was some difference between who owned the rights to the property, I've never heard of it.

That company, Looking Glass Studios, died though. Becoming possibly the most mourned name in videogame history, for those with a clue. The rights to Thief and Shock did not stay together, as they had been published by different companies (Origin and EA for Shock, Eidos for Thief). In fact, I think the Shock rights are splattered all over the place in an incredibly messy fashion, so there's never likely to be another game without anything short of divine intervention.

Read about this in a game informer. Sounds really neat since advancing your abilities involves mugging children, draining dna from them and modding yourself with it. Mature rating, here you come.