Netdevil Memorial

This post is the second in a series. You can find the first 'Nukes in Moscow' here.

The bombing run yesterday ended well. I have a huge Quantar Bounty to work off now, as I ended with a political rating of -78, but I ended up in the galaxy's news for it.

The Moscow Years

The video above was shot earlier today. I remember seeing that station before, first I think in 2015. From the recent article on the Moscow server's main website:

Today is five years since the launch of the server.
I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who provided and provides assistance and support in maintaining the server. And also to thank friends, without their support it would hardly have been possible.
Over the past five years, much has happened in the world of Jumpate. New pilots came, old ones left, many returned and left again to return.

'till it's gone..

To the extent that it was not mismanagement that can be laid at the feet of collapsing companies like 3DO and Gazillion, the mortal wounds to the original JumpGate were dealt in what was referred to as: Episode 2 - Attack of the Conflux.

From an 'O6 piece on GameSpot

Colorado-based game developer NetDevil has announced plans for Jumpgate Episode 2: Attack of the Conflux, a major expansion to its online space simulation game Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative. The expansion will contain a variety of improvements, such as player-owned space stations, a new alien galaxy, a new squad vs. squad combat system, and a streamlined chat interface. In addition, Episode 2 will include new pirating technology and several new ship types.

"Our players have been telling us what they want to see in the game, and we've been listening," said Scott Brown, president of NetDevil. "This new episode will add features they want and revolutionize the Jumpgate experience for players new and old."

One of those things they didn't realize (as far as I can tell) that JumpGate had going for it, was the illusion of development immersion. Perhaps it was a matter of publisher-decision making that caused them to decide to bundle development into a yuuuuuge expansion.

Throughout the beta, and I believe up until this point in 2006 - additions to the game were ongoing and incremental. The best part though, was that they made the players work for them through "faction missions." While I'm sure the faction missions were levied on the players following the yuuuuuuge expansion, the illusion was still shattered. With the ongoing development and mission races (the factions would compete to finish the missions to get the new toys first), the universe felt more alive and dynamic.

From a community website Chrome now claims is unsafe:

Also remember loads of us working our asses off to get the substance transceivers operational on EU as part of another TRI mission, and upon it being completed seeing the first KTRI broadcasts being sent out over chat and to the last day having KTRI still broadcasting from something we'd essentially flipped the switch on ourselves through building the transceivers, actually left quite the impression.

Here's a big list of features were working on for months while you get nothing new... put a layer of separation between the players and the game. It isn't particularly obvious on the surface, but for those months the expansion was being worked on, the player-community felt it.

Of course, this was long before the season pass model of ongoing game development that has since arisen.

####- GG
Swing by tomorrow for the next post in the series - or 'Follow' me and I'll 'Feed' you posts regularly :)