Back in 1995-96, Flatline Studios, LLC. pitched a game demo to Interplay and they were signed on to do a title which was eventually called AI: Alien Intelligence. Unfortunately, Interplay shelved the title after their unsuccessful IPO (and Flatline's 2 years of development). It was cancelled in 1999 just prior to the retail release.

Flatline consisted of about 20 employees at the time and they were responsible for all aspects of development (video, sound, coding, gameplay, cinematics, etc.) They were royally screwed over in the deal, and the company died after AI was shelved.

Being an avid Starcraft player, I was really looking forwards to the game back in 1998. It was a very ambitious project for it's time and it had the potential to succeed Blizzard's Starcraft. If history played a little different, we might all be playing "World of Alien Intelligence" right now. =]

So, imagine this scenario: It's about one year after Starcraft is first released and another Sci-Fi RTS arises. It has superior graphics, cinematics and sound. You can manage units on multiple planets throughout a universe (which you can also explore) and you can also travel between (ie, trade with), colonize, or conquer other (un)inhabited planets. All of this is in realtime Starcraft-style but with simultaneous land and space combat.. and even planetary bombardment. Oh yeah.

Not only that, but throw in:

- Massive technology research trees (150 levels of tech that you could develop or steal.)
- Six alien species (with their own characteristics, technologies, play styles, and combat strategies.)
- More advanced NPC A.I.
- Over 10,000 ship designs
- A playing field that spans multiple star systems.
- Diplomacy, trade and resource management (4X features).
- Non-linear sandbox-style gameplay in an realtime game universe (more of an epic feel rather than linear missions).
- Superior multiplayer support (LAN, Modem, Serial, and TCP/IP Internet).

(Historical Note: Starcraft 1 provided no method to play TCP/IP games over the internet other than through Battle.net which was extremely slow and unstable at the time. Many players couldn't even access Battle.net due to lack of internet connectivity (school, university netorks, LAN parties). There were also other major problems with Battle.net such as substantial cheating and the inability to locate friends.)

Anyhow, here were some old videos I was able to dig up:





Descriptions for each race:

1. Psionids - "highly evolved, possess strong mental powers that they use to confuse the enemy in the heat of battle."
2. Strixthes - "Insectoid, behave like ants with mindless drones being controlled by a queen."
3. Arkanians - "Insectoid, more like roaches that can construct anything out of garbage - they're also excellent thieves."
4. Munzoids - "Closest to the human race. Descended from Mongolians captured and enslaved by an alien race. The Munzoids are extremely aggressive and never surrender."
5. Metalloids - "Somewhere between Star Trek's Borg race and the T1000 from Terminator 2. Artificially created as servants, their individual thought processors are controlled by a central computer known as The One. They reproduce by absorbing metal and then splitting, amoeba like, in two."
6. Drache - "Dragon-like. These former slaves are skilled workers and can transform a barren landscape into a habitable world."

Here was an old write-up about the game:

"The planets that you colonise will give your race not only a place to grow, but also many resources. At the same time, planets have their own ecosystem which could be upset if you choose to meddle with it. For example, you may decide to eliminate a creature that becomes a pest, but in doing so, the predators that live off those creatures might start viewing your race as an alternative food source.

Once you've successfully populated one planet, you will want to expand and for that you need ships. In addition to outpost and colony ships, there are seven basic hull types for each race, all of which can be customised to some degree. Some of these are ideal for ferrying troops to newly discovered planets, while others are combat specific. Not only can these interstellar behemoths face off against enemy fleets, but they are also capable of bombing planets.

War is avoidable, though: diplomatic relations are a large part of the game and you can maintain neutrality, enter into hostilities or even form an alliance with another race. Trade is another area and will provide you with resources that you cannot get for yourself and money, which goes towards the development and running of your colonies.

Naturally, careful resource management is central to the success of your empire. For your colonies to flourish, you need sufficient food, as well as plenty of buildings and structures. You can't have buildings without metals, which must be mined, and power, which is derived from radioactives. And of course, you can't build anything without money, which you'll need for units, ships and structures. Fortunately, resource management is made easier because materials can be used anywhere, not just in the area they were acquired."

I was sitting on this blog post for quite a while now, but I was hoping to get some more information before posting this (e.g. more details, screenshots, videos), but my contact (Eric Smith - former President of Flatline Studios) got a little busy and forgot all about me. =[

Maybe if he finds this blog in his travels, he might get back in touch (I'm looking at you Eric!). Apparently, he still has Pre-Production boxes and a few Demo/Beta CD-ROMs lying around somewhere. I'd love to get my hands on some old videos or screenshots of live gameplay!

