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http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/07/29/harebrained-schemes-returns-to-battletech-and-kickstarter-this-fall-.aspx

I was burned by Mechwarrior tactics, but I'm still interested in the concept of a turn based Battletech game which looks better than Megamek. I just may not be able to back it while it is the whisper of a ghost, or the shadow of a unicorn's dreams.

Let me know when Mech commander 3 is a thing. Not gonna give a cent before that.

Yeah, after Mechwarrior Tactics (which was both a giant scam and a bad game) gonna wait for other people to test this one out for me for a year or two

I have been looking for a Mecha TBS game for awhile. (I only found about 1 so far.) I have hope for this. Though I didn't like harebrained last game.

What happened with Mechwarrior Tactics?

[EDIT]: I see Mitch Gitelman is working on this? He's one of the originals who worked on MechCommander and MechCommander 2. He's actually where the MechCommander cheat code 'mitchlovesyou' comes from. Good to see him involved.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What happened with Mechwarrior Tactics?

I just had to look it up myself. Looks like things went south last summer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MechWarrior_Tactics

n late August 2014, Blue Lizard Games (cited on the game's website as its present developer) has stated the company had no involvement with MechWarrior Tactics' development since December 2013: "[...]unfortunately our development contract on MWT was cancelled in December last year. Please contact IGP for updates."[2]

Since August 28, 2014 the official website's main page was with no prior warning replaced with a customized Cloudflare HTTP 500 error page stating the website is unavailable due to a 72-hour "extended maintenance" window due to a hardware upgrade.

This led players to attempt contact with IGP in order to demand status updates on the game or request refunds on their Founder Program payments.[3]

Throughout 2013 and 2014 IGP has continued selling Founder Program packages and marketing the game as under development and scheduled for Open Beta "later this year".[4]

Due to these practices continuing in absence of development progress, accusations of scam have been directed at IGP. The discovery that a major portion of the company employees have left their employ has also prompted theories that Infinite Games Publishing may be shutting down.[5]

As of September 18, members of the game's fanbase have managed to obtain a response from Infinite Games Publishing through the company's former CEO Kelly Zmak, stating the game "will be offline for a while longer" but it is not cancelled and "IGP is seeking a new partner/developer and a new hosting location for the game", although with no definite timeline.[6] As of September 20, the message on the game's website has been updated to reflect that statement.[7]

As of early December 2014, the rights to the game were placed on sale as part of bankruptcy proceedings [8] initiated on October 1 and were sold to an unknown buyer.[9][10]

Does anyone know if people got their money back from IGP?

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah, after Mechwarrior Tactics (which was both a giant scam and a bad game) gonna wait for other people to test this one out for me for a year or two

Harebrained seems to be good people. Both of the Shadowrun games that they've released have been well-received, and they have a third one on the way (the Boston game is by a different company). And if Harebrained is involved, that means that one of FASAs founders is, as well.

Eumerin wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah, after Mechwarrior Tactics (which was both a giant scam and a bad game) gonna wait for other people to test this one out for me for a year or two

Harebrained seems to be good people. Both of the Shadowrun games that they've released have been well-received, and they have a third one on the way (the Boston game is by a different company). And if Harebrained is involved, that means that one of FASAs founders is, as well.

Ya at the very least, you can expect the game to be completed. (and likely faster then you expect they are shipping Hong Kong out about six months after the kickstarter.) Quality could be a question depding on what you want. Expect few frills. Harebrained plays it smart with kickstarter money not spending it where it's not needed. (Like I am already speculating that there might not be a character creator, or any gameplay segments outside of a mech. I mean why spend money to model a PC when you could spend that modeling a new mech chassis.)

I kind of wonder how like the source the rules will be. I mean they seemed rather faithful in shadowrun, but boy things could get complex if they don't try and simply some things.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What happened with Mechwarrior Tactics?

All development on the game halted last summer, and a guy claiming to be a dev on the game appeared on reddit (? I think it was reddit anyway) and said that IGP had fired the entire development staff, reasons unknown. This sparked fears the game was going to be shut down, which it was this past December when IGP went under. PGI and MWO were fortunate enough to escape the sinking ship of IGP. MWT was not so lucky, nor was anyone who bought any of the Founders packs as the game doesn't even run anyway.

