Why is Space Sim Gaming so unpopular?

Maybe this is a good example of why the genre is unpopular. It may be a situation display, but if you call it a map, people get the idea of a map.

The map problem could one day be easily fixed with 3D gaming. A spherical true 3D "situation display" would be pretty cool.

Are there any space sims (or combat flight sims for that matter) that have two pilots per fighter? Now that would be an interesting challenge

Now that is an interesting suggestion! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> Maybe you should mention it in this thread http://spacesimcentr... ... =83&t=2878

Heliosphere has a working cockpit. Perhaps there could be a second seat usable through a co-op mode?

You can. I'd rather not dump an "oh and by the way, you could also add this really cool feature that utterly changes the game and massively increases development time" on someone 🙂

Actually, having thought about it, if the second pilot is a gunner, and the guns can shoot anywhere, the first pilot is going to get the boring job of simply flying around like crazy to avoid getting shot at whilst the gunner gets all the fun job of blowing stuff up!

Off hand the only couple of games I can think off which have tried some thing with two + crew are games like Artemis viewtopic.php?f=69&t=1430

or the Nes version of Elite witch had a two player mode in which one player controlled the ship and other the weapons.

Hi evan9808

Welcome to the SSC <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> And your totally correct, space travel should be the main feature in a space sim. The only other game genre I can think of that uses their environments to the full are sub sims like Silent Hunter, Aquanox or (an oldie) Sub War 2050 as in thermal layers or crush depths. Space also has it's share of hazards and other things for a player to exploit to their advantage and space sims should use their environments to the full also <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Evan makes some good points. hyperspace travel should be more engaging.

And Aquanox, to me, is a space sim...just underwater. wish they would make more games like this.

Depends on who the game is aimed at, Orbitor and the Xplane are simulations not games I think theirs a very big difference between them and and something like Freespace.

Look no further than Babylon5 for a great example of what hyperspace should be like in games.

Well, there is this in the download area <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> http://spacesimcentr... ... -Found_Her

Info here http://ifh.firstones.com/project/faq/

I don't believe that Space Sim gaming is that unpopular, not with the gaming community anyway. . .

I mean look at this place there are hundreds of active members giving feedback to indie devs on their projects. I know this thread was started to bash the mainstream publishers and I have to join in on that given what a certain publisher has done to my beloved JumpGate.

Publishers are being told that games with a quick in and out, like FPS games are the road to making money. They're not prepared to invest in an audience over a long term as the return will always diminish over time until there's none at all. We now live in an age where games and the machines we play them on are disposable and easily replaced over a one or two year period. They look at the hardware, that's still moving forward at a rate of knots and think, if we create a game for this platform how long before a newer platform makes the game obsolete ? What does really annoy me about the current games market is this push to create more and more console titles, forgetting the ever faithful PC gamer who once again will get the shitty end of the stick when it comes to releases, simply down to the fact that publishers can charge more for a console title than they can a PC game.

Yes I know I'm ranting.

The recent failures and closures in the PC market are a pointer to what's to come -

Jumpgate - Closed by the publisher after nearly 12 years of being online, no explanation, no remorse and very little communication with the player base.

Star Wars Galaxies - Closed by the publisher after 8 years because they don't believe there's room for two Star Wars MMO's in the market place.

Black Prophecy - A game that's been hung out to dry by it's own publisher and community, there's so much wrong with game that there's very little chance of it ever being fixed.

Jumpgate Evolution - Vapourware thanks to legal wrangles between publishers and disagreements over the game's direction.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Treats the space aspect of this massive franchise as a mini game in a console title, it's utterly pointless and very unrewarding.

I'm just frustrated with the state of things.

I'd like publishers to think about one simple fact - You can't please all of the people all of the time but you can please some of them all of the time. So give us Space Sim Gamers a break and a game that pleases us and we'll reward you with cash and loyalty. . . .

I was thinking about this dumbing down thing, and it reminded me of a vid I saw on Amibay, its not space sim related but makes the point none the less 😆

The question should really be "Why aren't many people interested in space?"

One could look at a man trainspotting and wonder why he does it. The man trainspotting would probably post on a trainspotting forum "Why is trainspotting so unpopular?"

For whatever reason, space sim gaming-and I'm talking about the exploration type game-is just not appealing to most. Personally I'm proud to be one person to love the hugely time consuming journey across a vast empty place where you know that NO other being has been. But why then?

Here's one theory of mine...

We(the Ones)dont see it as a "game" as such. We use it to explore our fascination. Go the places we wish we could go. Do the things we wish were real. We like space sims purely because we like the idea of space and everything that goes with it and it makes the fantasy as real as we can get.