While preparing this entry, I also pleasantly discovered a recent post about Alien Intelligence here. Glad to see that it's memory is still being kept alive.

It has been described by some as a Turn-Based Strategy (what MOO3 should have been) and by others as a Real-Time Strategy (like Starcraft but on an epic scale). The demos seem to indicate that most of the game was a real time strategy - so I assume it had a lot of features like a 4X game (ie, resource management, diplomacy, espionage, etc) but there might have been a way to task a NPC to micromanage certain aspects of your empire for you. And, if you had time between building construction, combat, or travelling to other planets, you could do some micromanaging on your own. Without playing the actual game, though, I can only fill in the gaps with my imagination. =]

Oh well. At least I'm comforted in knowing that A.I. Alien Intelligence survives somewhere in a parallel dimension where Interplay made smart business decisions, the game shattered sales records, and my counterpart was addicted to it for several years.

There, I said it.

Free "One-Way" Faction Changes are desperately needed. ("One-Way" meaning that you can only switch factions to side with the small population.)

Almost all realms are imbalanced - they're a complete and utter mess. It's a worldwide WoW issue too and it's not just limited to NA or EU realms.

Blizzard designed WoW to be balanced and they're constantly making minor changes to keep this balance. Because of this symmetry, if something is not balanced it causes a domino effect on all other facets of the world.

- Tol Barad and Wintergrasp are brutal and almost impossible to join. 30 people can join out of 1000 waiting every 2 hours. And it doesn't even matter how early you queue. Nice.
- 30-120 minutes wait times to join a Battleground, only to find out you're outnumbered 15:10.
- So much wasted time and customer frustration. In some cases, even scaring them away from WoW completely.
- PVP growth rates (ie honor gain, collecting gear, etc) are imbalanced, giving an unfair advantage to factions with smaller populations.
- The imbalances have completely reshaped the culture of players: what they do, where they go, what items to make, what to sell items for, what to gather, which guilds to join, who to interact with, who or which areas to avoid, etc.
- Population imbalances effect markets and economies, completely destroying the value of gold and player professions on one side. They're probably doing more harm than gold farmers ever could.

In essence, you're penalized for wanting to join groups or find more friends. Blizzard constantly encourages socialization and joining guilds, but they don't show the fine print.

"Hey guys! Invite your friends! Join Guilds! Socialize! Oh by the way, you'll pay dearly for it."

If by design the World of Warcraft was supposed to be balanced for everything to work properly, why is Blizzard performing several _other_ balancing acts, but not where it matters the most? This is the one item that they're not doing anything seriously about. The only difference between this balancing act and the others is that there's potential profit involved. It's the only reason I can fathom that they're not opening up Free Faction Changes.

The "World" is definitely not working the way it was envisioned and designed. There are constant patchwork jobs for something that's NOT working as intended and yet there's an available fix nearby. Hell, Blizzard.. at least do an experiment to see if it actually works or not! Test it out on one realm, as a "special gift" or "anniversary reward". You'll shut me up (and the others) if it doesn't work.

I'd love to move all of my characters over to the other faction just so that I can PVP again. But there's no way in hell I'll be paying $600.00 USD to do it.

Recently, a U.S. Senator called out the University of California, Irvine on their shameless waste of tax payer's money "studying" World of Warcraft.

Walt Scacchi, a research director at UCI in response stated that "They absolutely don't get what we're doing". This study can only benefit mankind right? I mean.. playing World of Warcraft SAVES LIVES man. They're heroes!

What I didn't understand, though, was that they called World of Warcraft the "World's Most Popular MMORPG". I suppose everyone interprets the definition of a "MMORPG" differently.. and even the whole definition of "subscribers" is pretty flexible.

WoW is certainly very popular in Irvine CA and the rest of the Americas.. but the entire world? I suppose it is popular in some areas of the world due to the massive amount of money Blizzard invests in promotion.. so, it's "very well known". But most popular? Does popular mean most amount of players? I'm assuming so.