Not that it ran particularly well mind you.

Does anyone know if people got their money back from IGP?

Yes and the answer is no.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Eumerin wrote:
that means that one of FASAs founders is, as well.

This is not a plus

I remember FASA. Good times.

 LordofHats wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

Eumerin wrote:
that means that one of FASAs founders is, as well.

This is not a plus

Yeah. Let's never forget that FASA shut its doors because they didn't see the future of miniature games going anywhere.

That and they committed so many copyright violations and errors, it can only be attributed to a mild case of stupidity.

It's a pity, really.

 LordofHats wrote:
That and they committed so many copyright violations and errors, it can only be attributed to a mild case of stupidity.

People will fight you on that assertion.

Hey, if it happened just once I'd chalk it up to harmless error. Once you start getting sued a fourth time in less than 15 years, i start thinking you're just not thinking hard

Don't get me wrong. I think Harmony Gold is as big a douche as the next guy, but licensing other IPs for your own fictional universe? Someone should have stood up in the drawing room and said "maybe that's not a good idea."

 LordofHats wrote:
Hey, if it happened just once I'd chalk it up to harmless error. Once you start getting sued a fourth time in less than 15 years, i start thinking you're just not thinking hard

Don't get me wrong. I think Harmony Gold is as big a douche as the next guy, but licensing other IPs for your own fictional universe? Someone should have stood up in the drawing room and said "maybe that's not a good idea."

Amen

What caught my attentio0n to Battletech in the first place..MECHS from Robotech hehe

 LordofHats wrote:
Hey, if it happened just once I'd chalk it up to harmless error. Once you start getting sued a fourth time in less than 15 years, i start thinking you're just not thinking hard

Don't get me wrong. I think Harmony Gold is as big a douche as the next guy, but licensing other IPs for your own fictional universe? Someone should have stood up in the drawing room and said "maybe that's not a good idea."

FASA did it for the same reason that Harmony Gold was able to license Macross - nobody cared back when they did it. I once read something that the founder of Animeigo (one of - if not the - first companies importing anime) posted that described sending his first royalty check to the company they'd licensed a show from, and getting back a question along the lines of, "Why are you sending us more money? You already paid for the license!" No one realized that there was any money in anime in the US, so no one really cared about the copyrights beyond ensuring that the basic purchase was performed. Otherwise, Tatsnunako never would have gotten the international distribution rights to Macross, and Carl Macek never would have been able to get his hands on it for Robotech.

It even took HG a while to figure it out. Macross Plus is only available in the US because Harmony Gold didn't think there was any value to the rights at the time.

And the argument over who owns what with regards to the Macross franchise is another story entirely. That's a mess both here *and* in Japan.

So yeah, FASA purchased the rights to a number of images. And if things had continued on as they were at the time when Battletech was first created, then no one would have filed lawsuits against the company. FASA's problem was that the world changed, and FASA didn't notice until it was too late.


(on a related note, Do You Remember Love was licensed in the US twice, and no one knows exactly who owns the rights these days due to bankruptcies)

Japan sorted it all out way back in 2002. It's just the rest of the world that hasn't caught up

And no. It had nothing to do with the world changing. It had to do with companies using really loosely worded and vague licensing agreements, who then created more loosely worded licensing agreements.

Either way, the whole "we made our own fiction universe but licensed all our robots from other franchises" should have been an immediate flag for the "not a good idea pile." Cause... It's just not a good idea.

 LordofHats wrote:
Japan sorted it all out way back in 2002. It's just the rest of the world that hasn't caught up

And no. It had nothing to do with the world changing. It had to do with companies using really loosely worded and vague licensing agreements, who then created more loosely worded licensing agreements.

Either way, the whole "we made our own fiction universe but licensed all our robots from other franchises" should have been an immediate flag for the "not a good idea pile." Cause... It's just not a good idea.

The G1 Transformers disagree with you (except for Jetfire, of course).


As for the rest, you're not paying attention to what I wrote.

