After nine years of patiently waiting, could it be true? Darkstar finally being released?
MSTies everywhere have eagerly awaited seeing the original cast of their favorite cow-town puppet show in their own, genuine space opera, only to be disappointed by missed release dates for some time now. Some have doubted that the project would ever be completed, but nobody stopped hoping.
While we’re not advocating holding your breath or anything, the newest information is that the project is now content-complete and is in final beta testing in Canada. Once that’s complete in January, it will be in the hands of the suit guys who will figure out when “Darkstar” will be released.
That’s where you come in. The studio would like to gather some information to help them package the product and refine their demographics prior to release. If you need to refresh your memory about the project, check out this brand new trailer. Our pal Director/Producer guy J. Allen Williams also answered a few basic questions on what the lowdown is at this point. You can read them after the jump.
Oh, and this counts as the weekend discussion thread.
Q: Why has it taken so long to get “Darkstar” out to the public?
A: There have been several issues that have caused us to miss self-imposed deadlines. The primary issue is that we just kept coming up with ideas to make it bigger and better, and each tacked on months, sometimes years of production time. We’ve also had technological setbacks with CGI and authoring programs we use that put us behind the eight ball, but in the end these were a blessing in disguise, as ultimately it improved the final product. We’ve been pretty much content complete since the end of ’08, and that’s when we moved into the realm of publishing and legal issues. The crash in the economy has slowed us down a bit, because many of the publishers have no money right now, and others are being very careful about how much they put into third-party productions, and rightfully so.
Q: So it’s definitely coming out.
A: It is definitely coming out.
Q: What is the purpose of the survey you’ve offered up here?
A: Solely to get a good handle on who our demographic audience is. Age, gender, what consoles they prefer, stuff like that. We have decided to release DS first on PC/MAC only, then do consoles later in the year or the next year. There are only five questions, and they will help us quite a bit to put this together the way our demo would want us to.
Q: Where is this survey available besides this website?
A: Darkstar has three basic niche markets that we are very interested in catering to specifically. Obviously this one, because of the presence of Trace, Mary Jo, Joel, Josh, Frank and Beez. Also, the fact Peter Graves is our narrator seems to be of great interest to the Misties. But also there is the RUSH factor, with 24 songs from the band, so we’re working with the RUSH Power Windows site on that end. Clive Robertson, the lead actor in Darkstar has a decent following, so we’re working with his fansite out of Belgium. And there are a few sites out there that cater to this specific type of game project that the survey will appear on. Of course it will be on the Darkstar website for folks that have been following it there as well. This survey is aimed at the core fanbase of a product like Darkstar.
Q: What’s next for the project?
A: The hard part, the business side of things. But that’s well under way, and data from this survey will sure help us out. The easy part was working with an amazingly talented and funny bunch of folks like the ones from Best Brains. It was a true privilege getting to know MJ, Josh, Joel, Beez and Frank. My friend Trace hooked me up with the group, and it’s been so nice working with them. I truly hope MSTies enjoy Darkstar.
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Darkstar doesn’t really interest me as a game, but I will buy it for the cutscenes.
The survey doesn’t seem to be working for me for some reason.
Also, I had completely given up hope on Darkstar ever seeing release, so this is a pleasant surprise.
Haven’t heard about this project before, and the trailer didn’t tell me anything. How is the cast in the project? What do you actually do when you play the game? And what about Naomi?
I have no idea what Darkstar is, and I don’t play video games.
Well, it looks pretty impressive, but it’s tough to judge how it works as a game, because there’s not really much information about the actual gameplay. Are these cutscenes in between levels, or is this an FMV (Full Motion Video) game, with (usually limited) interaction with the scenes themselves?
The “Controller Interaction Feature” on their site gives me some hope, inasmuch as you can explore the environments. But if many gameplay elements are like the one in the “Interactivity” segment, which is just a very simple jigsaw puzzle, “Darkstar” isn’t going to be too promising.
Honestly, this is the Duke Nukem Forever of MST-related projects. Does anybody know or care what the game is like, outside of the cut scenes?
Just put it out on XBLA, PSN and Steam and get it over with, guys. If you attempt to release this thing on media, I think you’ll be sorely disappointed.
I’m just glad they finshing the dang thing. I mean remeber Edward the less. Timmy big hand. Nice see they trying something new other than riffing on movies.
And if fail well they got CT to fall back on.
I’d be very interested in this. Here’s hoping it finds its way soon.
#4: Ditto.
A few things scare me. First, games nine years ago were all MYST clones, and this game sort of has that wang. Second, how is nine-year-old video footage going to hold a candle to current video quality?
However, a few things are very exciting. Seeing everyone together again with almost 10 years of aging erased is great! Also, and I’ve always said this, Beez is hot Hot HOT!