So, let's see how WoW holds up against other MMORPG subscriber counts worldwide. Here are some of the largest MMORPG's by population or "popularity" that have listed their subscription figures:

Dungeons and Dragons Online - 2 Million
Knight Online - 4.25 Million
Flyff - 5 Million
Guild Wars - 6 Million
Metin2 - 7 Million
Gaia Online - 8 Million
Lineage 1 - 10 Million
Free Realms - 12 Million
World of Warcraft - 12 Million
Wizard 101 - 15 Million
Silkroad Online - 18 Million
Lineage 2 - 20 Million
Second Life - 20 Million
Dofus - 30 Million
MU Online - 40 Million
DarkOrbit - 50 Million
Perfect World - 50 Million
Scions of Fate - 50 Million
Ragnarok Online - 60 Million
Farmville - 80 Million
Westward Journey Online II - 86 Million
Maple Story - 100 Million
RuneScape - 130 Million
Dungeon Fighter Online - 200 Million

All of these numbers are certainly debatable, but these are the official subscribers counts.. apparently.

So in the end, I wouldn't necessarily call WoW the "World's Most Popular MMORPG". When I heard "World's Most Popular MMORPG" I immediately thought of Maple Story and RuneScape actually. Therefore, it would be much more appropriate and accurate to call it "The Most Well Known Non-Free Non-Browser Client-Based 3D Fantasy MMORPG In Some Parts of the World."

Maybe "World's Most Popular MMORPG" is a trademark or a registered company name that Blizzard owns. You know, like McDonald's "100% Pure Beef" marketing strategy. It's written on their packaging, but "100% Pure Beef" is really just the name of the company that manufactures the processed meat. It doesn't actually MEAN the meat is 100% pure beef though. =]

Red Dead Redemption has been doing exceptionally well and Rockstar just didn't anticipate how successful the game was going to be. But, there's still no update or confirmation from Rockstar whether there is going to be a Red Dead Redemption PC Port or not.

Recently however, I noticed something a little interesting from our favorite little team in Oakville, Ontario.

Rockstar Toronto has been seeing a lot of action these past few months and they're on a hiring spree for new talent. Now, job postings are worded in such a way not to reveal any games that they're working on.. but a recent Senior Animator posting (Dec 17) caught my attention.

Here's what they wrote:

"At Rockstar Toronto, we provide a highly creative work environment and develop some of the most respected and widely recognized titles in video games for current and next-gen consoles including: The Warriors, ManHunt 2, Bully, Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption."

The reason that this is so interesting is that Rockstar Toronto has NEVER been associated with Red Dead Redemption.

If you've read my earlier post on RDR, you'll know that Rockstar Toronto did indeed do a little outsourced work for RDR. However, they were never recognized for that work by anyone, Rockstar Toronto is NOT listed in the credits, and even the R* Toronto and the HQ websites do NOT attribute RDR with R* Toronto in any way! If you check out R* Toronto's release list - Red Dead Redemption is NOT listed. Officially, RDR is not linked to R* Toronto in any way.

This is actually the first time Rockstar Toronto has officially associated themselves with Red Dead Redemption, and Rockstar claims that it's "future" work (ie, "next-gen consoles") too. =]

Very interesting..

Not only that, check out that "At Rockstar Toronto, we provide.." line - it's actually a standard recruiting post that they have used many times. HOWEVER, all of their past job posts only stated "The Warriors, ManHunt 2, Bully and Grand Theft Auto IV." It's suddenly changed in the past week to include RDR. Hmmm...

This all might just be an accident by their recruiting department (ie, either they weren't aware that RDR shouldn't have been associated with R* Toronto OR they accidentally revealed that R* Toronto is working on it.) With RDR being such a huge success though, I'm going to remain optimistic that they'll be working on RDR PC once they get LA Noire out of the way.

In related news, Take Two just filed trademarks for LA Noire related merchandising (e.g. "ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers, graphics, digital music files, videos, films and other multimedia materials" etc.) I guess they're expecting it to be a pretty big hit. I just can't see it though, even the title alone targets a niche market of gamers.

At the same time, they have also filed two other trademarks. The big one was "ROCKSTAR FILMS", a new division of Rockstar that will be producing animated motion pictures starting with Red Dead Redemption machinima. The third new trademark was for Red Dead Redemption films (Note: animated motion picture, not live action). It looks like Take Two wants to do the same thing Bobby Kotick mentioned a few months ago.

* Update:

They've also updated their Rockstar Games and R* Trademarks to include "Animated motion picture films". They have trademarked an animated series, film and "TV programs" planned for LA Noire if it's a big hit.

There's also a trademark for a Bioshock Infinite "live action motion picture", as well as videos, films, and an animated series. (Rockstar has a webpage planned where users can watch animated and live-action series based on their games.) The Line has also been trademarked for films, an animated series, and TV programs. Bioshock was the only one with "live action" mentioned however. =]

It's a good business plan.. might as well utilize those hundreds of idling Cinematic Artists rather than the seasonal firing-and-rehiring process.