Back in the early '80s, when Battletech was being created, anime was not viewed as the cash-generator that it would become. If it hadn't taken off like it did, then there wouldn't have been any problems for FASA, as no one would have cared about the use of the images. Fast forward to 1994, and anime is a big deal. Harmony Gold finally wakes up and realizes that it's sitting on a potential gold mine (after belatedly not issuing a C&D for the release of Macross Plus outside of Japan), notices that FASA is using Macross images, and goes after them.

And then FASA realizes that due to the tangled mess that was Macross rights back in 1984, it had been negotiating with a company that never had the rights to begin with.

Chances are that if Carl Macek had never brought Macross over to the US, then Battletech would still be using all of those images because no one would have raised a fuss, and FASA would likely still believe that it had legitimate rights to all of them.

Does this mean that Crimson Skies may also see a return sooner or later?

Eumerin wrote:
As for the rest, you're not paying attention to what I wrote.

Actually I thought you were specifically referencing the legal mess with Robotech/Macross. Which you were. And at least in Japan, that mess got worked out in 2002. It's just that Japanese Courts only decide things in Japan, and not the rest of the world where Harmony Gold sits waiting literally doing nothing but making money off suing people over the rights to Robotech.

If it hadn't taken off like it did, then there wouldn't have been any problems for FASA, as no one would have cared about the use of the images.

Stopping you right there. Copyright infringement is always copyright infringement, whether someone cares you're doing it or not.

Fast forward to 1994, and anime is a big deal. Harmony Gold finally wakes up and realizes that it's sitting on a potential gold mine (after belatedly not issuing a C&D for the release of Macross Plus outside of Japan), notices that FASA is using Macross images, and goes after them.

That's not even remotely what happened, nor is it really relevant to my criticism that licensing art IP from other franchises when making your own fictional universe is a bad idea (and that doing it upwards of a dozen times with a dozen different IPs leaves me questioning the game maker's business common sense). It had nothing to do with people not thinking anime would be a big deal. Seriously, if no one thought it would be a big deal, why would anyone import it in the first place? The issue was that when importing different licensing rights were handed out left and right to multiple companies (for multiple franchises) and then a huge legal siesta started when different companies started butting heads over who had rights to what parts of what franchise. It was poor licensing agreements, which plagues more than just Anime in the early 90's. It hit a lot of marketing sectors. Yey globalism!

^ Part of the issue though is that Japanese Licensing agreements tend to be... Convoluted in general.

FASA had licensed the Robotech images from TCI (Twentieth Century Imports), who did have the rights to distribute Macross related merchandise (namely toys). But Harmony Gold (who erroneously was given in literal English words the rights to the Footage of the series < big translation mistake there). Harmony Gold interpreted that as "we own the show, we own it all" in late 1993. Their attention was drawn to FASA for very different reasons, namely FASA had attempted to enter into a toy contract with a toy maker to produce some BattleTech action figures. The Toy maker turned down the idea, then went ahead and started making the toys anyway. FASA sued said toy maker, cause you know copyright infringement is always copyright infringement, and it turned out said toy maker was working on a deal with Harmony Gold to make so Robotech toys. Que Harmony Gold's massive law suit. FASA basically shuts out everything that wasn't made in house, which at the time, was virtually everything not Clan related.

And then FASA realizes that due to the tangled mess that was Macross rights back in 1984, it had been negotiating with a company that never had the rights to begin with.

TCI did have the rights. The court case that awarded complete ownership to Harmony Gold is, frankly, a travesty of copyright law. But US copyright law is pretty much a travisty in itself so who's surprised? Reediting 3 different animes in a single series and calling it an "original work" has got to be one of the worse arguments that ever won a copyright case in history.

EDIT: And really, that's all just part of why my sympathy for FASA is limited. The whole droids thing with Lucas film, shafting themselves with Microsoft, numerous failed toy lines, multiple rebrandings. Battletech is a good IP created by a band of idiots. There are companies that have been around for a hundred years that didn't make as many critical mistakes as FASA.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BrookM wrote:
Does this mean that Crimson Skies may also see a return sooner or later?

I hope so.

Oh, someone needs to get the rights to Crimson Skies into Fantasy Flight Games' hands. Imagine X-wing with Crimson Sky planes... mmmmmmmm.

Speaking of travesties, that we never saw a sequel to High Road of Revenge, makes me sad on the inside.

Was that the X-Box or PC one?

It was the X-Box game.