I for one think this looks pretty fun. Maybe not a “good” game, but definitely fun. I like big dumb spaceshippy explosiony sci-fi.
i dont give a damn about graphics, im interested. if i got the cash, i will be purchasing or at the very least renting this game.
I don’t have a console. I play on my computer, and since I don’t have the best computer for gaming, I actually find it easier to play games with lower-quality graphics. I don’t really mind.
The most they could hope for in a console release is as downloadable content. If its completely done and they have console dev-kits that it works on, I don’t see how there could be too many unwilling publishers that wouldn’t at least try to stick it up on XBox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network.
If that fails, there’s always the PC market. Sure the issue of piracy is greater to contend with, but if they want this thing visible to the public, it may be the only way for them at this point.
Personally I see this as something that was only ever going to be PC bound. Something like this game, whatever it really turns out to be, sounds like something you use a mouse and keyboard for. Not a controller.
Wow, you can tell the newbies here ’cause they’ve never heard of Darkstar.
I’ve been waiting for this for years, and will definitely buy it once it’s available. Please do it for PC!!!!!!!
I was surprised to hear them consider consoles. If anything, I was thinking a budget PC release. I could see it on PSN or XBL. Wherever it comes out – I’m getting it.
if isnt released for PC then forget it.
I will never get to play darkstar(very very very out of date) too bad you cant release it for ps2 or origonal xbox.
“ah this is no carrere for me, I should be hosting a show where they tell the tales of peoples lives.. call it ah memour or maybe recalection, today on life narative.. no thats not it.”
Wow, a weekend discussion thread and I have absolutly nothing to say. I’m with numbers 4 and 9.
Is there some sort of regional restriction in accessing that site or something? For the past few months I keep getting “Server/page not found” whenever I try to get there (including through the link for this poll). I’m in Europe, and I’ve tried both IE and Firefox with the same result…
With regards to the project itself, I had long lost hope of ever seeing it released, so this is a happy surprise. As long as it’s available for PC I’ll be getting it.
Oh teh squee. And I’ll be the first to admit that I flailed about upon seeing Trace doing that silhouetted slow-walk towards the camera.
And also ’cause I got to say “FRANK IS GLOWY!”
What I did notice in the trailer as opposed to the clips and pictures we’ve seen before is how much better the integration is between the live action and the 3D environment. There used to be this really obvious green/pixely edge around the actors which I didn’t see in the trailer. Maybe they figured out a better integration method?
Still, I’m excited.
There’s only been a link to Darkstar on this site for years now. :wink:
I guess Peter Graves forgot all about working on this when he was bad mouthing MST at his Walk of Fame star unveiling!
Glad there’s finally some news.
Who here can’t NOT think of Pearl when Mary Jo barks out, “Hail these idiots!”?
It looks cheesy-campy in a fun way. I love Myst-type games. Really looking forward to this.
Ditto with 4, 9 & 19.
“Please stand by.” Hopefully not for another 9 years. :wink: I’ll buy it for my PC when it comes out. Looks interesting to me.
Survey completed.
I am now 41 y.o. If it comes out before I am 65, I promise to buy it, even if I have to buy a new console.
Hello, I am a person who has never heard of Darkstar, is not interested in video games, and I don’t even own a video game tape player, nor do I ever use a joy stick in my daily life, and yet for some reason I felt the need to read an interview about a video game, which I may have mentioned I have no interest in, and now I also feel the need to post a comment in this comment section to tell everyone that I don’t know anything about this Darkstar video game movie film thing, and I also don’t play video games, nor use joy sticks, and so have nothing at all to say about any of this, except how I don’t know about any of this, partake in the hobby that this relates to, nor have anything really to say other than that.
Sarcasm mode end.
Seriously, it would be like me seeing an article about a football game that the MST people were at, and then posting a comment under the article about nothing except how I don’t understand football, nor have any interest in it at all (which is true). What would be the point?
@ Cronkite Moonshot (#28):
Well, it does give the makers of the game, who are no doubt reading this thread, some idea of the proportion of MSTies who are interested, as against those who aren’t.
I’m interested. I’m not a big gamer (I have a DS and a couple of PC games), so I can’t really judge what platform would work best. That being said, I wonder what it’d be like on something the the Xbox 360 or the Wii–if it would work and work well? I think it might increase its market if it did.
I’d probably get the PC version anyway.
Put this baby on Steam!
When this project first came about, getting ‘the old gang’ together was something to be looked forward to. Now that we have CT and Rifftrax…meh, there’s so much good material from ‘the old gang’ these days that this 9 year old project really isn’t going to grab me.