I stood in the garden on a clear night and looked at the stars and was bewildered. No matter how long I stare out there it never ceases to amaze and humble me. My girlfriend however couldn't care less. She has no interest whatsoever in stars or what they are, or how far away they are, or how long it would take at 3x10^8 metres per second to get there. But thats it. It puzzles me why anyone could not be impressed by the concept of space, but it seems we are in a minority. But Its probably better that way. We are fortunate because the games we do get are created by people with the same interest as us, rather than the big money grabbers who hype a game as much as possible to get sales.

You may ask how people lost interest after the success of the Elite era. Well if you think that most games of that time were 2d platformers/scrollers and at best isometric "3D" games, Elite was just unbelievable. One minute you are playing Dizzy and next you're transporting illegal goods to Riedquat hoping your next hyperspace jump doesn't land you in the lap of the Thargoids.

A thoroughly commendable occupation, is that - much joyous immersion ensues!

I know this is an ancient thread so apologies for the mega necro but I found myself going through it again. The ideas in this thread were amazing, deserved a wee bump and I think, when you look at space sims today, they were not that far off in their predictions.   Its still my hope to see many of these ideas in a space sim one day. Could Elite D, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky or something else finally deliver I wonder.

Star Citizen, E:D, No Man's Sky and I would add Valkyrie are all good getting publicity and drawing more people into playing this sort of game which should in turn should have a knock on effects for the other indie space games where I think the real action is to be found in terms of ideas. As indie developers are more open to try an idea, which a more commercial developer will avoid

Star Citizen, E:D, No Man's Sky and I would add Valkyrie are all good getting publicity and drawing more people into playing this sort of game which should in turn should have a knock on effects for the other indie space games where I think the real action is to be found in terms of ideas. As indie developers are more open to try an idea, which a more commercial developer will avoid

Yep, I agree. It's astonishing that I missed this whole post for all these years, I've read it up to the review of Freelancer - WC5 - Darkstar One. I have played FL and DSO, and I liked both for some special aspects. Freelancer has the perfect suited and a really convincing plot while DSO has a very challenging space combat where you need to correctly update your ship. I also agree that in DSO the voice-over and the story is pure Bu******.

But that's the point: Do we space simmers really care about the story?  Well, in a game like WC5 the story is the game (I cannot remember if you can roam around and do free missions in WC5, I think not, you have to stay with the story). Freelancer, and more recent space games (after 2005) have to convince in the Sandbox aspect (Free Roaming) where the player really influences the limited sector of the galaxy where he acts. So the player's consequences should not be predictable and once the story ends there should still be plenty of things to do like in X: Rebirth, X3. These things are limited however. I dunno about a space game that really has a high replayability.

So, NO: the story is not the central thing in a space game, that's where the reviewer above is wrong and his ratings biased. I have started X:Rebirth, SPG2 and very now Spaceforce: Rogue Universe HD, all these WITHOUT the story, starting in Free Play mode. If I get good entertainment there then the sim is good for sure.

I think that the arising space sim No Man's Sky, together with a few other titles if they finally come out, will be a huge success, at least well above the selling numbers of other space sims. NoMS will have success not because of its in-game story (I highly doubt there will be any), but because of its huge immersion, the absence of travel limits, because of the excellent artwork that also makes the player more interested in real space problems, and there are many of them.

I still hope that Star Citizen will have a good single-player game mode, with or without story I don't care, and not only tagged for Multiplayer, I'm not glad to hear that single-player is just an option with some shipped mission series, that sounds bad.

A game like Shores Of Hazaron, but also for the offline single player, with good AI for NPC ships, this is the formula for a good space sim IMO.

In general, why are space games not popular?

Except for science-fiction litterature or movies, space technology and projects don't make the cut on common people. They are seeing incredibly expensive projects that they pay with taxes.

But this can change, also in the long future mankind has to go into space, not just for fun but for a number of very solid reasons, one of them is survival IMO.

As for space games: there must be much more than a simple arcade play in space to make it to the selling charts. For a good arcade shooter, FPS game or else I don't need the space environment in a game, so a publisher may well ask me to take this out. Or: you do a real good arcade game in space. Is Spaceforce Homeworld by Dreamatrix the One? Don't know, IMO it's much worse than the console games Space Invaders or Phoenix, but just another background. These are not space games. 

Space games are indeed popular, for the gamers - not for bigger publishers

Very unfortunately games like Freelancer, X: Rebirth, ED and future space games, they all assemble the most huge amount of features that all cost money to develop, much more than in any other game genre. And yes, altough I'm not terribly interested in, they aslo should come with a in-game story. The work involved for good voice-overs and the related artwork for sequences etc. are not cheap to develop either. Unfortunately these are all reasons for a bigger publisher to dismiss such projects, unless you would convince him about an exceptional aspect that really sells well. Retro-games (copies) of Elite or Wing Commander won't do it, so what remains? No Man's Sky will teach us.

XenonS