Natural Selection 2 News Update - Natural Selection 2 v1.0 released on Steam
Flayra
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Comments
Still no download on my side though :(
Technically nothing much changed, the game is still the same as I played yesterday and the day before. But still this day is special, and I am not talking about the fact that my precious black armor will now finally stand out from the crowd.
It feels like an eternity when I first learned that ns2 was in the making. I used to play ns1 quite often - even my best gaming experience ever was in ns1 (I remember that one game although it must be years now).
So when I learned that ns2 was in the making, I immediatly devoured the whole blog and all of the podcasts. Ever since I have kept a close eye on the progress (thanks to Dev Stalker for making this alot easier); I've read all changelogs, and watched all the videos.
When you started the pre-alpha pre-order, I did not have to think twice whether or not to buy. In fact all I thought was, that I need a paypal account ASAP. It took me 3 endless days to get one. Despite all the people calling vaporware, I never had a single second of doubt that you will make it.
But for me, the unique game mechanics, that no other game has come close to, is only the icing of the cake. What thrills me even more is to know that you come from a modding background.
Being old enough, I have witnessed the golden age of pc gaming and I had to watch as everything went down the drains. Commercial mappacks, the replacment of dedicated servers by rented ones, character leveling (which means you wont kill anything until you unlocked the same weapon everyone else uses), limited scripting support or the need to register my email adress at two dozen different "community sites" that I have no interest in being part of, just to name a few. The overall decrease in moddability is also a big one. Mods are an ideal playground for aspiring programmers and designers alike and to my regard, most of the greatest games out there started as mods (including natural selection). So when modding or even just scripting is removed from all the major games (anyone remembers how they deactivated the whole console after people found some hidden game modes in modern warfare 2?), there is so much more being at stake.
And yet, here you are, a tiny Indie developer breaking with all the conventions, coming with your own engine, your own mapping tools and everything fully moddable in Lua. We have seen how relative ease in bringing 2D graphics onto the screen resulted in an enormous increase of 2D games (for which a major part seems to consist of generic platformers). Having the same comfort for making 3D games will hopefully result in an even bigger variety of games and help new unseen or long forgotten game genres to emerge (+ another 300 minecraft clones, of course).
I really hope this will be a huge success for you and UWE will be swimming in money long after activision went bankrupt, EA closed their last studio, and ubisoft's name has been long forgotten. Be it a great success or a daunting warning for those to follow, today is the day it begins.
So Gentlemen, in short, I expect nothing less from you than to save pc gaming.
And as the icing of the cake I get a great game. Yay!
Edit: just kidding.
Not yet, there's always a delay.
Thank you guys. If your ever in the UK give me a shout!
NS2 cured my wow addiction, so have to shake your hands :)
...about time.
You are an example of what a good company should be.
And your game rocks. Congrats!
Happy Fall 2009!
Congratulations!