My ambivalence about this is palpable. Can’t we get beyond Thunderdome?
It’s a real shame that more people have not been exposed to some of the great interactive movie adventure games of the past, specifically the Tex Murphy sci-fi/mystery series which was definitely the best of the lot. Sure these types of games weren’t all great and a few were real stinkers; but when done right you gain a glorious gaming experience unlike any other.
If you want to experience what one of these games can be like when done right then check out the Good Old Games website at gog.com and treat yourself to the Tex Murphy adventure The Pandora Directive. You’ll have to pay about $10 for it but when you play it you’ll understand just how awesome Darkstar could be and I doubt you’ll be able to resist picking it up when it’s available.
Am I the only one getting bored by the ‘will they, won’t they’ aspect of this?
Silly question- any way to isolate and release the material containing our favorite people by themselves, sans the game?
They should have made an interactive MST3K episode instead. This game looks like it would have been interesting 12 years ago. Still, I’d like to see all the parts with Joel and everybody else so I’d buy it if it wasn’t too much. I do agree with #32 though…I’ve seen no CT episodes yet and would buy those way before this game. (btw, I’m watching MST3K all the way thru before starting CT)
Don’t put it on Steam exclusively because I won’t buy it. I need it on a disc.
I am curious, don’t want to hurry us.
I’m intrigued with us.
Ain’t this song a bust.
I don’t care, dark star.
-Crosby, Stills and Nash
It really has nothing to do with the game, but it’s strangely apropos…
If this comes out for the Wii, Wii are there! Would we buy it? Wii, Wii!
I’ll be buying this. I’ve waited for a while on the final release, and am looking forward to seeing how it’s fared over time. I’m not a game player, but I’ll definitely be interested in the finished product.
RAD
@ Iggy Pop’s Brother Steve Pop #29…
Really that’s kind of a stretch. Most of the people who aren’t interested simply aren’t posting any comments at all, so how dependable would this comments section be for such information? Besides what do you really think they care about that anymore? It’s not like they are just testing the waters to see if they should bother making the game at all. It’s done. At this point the people who definitely aren’t interested at all probably aren’t of much concern to them. Now it’s just a matter of how to release the game, and helpful information of that sort will only come from people who are already at least somewhat interested in the game.
@ Cronkite Moonshot (#41): “Besides what do you really think they care about that anymore?”
Oh, they clearly don’t care at all. That’s why they didn’t do an interview for this site, or have a survey.
Sorry, I’m a big fan of MST3K and all, but I just don’t see the point of this. This game belongs in the era of crummy FMV adventure games…the mid-90s. The novelty of having real people in a game is long over, because the fact is you can get better performances out of voice actors and today’s CGI than you can out of people hamming it up in front of a green screen. Don’t release it as a game…release it as an interactive DVD if anything.
Had this come out 15 years ago, fine, it would fly. But that was the freakin’ dark ages of PC gaming.
I am a huge dork, but I don’t play video games.
Got to draw the line somewhere.
Still can’t access the site or the poll. *sigh* Not sure what the problem is.
As far as all of those comments regarding the game being dated or “from the dark ages of PC gaming”, many of my favorite games, which I still play to this day, come from 10+ years ago. Pharaoh and Sam & Max come to mind.
Just because a game is old doesn’t mean it’s not good.
OK, two parts here . . . the second part is the one that provides potential marketing information. Go ahead and skip to that if you hate “long” posts.
“I am a huge dork, but I don’t play video games.
Got to draw the line somewhere.”
The hell? This is really out of curiosity instead of hostility, but you do realize that there are lots of college-age (and older) jocks and other high-school stereotypes besides “dorks” who now play video games on a weekly basis, right? The old standards about video games being for little kids and “uncool” for grown-ups is melting away as people raised on video games continue to enter the workforce.
The only reason I reply here is because I actually heard a group of such jocks playing Halo and mocking the similarly-aged “dorks” (their term) who play World of Warcraft. And that’s when I knew video games had become truly mainstream – they are no longer the center of a united demographic. The divide and conquer marketing trick has convinced the popular kids that video games are always acceptable; it’s now a question what *kind* is uncool.
*********************
Anyway, I have no interest in games of this sort, but there’s a caveat. This is not about the age or content of the game so much as the format – I’m someone who likes FPS’s, RTS’s, fighting games, and the occasional racing game or RPG, with a platformer thrown in once in a while. I’m not truly a gamer – I only play a select few titles, mostly socially, and I’m not the kind of person who’s constantly trying out new stuff searching for the next big high. As such, heavily puzzle-oriented or dialogue-oriented games generally don’t appeal to me, unless there’s some other aspect I enjoy. In this case, the MSTie aspect is certainly intriguing. I want to see it. But I don’t want to buy the game for it. If it’s out on a console, I could rent it, and then they’d at least see some kind of money from my interest. But I have friends who are more deeply into MST3k memorabilia than I am, and I have a good chance of seeing it when *they* play it. I don’t have to buy it to satisfy my curiosity, is my point.
