What aren't they telling us about?

NeilF

NeilF
While watching one of the documentaries on the making of the original Elite game it was clear David Braben and Ian Bell were worried if news got out of their work, others would copy it.

I wonder how much of Elite Dangerous isn't being mentioned for the same reason.

There must be some cool features they want to tell us about to increase interest in the game, but won't due to the risk of ideas/features being 'borrowed'!?
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Hi Neil.
Firstly welcome to the forum. As your your question, yes it is possible Frontier may be holding some details about the game back (possibly because they are still to be worked out as yet like the latest announcement of Oculus Rift support), but to be honest, if you check out all the discussions on here, you will find a massive amount of detail about many aspects of the game. There is so much in fact that overall it will tell you just how massive Elite Dangerous will be. As for worry about ideas and or features being borrowed, well (for example), it's one thing to say, yes Frontier Developments are going to build a procedurally created galaxy, it's quite another to actually do it ;)

David has extensive experience in this area as does his design team. They will know things about procedural generation and how it will operate that will never be seen by normal players of the game. The real "magic" if you will, will happen underneath the hood of the game with the player seeing the end result. Sounds like magic to me. :D
 
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izzy

izzy
Welcome here Neil :)
Most space sim games was inflenced by Elite. Now there is not a lot of space sim games so I think FD do not really care if some ideas are 'borrowed' ;)
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
NeilF said:
While watching one of the documentaries on the making of the original Elite game it was clear David Braben and Ian Bell were worried if news got out of their work, others would copy it.

I wonder how much of Elite Dangerous isn't being mentioned for the same reason.

There must be some cool features they want to tell us about to increase interest in the game, but won't due to the risk of ideas/features being 'borrowed'!?
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First of all, it's not only fear - every game developer is an artist and wants to have some nice surprises in the bag, especially if you have backers instead of investors as financing source. And every gamer don't want to get spoiled with too much details. This is reason why Newsletters and dev diaries mostly talk about concepts - and that's awesome. I want grasp ideas. I will see realization myself when game will be released.

Second, yes, there's competition out there. FD doesn't have cloud of publisher or huge financing resources, and their success is all about timing. "Surprise" in market usually have more success than "we know almost everything about it".

Said that, FD has been very open about development (without sliding into spoilers territory), and that reason alone has been worth my pledged money.
 

Cosmos

C
NeilF said:
While watching one of the documentaries on the making of the original Elite game it was clear David Braben and Ian Bell were worried if news got out of their work, others would copy it.

I wonder how much of Elite Dangerous isn't being mentioned for the same reason.

There must be some cool features they want to tell us about to increase interest in the game, but won't due to the risk of ideas/features being 'borrowed'!?
Click to expand...

Its a very valid point you raise. I think because the project was crowd funded its a bit hard to keep secrets from the backers. Under normal circumstances a developer wouldn't reveal game details for fear of it being copied and losing competitive advantage. If there is one very real negative about the gaming industry it is the way it makes endless copies and sequels.

I'd be really surprised if there wasn't some sort of NDA for the alpha and beta tests. Can't say its going to be a good idea to have alpha or beta footage of the game plastered all over youtube, but then I am not in charge of these things.

I predict we are going to start to see a lot of space sim's largely because Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen have demonstrated there is a market for the games. And yes, features will get 'borrowed' no doubt.
 

Oss133

Oss133
Well, a friend of mine drinks in a pub in Cambridge and he is quite friendly with the barmaid there. This barmaid, right, well, her mother works in the hairdressers where this bloke goes on a regular basis, right, and he reckons he is the brother of the woman who buys David's jumpers (or clips Josh Atack's toenails, I can't quite remember). Anyway, she swears that FD are looking into OR (you remember? that hospital show with George Clooless, before he got famous, an' that?). So I think it's pretty clear that "Ambulance Driver" is going to be finding it's way into the games career ladder. Expect an announcement soon. And if that's not gem of a tabloid-worthy piece of goss' then I don't know what is!
 

Andrew Sayers

A
NeilF said:
While watching one of the documentaries on the making of the original Elite game it was clear David Braben and Ian Bell were worried if news got out of their work, others would copy it.
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Hey Neil,

Just to back up what Geraldine said - two guys working in a dorm room in the 80's had to deal with very different problems than a large game studio in 2013.

By definition, back then they were only capable of creating as much game as two people could make on a shoestring budget. For all they knew there could have been a super-genius in the next room working on something similar, and one wrong word could have given him an edge.

The actual release process for the original game would have drilled home the famous quote Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats. Getting a game like Elite past a publisher was then (and is now) such a struggle, you don't have to worry about many people doing it.

That was the 80's though. Nowadays, ten seconds on Google will reveal both the lone super-genius chasing you and the major company producing a similar game. A quick look round those sites shows they all have such different visions, they can safely borrow great stuff from each other without risking serious overlap.
 

