Spacetime Studios announces: Blackstar

[TripleDES]

Erm.

Hrm.

Looks very anime-ish?

Compared to the very first concept art image, which had a gritty scifi look, the video looked dumb. Fighting huge ass space cheesy monsters, yay. Maybe it looks better in highres screens and videos.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, I can't say I'm too impressed with the style of that video. Lacking context for the actions the characters are performing doesn't really help either.

[SnakeCharmer]

The guy turning into a spaceship is what mostly turned it off for me.

Damn.

Market it towards kids with RMT, it could possibly successful - particularly if it has low system specs.

[schild]

Looks lame and unfun. Noble effort though.

Too bad effort gets you mostly NOTHING in the gaming industry.

Wait, I forgot, almost anything can get funded these days. Thanks WoW!

[Venkman]

Bleh. Almost like that gPotato game, whatever it was called. The only solace I can take is that this was positioned as "what the Spacetime guys can do", not "here's what Blackstar looks like". Very loose hope, but there it is.

Oh, and considering how many studios have done both a combined ground and space game well, could we please stop promising both ground and space together, and concentrate on making just one work!?

Freespace 2 MMO. I'm going to start stapling that to people's heads.

edit: added rant

[Hoax]

Your thinking of Space Cowboy, which has been a bit of a success in the f2p MMO field, spawning an "episode 2" which is the interesting way f2p's work.  Instead of expansions they just redesign the whole game and everyone starts over in an improved but quite similar gameworld.  Not that I've played either enough to really comment, SCO sounded cool, but really sucked monkey balls.

I remember two things about that game.  Kill quests where almost every mob was named something different in the game versus the Engrish quest text.  Lots of them and finding out that a L20 missile does like wtfamillion more damage then a L5 missile.  That wasn't very cool.

[Lietgardis]

An update. 

(edit:  here's an interview)

[Mrbloodworth]

Congrats i think! Good luck on finding a publisher (not being sarcastic). But ditch the anime feel just a little please. I want wing commander...

[Lantyssa]

Why did the original iteration of Blackstar end up having its development cancelled by NCSoft?

All I can say is that is that NCSoft's portfolio strategy changed. They were a great publisher to work with, and everything ended on good terms, it was just business.

We would work with them again at any point in time. The specifics of why they cancelled the project really are because their portfolio strategy change. But we like them a lot.

Translation:  Because Tabula Rasa tanked and sucked more resources than anyone could possibly imagine.

I hope this works out.  I like a lot of the devs working on this.

[SnakeCharmer]

I hope this works out.  I like a lot of the devs working on this.

Same here. 

[grunk]

this along with heros journey is one of the games id really like to play...

BUT i like this AoC thang atm... i would def pickup B*

[Lucas]

Mini - riiiiiise!

Maybe some of you silently followed the latest site updates. Anyways, during the last month or so Spacetime Studios released a good amount of Concept Art exclusively for RPG Vault. You'll find the link (and the relative news piece) on the frontpage:

http://www.spacetimestudios.com/

Well, sketches look very cool and all, along with the interesting descriptions of the different environments. Now there is just that littlle detail of transfering everything in a working game, along with teh FuN 

And by the way, still no news about a possible company interested in the IP

I guess they will try to set up some talks during the E3...

[schild]

I can't help but think about Goonswarm adopting Vular... already.

[Stormwaltz]

If anyone from Spacetime is reading this, the plural of "nebula" is "nebulae," not "nebulas" (The Twisting Void).

Pretty art. The descriptions seem to veer between anime (Vular), Homeworld (Core Zero Wreckage) and Western SF cartoon of the late 80s (Kraken, a planet named Dread Prime).

- Chris, Pedantic Bastard

[stu]

That's some badass concept art. The pieces remind me a bit of the Ryan Church stuff for the Star Wars prequels. I'm hoping someone picks this IP up. The small bit of gameplay footage from a while back seemed fluid and engaging, but it was so little to be seen I've tried not to get too excited.

[Bokonon]

If anyone from Spacetime is reading this, the plural of "nebula" is "nebulae," not "nebulas" (The Twisting Void).

Not true. Nebulae is the plural only if you are communicating in Latin, or want to be a pretentious twit.. In English, either way is accepted.

[Lantyssa]

I like pretentious twits.

[Lucas]

Oh noes 
----

http://www.spacetimestudios.com/2008/07/31/another-chapter/

News travels fast so let’s get right to it.

Our company has been entirely self-funded the for the last six months while we tried to find a publishing deal for ‘Blackstar.’ Throughout this period we have held onto our pre-production development team because, honestly, we think they are the best of the best. We have been shopping Blackstar around but  - right now, at least – the concept of a SciFi space/ground IP has proven to be a challenge. Our studio cannot survive at its current burn rate without a publishing deal, so we face a necessary (though very difficult and painful) decision. We are scaling down from thirty-two down to sixteen folks in the hopes of developing a pitch, a prototype and another publishing deal.

We will be letting some very good folks go. They will receive extended benefits and we will be doing everything we can to help them land on their feet again. We consider these people to be the cream of the crop, so if you are looking to staff up your team please drop us a line at jobs@spacetimestudios.com.

[FatuousTwat]

Ah, damn it. I hope they find a publisher.

[Lucas]

Sigh...Watch it in high-quality (new video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRL7KZ0tJk0

[Viin]

Hmm. Nope, won't be playing that game.

[Lantyssa]

Still interested.

[Draegan]

PANZER DRAGOON ORTA!

[UnSub]

While I've been wading through the valley of the dead...

Spacetime has a "publishing partner". Might not be for Blackstar though.