If you are not a current gamer, then you have no idea what the hell just happened to Bioware.
I brought it up a few times in general conversation yesterday with people while chatting at a tech conference happy hour, and people just blinked until I named franchises. They had no idea what that meant.
Many of those people vaguely remember these games, if at all, that moved the earth for people in the core gamer community.
I found it to be troubling, but then again, I openly wept when 3do shuttered, and then of all publishers, Ubisoft wound up acquiring the rights to Might and Magic.
What does this have to do with anything?
I think that there is a moral right on behalf of publishers who mismanage IP to return it, perhaps with a strawberry-scented apology, to the originator, where that is possible, to let them attempt to steward it on behalf of their fans. You made your money. You burned down the building. Return the deed to the builder and try to move forward with some semblance of grace.
I love that Richard Garriott has the Ultima trademark back. It is a step in this direction. I don’t know if that gives him sufficient rights to release the existing games “remastered” or add to the franchise. But it is something.
The depth of the shuttered and abandoned catalog of game content owned by publishers who narrowly focus on the handful of titles that get greenlit between bouts of daydrinking is stupendous and shameful.
Someone should do something about this to reduce the burden of shit they did for a paycheck that will ultimately send them to hell for eternity.
