Did Space Empires V kill Space Empires?

[frightlever]

I was pretty vocal back in the day about how much SEV sucked. I recall saying some pretty bad things about Atrocities. Oh, I'm not apologising, just recollecting.

I see a lot of people who were optimistic about the game getting fixed back then, have changed their tune.

I hope Aaron has a back-up career, because his current project seems doomed. He never really made a decent or interesting game outside of the SE 4x games, and nothing really since SEIV, which is around ten years old. Now he doesn't even own the franchise.

I don't know whether World Supremacy is aiming for Risk or Hearts of Iron, but whatever it is, it's a crowded field. So is Space 4x these days, but that wasn't really the case back when SEIV came out. Nowadays you have everything from Sins to Distant Worlds, with a whole bunch in between. And they're being made by professionals.

I've been following the discussion over on Legacy. Laughable. I really hope they put something out but the minutiae is up their *** at this stage. I'd love to see an open source SEIV with a flexible, moddable engine. Once Shrapnel got involved with Legacy that didn't seem so likely. Fancy selling out, before you even have something to sell. Nice.

So, back to the title of this tirade.

If SEV had never happened would SEIV still have a vibrant community, or did it kill the joy entirely for most people? I can't even think of opening SEIV without getting a shudder of disappointment thinking back on SEV. More so, because there were improvement in SEV that could have made SEIV better.

OTOH I dug out my cherished copy of Stars! the other day and happily lost a couple of evenings to it. And that was made by ex-Microsoft Excel programmers in the 90s.