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System Shock 1 livestream with commentary from original Looking Glass Studios developers

Infinitron

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https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=6963.0

Hello friends,

MAHK here, LG programmer from back in the day.

System Shock is turning 20 this month!

To celebrate, I'm going to be live streaming the game this Sunday, 9/21. I'll start at 1pm pacific. I'll be doing commentary and telling development stories and probably reloading my save game a lot. I've asked some other Shock devs to call in and help with the commentary, and it seems likely that some of them will be around.

The twitch channel will be here: http://twitch.tv/algorithmancy.

Hope to see you there.

Salt the Fries!

- MAHK

P.S. Tell your friends!

"MAHK" is Marc LeBlanc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_LeBlanc

Thanks CyberP
 

LESS T_T

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Also LeBlanc having a Q&A thread there, it has a plenty of interesting info bits: https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=6971

A year or so ago I approached some contacts from EA about the possibility of licensing System Shock in order to kickstart a sequel. It turns out that the IP is pretty legally entangled; EA owns some, and other entities might have pieces of it from the LookingGlass closure. So getting all the IP in place would require a lot of legal research, even before the actual deal-making starts. So a System Shock in name is not likely to happen.

That said, I do think there's room in the space of possibility for a reboot or redux of some kind, but I don't know of any plans to do so. I'm pretty happy with my current gig doing R&D at Riot Games.

:(
 

Outlander

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Night Dive studios put System Shock 2 on Steam, along with other oldies like the Tex Murphy games and Wizardry 6, 7 and 8. Maybe LeBlack should contact them.
 

Unkillable Cat

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System Shock being in legal hell is not a new thing, but I have to say I'm surprised that there has been little to no movement about trying to resolve that entanglement.

I think it's better for everyone to just start fresh with a new IP. The biggest problem? Everyone will accuse them of ripping off Bioshock... :roll:
 

pippin

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System Shock being in legal hell is not a new thing, but I have to say I'm surprised that there has been little to no movement about trying to resolve that entanglement.

I think it's better for everyone to just start fresh with a new IP. The biggest problem? Everyone will accuse them of ripping off Bioshock... :roll:

I'd say most modern media people are aware that bioshock is the spiritual successor of SS, so that shoudln't be a problem. My guess is that legal guys prefer to focus on Bioshock's current fame than trying to resurrect a 20 years old game.
 

Baron Dupek

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There is already 2 games like SySo so (Consortium and one WIP - Solarix that wasn't funded like other scams) so no need to swim in IP hell. Anyway, it doesn't have anything unique that didn't appear in old horror movies to do some "spiritual succesor" aka raep.
And why I'm not suprised with thing like big publisher doing kickstarter by some devs?

Brb, gonna check Mods section of that forum...
 

MrBuzzKill

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Where is the video? There's only a 8 minute vid where nobody is talking and the game is on pause most of the time.
 

taxalot

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I'd say most modern media people are aware that bioshock is the spiritual successor of SS

Remember when The Who got accused of trying to become famous by complaining about a song from One Direction that sounded familiar ?
 

grudgebringer

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Dammit, I won't be able to watch it at that time. Can anyone record the stream and upload it to youtube later?
 

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Morkar Left

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Should have looked at the timestamp... I saw it yesterday and thought it was already done. Damn flu...
 

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Most important tidbit: LBP (the metric for contamination) stands for Lord British Penises. Keep that in mind next time you play the game and see you have 10 LBP. :D
 

LESS T_T

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Also LeBlanc having a Q&A thread there, it has a plenty of interesting info bits: https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=6971

Can you explain why the Underworld series was ultimately abandoned in favor of other, sometimes risky projects such as Terra Nova and Dark Camelot/Thief? If the UW3 pitches would have been successful, what would UW3 have been about?

I don't really think that "abandoned" is the right word there. First of all, Terra Nova was in development for a long time. I'm pretty sure it was started during Underworld 2, so it wasn't really viewed as a replacement for Underworld so much as a second franchise along for it.

Thief was supposed to be the game whose profits would fund Underworld 3 or something like it. In our minds, Underworld 3 was the risky project to do, because it was going to be huge in scope. At the time we started the Dark Project, we were looking at ourselves and looking at Id and it was pretty clear that Id was kicking our butts on the bottom line. We were looking for something closer to the Id model: something that was more about building out the next gen of tech and doing the simplest game that could use that tech. But we didn't want to just do a shooter and dive into the red ocean alongside id. We wanted our own angle. Unfortunately it took us a really long time to find that angle, and by the time it was Thief it wasn't really a simple game anymore.

Had LG survived, I think we probably would have tried to release Underworld 3 sometime around 2003, after Thief 3. I imagine the game would have looked alot like an Elder Scrolls game, but in more of a LookingGlass style.

...

As you mentioned id Software, how were you influenced by them, other than on a technical level? System Shock was years ahead of its time but lost commercially to its contemporary "simpler" ego shooters. Did you guys ever wanted to, or were you ever pressured into sacrificing elements of the game in order to cater to pure shooter fans?

I don't think we ever thought about catering to pure shooter fans, and I certainly don't think we really wanted to dive into the red ocean with everyone else. I do think we were looking for ways to leverage our tech on shorter, cheaper projects that would help us build momentum for the next big thing. Id was good at that.
 

grudgebringer

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So, they were trying to compete with Id. Nice.
 

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