Funcom opens up videogame license of Conan and other Robert E. Howard IPs to other developers

[rusty_shackleford]

Still don't understand who told cryptobros there was a goldmine in gaming. It's a product with absolutely no target audience.
"Playing this game gives you fake money that I made up!"
ok cool, and the game....?
"It's complete shit. But you can possibly make money!"


Oh wow just what I wanted, another job.

They all remind me of my one brother who constantly thinks of and exclusively discusses how to make money.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Still don't understand who told cryptobros there was a goldmine in gaming. It's a product with absolutely no target audience.
"Playing this game gives you fake money that I made up!"
ok cool, and the game....?
"It's complete shit. But you can possibly make money!"

Gamers play insanely boring games religiously. I think trying to getting gamers hooked on mining crypto in shitty games was a fantastic idea.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Still don't understand who told cryptobros there was a goldmine in gaming. It's a product with absolutely no target audience.
"Playing this game gives you fake money that I made up!"
ok cool, and the game....?
"It's complete shit. But you can possibly make money!"

Gamers play insanely boring games religiously. I think trying to getting gamers hooked on mining crypto in shitty games was a fantastic idea.

Yes, but not for money. Once you can count how much your time is worth - pennies an hour btw - you're going to do something else.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Still don't understand who told cryptobros there was a goldmine in gaming. It's a product with absolutely no target audience.
"Playing this game gives you fake money that I made up!"
ok cool, and the game....?
"It's complete shit. But you can possibly make money!"

Gamers play insanely boring games religiously. I think trying to getting gamers hooked on mining crypto in shitty games was a fantastic idea.

Yes, but not for money. Once you can count how much your time is worth - pennies an hour btw - you're going to do something else.

But they're speculating. They can be fooled into thinkning those penny tokens will be bigger than bitcoin.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

I mean, it's still a good idea. A decent game and a token with good fundamentals could work. After enough time has passed from the crypto crash that is.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I mean, it's still a good idea. A decent game and a token with good fundamentals could work. After enough time has passed from the crypto crash that is.

Most people don't want to play a game to earn money though.
It might work if you exclusively market it in third world countries and Israel.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

The company is gearing up to launch its own cryptocurrency token and is "underpinned by an NFT-powered ecosystem."

Is there anything sadder and indicative of scumminess than NFTs?

It is an odd thing. Nothing quite so similar as oil and water with this combination. Crypto ppl who shill NFTs don't generally give a shit about gaming, and video gamers don't generally give a shit about crypto/NFTs. It's a cynical take, but really the only answer that makes sense is pure profit. Nothing more. The only entities that seem to give a damn about games and NFTs are the companies that hock the products.

NFTs remind me of E-sports. They're both touted as something that everyone is into, you know, the coolest new thing. But when you look around, it's crickets and tumbleweeds. I have some crypto and I know crypto ppl shill NFTs as a 'utility', but a $20,000 picture of a monkey riding a bicycle is not utility. That's just stupidity.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

NFTs remind me of E-sports. They're both touted as something that everyone is into, you know, the coolest new thing. But when you look around, it's crickets and tumbleweeds.

There's a disconnect between the hardcore pleb gamers and the general public. Companies have been dealing with and chasing those players that spend 6 hours a day minimum for a decade on their multiplayer shooter. A demographic that seems to be born without the boredom gene or something. They didn't realse that the general public actually gets bored and wants something new.

 

[AndyS]

Found this amazing article on the subject. This is surprisingly well-written and thorough.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/fe...game-studio-is-teetering-on-the-edge-of-ruin/

But Casais saw something in Dungeon Chop Chop — a way to open up the Conan IP to a new audience. He suggested expanding Dungeon Chop Chop from two players to four and setting it in the barbarian's fantasy world of Hyboria.

The dreaded words. Whenever you hear this run IMO. Turns out Funcom was to blame for why the game exists as a Conan title it was never MK's intention to make it a Conan game apparently.

This seems to happen to Conan with relative frequency, this tendency to make an unrelated game and slap the Conan brand name on it for marketing purposes. Literally the very first Conan game made, for the Apple II, did that and I think it happened with at least a couple of others over the years. I also feel compelled to nitpick that "the barbarian's fantasy world" isn't called Hyboria. It's a fictitious part of history called the Hyborian Age. Conan actually lives in pre-cataclysmic Europe.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

It annoys me that every time a studio closes the industry just says "get out the jobs listings". Not gonna work for Adelaide there are no fallbacks.
The staff would be best abandoning the idea of pursuing game dev as a career going forward. There are better industries to work in.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It annoys me that every time a studio closes the industry just says "get out the jobs listings".

Because they're vermin.
The concept of merit doesn't even enter the mind of a g*medev, the idea that the devs involved could be the reason the studio closed is verboten, it must be some cigar chomping evil white man at the top who is responsible.

 

[Immortal]

When is Conan going to become public domain?

i thought it already was. it's insane that it isn't.

I think part of it is and part of it isn't...


EDIT:
Oh yea this:

Paradox Entertainment claims copyright on all material connected to Conan, yet most of the Conan work has been in the public domain in Australia and the UK since 2006.

Bizarre.

Not an expert on this but it always was explained to me that Conan as a character is trademarked, and that has been reinforced through the comics/movies/games etc. So the writings of REH are public domain in some places, but not the characters?

Dunno - not my area really.

I'm not sure how it works.. it feels like a clusterfuck, the IP has been in a weird grey area forever as several different entities claimed they owned it..
Somehow Funcom now "owns" it and has decided to do.. basically fuck all with it - and so in a last ditch effort they are going to milk it to death - while spinning it as something altruistic.