Kerrash

Kerrash
Hey NeilF, nice to have you aboard commander!

You'll have to be careful around here, if you start another 'rumour and speculation' thread some people might get their tin-foil hats out ;)
 
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NeilF

NeilF
Kerrash said:
Hey NeilF, nice to have you aboard commander!

You'll have to careful around here, if you start another 'rumour and speculation' thread some people might get their tin-foil hats out ;)
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Oh no intent to start rumour and speculation... :)

Just interested in the idea for all the openness we seem to have, especially due to the crowd funding etc, I suspect there's some stuff not out in the open due to Frontier seeing it as unique or pivotal to ED's uniqueness/success.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Cosmos said:
I predict we are going to start to see a lot of space sim's largely because Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen have demonstrated there is a market for the games. And yes, features will get 'borrowed' no doubt.
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It's hard to predict it as ED is months and SC years away to be actually sold on retail. So far they are seen by industry as hobbyists without intent to make "real money" like GTA5. And I would be really happy for things to stay that way (t.i. to let rest of industry to keep on this thought), because big gaming companies *sometimes* only care about short term profit, and with that in mind, is hard to create games like ED or SC.

Question is whatever ED and SC will have enough clout and crowd buzz to get gaming community to try it out. SC has had more success recently in this area, but it's still open question if people will be attracted by this kind of gameplay, and how David and FD will market this. FD has more experience with casual gamers, so it could be their strength. While SC openly carters hardcore PC crowd, because it pushes boundaries of their gaming rings (and not only).

However, in age of Youtube when tons of people share gameplay it is hard to predict what people will do anymore, as traditional news sources play less role here and it's time of Youtube reviewers, which review not only "Last Of Us", but also indie hits like "FTL". It could end up that ED, SC and other space games with successful releases *carve* their own niche bigger and make big industry nervous. Will see.

What I know I will welcome anyone inexperienced to the world of Elite. One reason I backed this I want ED to inspire young minds like it did for me and others.
 
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Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Jenner
Cosmos said:
I predict we are going to start to see a lot of space sim's largely because Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen have demonstrated there is a market for the games. And yes, features will get 'borrowed' no doubt.
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Unless SC and ED's market share is so great (of the potential space sim player base) that there is simply no room for competitors. In that environment you have to do a lot more than simply borrow features - you have to really set yourself apart in order to siphon off players from the elephants in the room.

Of course it's also readily apparent that the market can support more diversity than the big publishers currently think is viable. I'm sure there were a few space mmos pitched that were not picked up simply because no one thought there was room in the market along side EVE. Obviously, given the insane money raised by ED and SC, that's not the case.
 

Oss133

Oss133
Jenner said:
Unless SC and ED's market share is so great (of the potential space sim player base) that there is simply no room for competitors. In that environment you have to do a lot more than simply borrow features - you have to really set yourself apart in order to siphon off players from the elephants in the room.
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Elephants! Yeah!
 

Cosmos

C
Jenner said:
Unless SC and ED's market share is so great (of the potential space sim player base) that there is simply no room for competitors. In that environment you have to do a lot more than simply borrow features - you have to really set yourself apart in order to siphon off players from the elephants in the room.

Of course it's also readily apparent that the market can support more diversity than the big publishers currently think is viable. I'm sure there were a few space mmos pitched that were not picked up simply because no one thought there was room in the market along side EVE. Obviously, given the insane money raised by ED and SC, that's not the case.
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Yet I look at the way the mmo market spawned so many weak clones and saturated the market, eventually turning to F2P/B2P models because they couldn't compete on equal terms with the daddy of them all.

It happened with the likes of the zombie survival game too. Even the Arma 2 mod DayZ was rapidly copied in sickening fashion, what did they call it? 'WarZ'?
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Jenner said:
Of course it's also readily apparent that the market can support more diversity than the big publishers currently think is viable. I'm sure there were a few space mmos pitched that were not picked up simply because no one thought there was room in the market along side EVE. Obviously, given the insane money raised by ED and SC, that's not the case.
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That's not so easy. Game publishers aren't run by gaming geeks. They are run by accountants. For publishers to support game development they need to borrow money and their cost is their credit rating. It is very easy for games like ED or SC "fall" trough the cracks. ED and SC could be reasonably profitable in let's say long term (year or two), but that's too much for publishers, because their creditors keep counters on. So yeah, there is actually things that market can support, but suppliers can't, because profit is not enough to borrow investment. So to develop such games someone can turn to private financing, or....crowd-funding, essentially collecting money for pre-orders (with spicy addons, as backers take risk here too).

So while I could loath publishers as much as next guy, there's solid real life problems behind why we see Elite sequel just now. And if honest, I am happy that it turned this way, because time is right, crowd is right, David has right team it seems. While it would be much easier with publisher, I don't see how anything we see in DDF archive these days could be done with it in command.
 
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