It's Already an Outrageous Success
I'm not sure what to say about the outrageously successful Biologic Life, other than I'm happy for them. The company that's selling an implantable chip to monitor your body's every function and diagnosis a disease before it becomes serious is doing really well. It says on their website that they've raised $16 billion in their last round of funding and have recently partnered with the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
Wow. That's crazy! How do they make money?
The company makes money by licensing out its intellectual property and technologies for both diagnostics and therapeutics, as well as partnering with pharmaceutical companies for new drug discovery programs.
They sell an implantable chip to monitor your body's every function and diagnose a disease before it becomes serious? Wow! That sounds pretty cool! They don't have any human trials, but they don't need to. It's already an outrageously successful company that's making money hand over fist. Who could possibly object to the idea of giving people a choice of which disease they get instead of being stuck with one? If you took out the concept of free will, this isn't even unethical. I've tried to understand how this could be a bad idea, but I just can't.
Released: March 2014
Genre: RPG Adventure
Developer: William Shatner Presents Star Trek
Publisher: William Shatner Presents Star Trek
Preamble – The year is 2286, the story takes place about half a century after the events of the Original Series (TOS) and is set in the TOS-Prime Universe that diverged from our own in 1967. The USS Enterprise , NCC-1701, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, departed Earth Spacedock on stardate 2258.3 (the fourth day of November, 2285) on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before.
We'll just have to see how the torch is passed on this generation. The title I'm most excited for is the one by William Shatner. You'll get all kinds of info on TOS from this one including the Deltan Power Suits you wore in TOS and even get some background information on what happened to the Enterprise after its first five-year mission. If Shatner himself directs it then it will be an epic game. I'm sure that Shatner is a great writer as well, although he probably just got someone else to write it for him. He could have the greatest writing staff in the world if he wanted to.
The game is released and it gets a score of 34 on Metacritic. What went wrong? I know they spent a lot of money on the marketing of this game, but that's not what did them in. The graphics are really good, but they seem to have put too much money into that aspect instead of the gameplay and storytelling. I've looked at some reviews on YouTube and it seems like the reviewers thought that this was going to be a full-on RPG adventure, which isn't what it is at all. It's supposed to be a sidescrolling action game, but it was marketed as an RPG.
I really don't know what happened to this game, but I think that if they put more money into the storytelling aspect and less into the graphics, then it could have been a great game. Instead, they got a couple of reviewers that weren't too fond of it and people just heard that and thought that because the graphics looked good then there would be some good gameplay with great storytelling. It just didn't work out for them like that.
The game has gone from a score of 34 to a score of 49. It's still doing pretty well, but it's not what they expected. They were hoping that this would be the next Bioshock and I'm not sure what happened with that one either. If you haven't seen the movie, then you probably don't know about the controversy surrounding its production.
They seem to have fixed their problems by releasing Star Trek Online, although I haven't heard much in regards to that game. The only thing I've heard is that it's pretty much just an online expansion for this game and they are planning on creating a sequel. I'll look at Metacritic and see how that game ends up doing.
There's another company making a new Star Trek game. Tell me more about it!
Released: September 2014
Genre: Third-Person Adventure Game
Developer: Interplay Entertainment's RPG Studio Brisbane Australia (IPEA)
Publisher: Interplay Entertainment
The game sells really well and is a great success! The reviews are phenomenal and the gameplay is fun! This one has been in development for over two years, but it was time well spent. It's an adventure game with lots of exploration, which people have been wanting to see for a long time now. There are no long cutscenes and all of the dialogue is shown through full-motion video. It's the kind of experience that a lot of people have been wanting for a long time and they've finally gotten it.
This game was clearly just in development hell for so long because there were too many cooks in the kitchen, but Interplay didn't know it at the time. They spent tens of millions on an over-the-hump sequel to an old franchise that wasn't even theirs, but still had to make a new game, because they knew that if they didn't then people would think that they had given up on Star Trek. It's a great sequel to the original Star Trek (TOS) and it was worth the wait.
This game gets a score of 84 on Metacritic, which is incredibly high for an indie game. Apparently there are only a few companies that make games that are this high quality and this one got it right. This one has gone over really well and I don't know what else to say about it.
Why is this game just not getting more attention?
Released: March 2015
Genre: Third-Person Adventure Game
Developer: InXile Entertainment (Robert E. Schwalb)
Publisher: InXile Entertainment
This game is absolutely amazing! I can't believe that a lot of people have not heard about this yet. This is an action-adventure game and it's easy to imagine it in the style of the old Star Trek games. There are some really great ideas on display here and I wish that more games had such a clear vision. It's also one of the only Kickstarted games that actually has a positive message and it's beautiful, but it didn't get enough attention. They just don't have the money to market this one.
Conclusion
These games got a lot of attention, but they didn't get enough money to market them properly. They weren't able to get the word out about these games and it's too bad, because they did such great work. I don't know what more I can say about this topic. If you have an opinion, then please share it with us!
New additions and comments:
- I've added a new section called "Other Classic CBS Games" which is just a list of other classic CBS licensed titles that were not Star Trek games. There are some really good ones here like Moonbase Alpha , EarthSiege , Firebird , and Intellivision Lives! .