Any bets on the executives of Funcom (The ones not in prison) covertly pump and dumping the stock on the tail of this announcement ?

 

[Curious_Tongue]

It annoys me that every time a studio closes the industry just says "get out the jobs listings". Not gonna work for Adelaide there are no fallbacks.
The staff would be best abandoning the idea of pursuing game dev as a career going forward. There are better industries to work in.

I have a crazy idea. Hear me out.

Devs could get together, use the many tools available to indie developers, and spend a year or two on project that ISN'T the same cutesy, boring project 10 000 other developers are making.

I understand guys have got families and shit, and year or two off work isn't off isn't on the table. i just find it hard to believe that so many devs need to suckle from the corporate teat and/or have no interest trying to service niche markets the big players aren't bothering with.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://boundingintocomics.com/2022...arian-tv-series-because-of-toxic-masculinity/

New Report Claims Prime Video Abandoned A Conan The Barbarian TV Series Because Of “Toxic Masculinity”​

i hope funcom is ok around that much toxic masculinity, wouldn't want anything to happen to them

 

[udm]

I kinda wish there was a cool singleplayer Conan game with a proper story (or at least an ending instead of endless grind). Exiles I'm not sure if it's comlpeted or still in Early Access, and I don't know how to play that kind of multi-player games anyway.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: someone needs to get the license for the Mount & Blade (or M&B2) engine and make a Conan game out of it. The game was made for Conan-style sword & sorcery romps with mass battles. You can even do text-adventures in it.

I was allowed to show footage of the single player game at the Robert E Howard days festival this year, so you can kind of get a gist of the game from this footage.
https://youtu.be/oMFIrfpEXWg?t=1713

Holy shit this was more or less how my mind imagined the city that the Tower of the Elephant took place in, as well as Taurus and the tower itself! Every. Detail. Is exactly how Howard wrote it.

I would have really liked to see the spider fight though. Shame that wasn't in

 

[Great Deceiver]

With how Rings of Shit turned out, we should all be thankful Bezos didn't pursue a Conan series. It would have been 100% worse than that terrible late 90s show, no question about it.

 

[Curratum]

I just saw the July footage of the SP Conan game. You had me at the chapter select screen where chapters are named after actual REH stories. The detail and adherence to the text in the Tower of the Elephant footage is surprisingly good too, can't wait <3

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I just saw the July footage of the SP Conan game. You had me at the chapter select screen where chapters are named after actual REH stories. The detail and adherence to the text in the Tower of the Elephant footage is surprisingly good too, can't wait <3

it was canceled

 

[Curratum]

I just saw the July footage of the SP Conan game. You had me at the chapter select screen where chapters are named after actual REH stories. The detail and adherence to the text in the Tower of the Elephant footage is surprisingly good too, can't wait <3

it was canceled

FUCK THS GAY EARTH

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[NecroLord]

Honestly,I can't see another badass Conan movie or even video game happening anytime soon,especially in "Current Year".

 

[udm]

In the meantime, here's some badass music by Knut Avenstroup Haugen and Helene Bøksle to make everyone feel better.

Spoiler

 

[bylam]

I kinda wish there was a cool singleplayer Conan game with a proper story (or at least an ending instead of endless grind). Exiles I'm not sure if it's comlpeted or still in Early Access, and I don't know how to play that kind of multi-player games anyway.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: someone needs to get the license for the Mount & Blade (or M&B2) engine and make a Conan game out of it. The game was made for Conan-style sword & sorcery romps with mass battles. You can even do text-adventures in it.

I was allowed to show footage of the single player game at the Robert E Howard days festival this year, so you can kind of get a gist of the game from this footage.
https://youtu.be/oMFIrfpEXWg?t=1713

Holy shit this was more or less how my mind imagined the city that the Tower of the Elephant took place in, as well as Taurus and the tower itself! Every. Detail. Is exactly how Howard wrote it.

I would have really liked to see the spider fight though. Shame that wasn't in

It's in, I just skipped it because I only had the hour. :D

 

[AndyS]

Honestly,I can't see another badass Conan movie or even video game happening anytime soon,especially in "Current Year".

Even when the Jason Momoa movie came out, it was basically DOA because people back then were already not at all interested that kind of traditionally masculine storytelling. It was all about Harry Potter. It took them forever to get the movie made and they kept having to downgrade in their choices for director ("Brett Ratner! You'll love him! He's such a nice Jewish boy!") because no one wants or gets Howard's perspective. They had to settle on the guy they did because he happened to like Frazetta's paintings and they were down to "Eh, fuck it, just make the movie for the sake of making it..." in their thinking.

 

[Strig]

With how Rings of Shit turned out, we should all be thankful Bezos didn't pursue a Conan series. It would have been 100% worse than that terrible late 90s show, no question about it.

Unfortunately there's a new Conan series being developed for Netflix. What's baffling is that Amazon already had Reacher and Terminal List, shows that may not be completely divorced from Modern Sensibilities™ but they are pretty off the course. The first one could be a fine blueprint for Conan and I wouldn't even mind Alan Ritchson, an absolute brick shithouse of a man, playing the Cimmerian himself. Teminal List caused industrial amounts of butthurt among libs and lefties with headlines like "Chris Pratt’s ‘The Terminal List’ Is an Unhinged Right-Wing Revenge Fantasy". Both were massively popular and both were announced after Jennifer Salke took reins of Amazon Studios. Maybe these two weren't considered high enough profile? Or there are still people there who know how to make money with decent stories? Anyway, I miss the times when the news of an upcoming Conan adaptation would be considered good.