I really can’t see how this is going to compete in a game market dominated by the likes of Smash Brothers, Mario Cart, Halo, Modern Warfare, and soon enough (on computers anyway) StarCraft freakin’ II. This survey to get the best out of their marketing money is a good idea – gotta aim at the right niches or you’re just wasting cash. But it’s going to be a very limited niche, I suspect. I could be wrong, depending on how innovative they’ve been. But I think they recognize the difficulty of the situation they’re in.
In all honesty, I think the MSTies are going to be their single biggest market. They have an “in” with us because of the people in the game. (I guess I don’t know how rabidly loyal Rush fans are, but it strikes me that they’d be less easily targetable here, especially given the ability to rip music out of games fairly easily.)
I don’t think they’re going to get very far on content alone, so these tie-ins are important for their business. Unfortunately, their MSTie demographic is also beginning to show its age, and youngins like me who got in late enough to enjoy MST3k and early enough to consider electronic games a normal form of entertainment are rare. It does seem that a lot of us would be willing to buy the game mainly for content, however, so investing in the MSTie market is probably a wise choice.
There, I’m done, the dry look.
@ miwright:
Yes, you have a point and I don’t disagree that there were some real gems in that era. Sam and Max is an excellent example and I’m happy to see that they have been making new Sam and Max games lately.
But if you were to go back into a game store in the early to mid 90s, 50% of stuff on the PC racks would be half-hearted Myst clones…bad graphics, bad writing, bad acting, bad puzzles.
Compare that to something like Super Mario Bros (which I believe the cast and crew of MST3K played to death). It didn’t try to be a flashy game with slick graphics and “state of the art” full motion videos of people acting terribly in front of green screens. It did something simple and because of that, it holds up even today. So please don’t think I mean that everything old is bad.
Heck, to bring up Sam and Max again, it holds up much better than even Myst does. It’s simply aged better because of its aesthetic choices and it’s superb writing.
My point is this. This game has little to no relevance in today’s market. It’s dated in every way, and it won’t sell. Look at the list of people who said they’ll buy it up above. THAT is their market for the game. It simply looks to me like a way to make back a tiny fraction of the money they spent making this game over the course of ten years. And I find that sad.
I don’t doubt a lot of heart and hard work went into this game, I really don’t. But some things are just better left alone.
I don’t care how dated it is. I’ll try it out to see how it handles. Even if I’m not good at it, I’ll keep it.
I don’t play a whole lot of videogames, but because of that, I have a few advantages:
1. I am rarely underwhelmed by a game, because it’s not like I’m comparing it in my head to Assassin’s Creed II or anything.
2. I am never burned out on any style of videogames. 90’s style live action capture game? Hey, I’ve been watching Let’s Plays of those for the hell of it lately! It might be fun to try one once out, especially if it’s made for the current level of tech (no messing about with emulators or any of that stuff).
3. Things which are par the course for other players are complete novelties for me.
Of course, there are a few difficulties that come with being an almost-never gamer. Such as:
1. The closest thing I have to a current generation video console is a Nintendo DS. Also I run a Mac. Yeeah.
But wait! They’re planning a Mac release? Holy hell, games almost never have Mac releases! (Unless they’re MMOs with monthly fees, like WoW, or straight-up puzzle games.)
So I may just save up my pennies to load this game on my shiny, beloved iMac, alongside my Penny Arcade Adventures games and my City of Heroes (subscription long since canceled).
It’s piqued my interest, and it will be fun to have a new, different game on hand for when I feel the urge to play.
Alex @ #47,
Yes the material is dated. But you also have a number of people who do not like the way today’s video games are, and will like a game made in the “old fashioned” way of 10 years ago.
I’m with the crowd that doesn’t play video games. But reasonably priced enough, I will by this for the cutscene material as well.
When you have a project you’ve been working on for ten years and finally have a chance to bring it out to the public, sometimes you just have to do it. You may lose a truckload of money on the project, but sometimes reaching the finish line is more important for some people. I have a pilot to a television series I developed that I’m novelizing. The screenplay’s written like a TV show from the mid-90’s (it was written in 2000), so I am narrowing my pool of customers down, but not to absolute zero since there are people would still enjoy a story written in that era. With on-demand publishing becoming prevalent, I can control my costs enough to come close to making a profit, if not make one once I find the niche audience.
There is a niche audience for Darkstar. If they play this right, they could make this profitable.