AMA with Joe Bostic

[Gobalopper]

Joe Bostic did an AMA over on reddit recently:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/19epje/i_am_joe_bostic_22_year_game_developer_11_years/

 

He is one of the co-founders of Petroglyph... in a way the spiritual successor to Westwood Studios. A couple of answers he gave related to Dune:

Q: If there was one project you could go back in time, and do differently, which would it be?

A: Maybe Dune II. Anyone up for Petroglyph creating Dune III? There is that pesky Dune licensing issue getting in the way, but it is fun to think about.

Q: Any chance for a new Dune RTS Game ? :(
A: I wish. The licensing hurdles required to use the Dune universe is probably extremely difficult.

Q: What was your favorite game that you and your team developed?
A: Probably Dune II because of all the new challenges it presented. We couldn't look at existing RTS games for guidance.

[Andrew]

A good read.

 

Do others think there has been a downfall of RTS games lately as mentioned in the AMA? I havn't really been into newer games until a couple months ago. I suppose the FPS genre took a large share compared to mid to late nineties when C&C and other RTS were at height of popularity.

 

I think I heard that Company of Heroes was a good RTS. I bought it, installed it but havn't played it because they require you to create an account in order to play which I didn't want to do at the time. I'm not sure what's going to happen when they shut down the registration/login server... Stupid new games creating more barriers to play the damn game you already paid for. Might have to go back to 90s games.

[Dunenewt]

Who owns the licence? Is it EA? 

[Gobalopper]

I don't think so. I believe Westwood's games were tied to the movie license.

[THE AQIB]

then who owns it??

[Gobalopper]

Well this is the copyright from Dune II:

 

Dune is a trademark of Dino de Laurentiis Corporation and licensed by MCA/Universal Merchandising, inc. © 1984 Dino de Laurentiis Corporation. All rights reserved.

[X3M]

They mean the movie Dune, not the game itself.

That 2001 surprises me, a mistake perhaps?

 

DUNE is a trademark of Dino De Laurentiis Corporation and licensed by MCA/
Univercal Merchandising, Inc. © 1984 Dino De Laurentiis Corporation. All rights
reserved. © 1992 Westwood Studios, Inc. All rights reserved. Virgin is a registered
trademark of Virgin Enterprises, Ltd.

Thank you Nyerguds.

 

This one clearly says Dune2 is still in ownership of Westwood from the year 1992. But the manual where I got this from might be outdated.

But then again, when does such an ownership end?

[Gobalopper]

The game itself would be copyrighted by Westwood (developer) and Virgin (publisher). The publisher usually holds the rights to the game but Virgin no longer exists so hard to say who owns the rights to Dune II itself. EA might have gotten some of those rights when they bought Westwood but they've never re-released it so I'm guessing they didn't.

 

However, the rights to using the Dune universe in a game belong to someone else. For the movie it is Dino de Laurentiis Corporation and MCA/Universal Merchandising, inc.

[D2k Sardaukar]

Lets pay that guy a visit! (presuming it's a guy that holds the rights)

 

He must be here somewhere: http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=dune&Search_Code=TALL&PID=XIFWQwLPXfNuln673sA9H9yqdhaZ&SEQ=20130326132128&CNT=25&HIST=1

[Davidu]

Maybe DuneII and Dune2000 are abandonware right now?

 

I remember there was a partial license for the games, that's why none of the characters match. They had the license for the more general part of the Duniverse.

 

I cannot understand why FH's son doesn't speculate more the whole Dune idea? Yes, he wrote a few books, and a tv series was filmed, but look at George Lucas: movies after movies and games and tv shows and whatnot... Though Dune is more important as idea and philosophy and such, Star Wars is the best known sci fi world (along with Star Trek). Just 5 video games, 3 of which are strategies that go non-canon by parsecs, and only one canon adventure game. 21 years ago! Oh, and "FH's Dune" that was such a big spoof it bankurpted Cryo and brought Dune Generations to a halt.

[THE AQIB]

i wish fed2k community gets the title to build dune games so every member can chip in to make the game...

anyone knows how we can get it??

[X3M]

i wish fed2k community gets the title to build dune games so every member can chip in to make the game... anyone knows how we can get it??

You are wishing to do something, just like the people who work on warzone2100?

They got open source.

 

If you really want to build up a game from scratch...

I wonder how much the licence costs.

[Davidu]

Probably it'll be a partial license as well, I don't see them giving away a full license... even so I bet they won't sell it if it won't make any money. No onw will link they name on a risky-to-die project. It's simply bad publicity.

[MrFlibble]

Maybe DuneII and Dune2000 are abandonware right now?

Well, since "abandonware" isn't a legal term, this doesn't make a difference at all.

 

I cannot understand why FH's son doesn't speculate more the whole Dune idea? Yes, he wrote a few books, and a tv series was filmed, but look at George Lucas: movies after movies and games and tv shows and whatnot... Though Dune is more important as idea and philosophy and such, Star Wars is the best known sci fi world (along with Star Trek). Just 5 video games, 3 of which are strategies that go non-canon by parsecs, and only one canon adventure game. 21 years ago! Oh, and "FH's Dune" that was such a big spoof it bankurpted Cryo and brought Dune Generations to a halt.

Dune copyright is owned by Herbert Properties LLC, which comprises of FH's relatives. Whichever decisions they make and whatever role in them is played by Brian, they very obviously don't place much emphasis on video games. I fancy it is a very telling fact that most of the games (if not all; not sure) were based on the Dune film license, not the book franchise licenses.

This is incomparable to the Star Wars franchise that very consciously went in many directions almost from the start, occupying every relevant niche possible.

The difference here isn't in that FH's books are "full of philosophy", it's in that George Lucas took a very different strategic approach so to speak. Or rather, FH didn't have any real "approach" in marketing his "product", he just wrote books about what concerned him.

[Davidu]

I know, i know... a pity for not marketing the whole thing better. 

 

Look at the Stalker series and Metro 2033 as they also adapt novels to video games.

[MrFlibble]

Look at the Stalker series and Metro 2033 as they also adapt novels to video games.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based on the events of Chernobyl disaster and is unrelated to either the novel Roadside Picnic or the film Stalker, except for the use of the word stalker itself, which became widely used to refer to people who would venture into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

The much less known Stalker 1: Path of Fire is also not a licensed title, even though it uses a lot of elements from the novel - most certainly without official permission, even though due to the specifics of Soviet copyright laws this unauthorized use might actually be within legal boundaries (I'm not sure about this though).

There are in fact several official game adaptations of other works by the Strugatsky brothers though, like Hard to be a God. These are however mere spin-off by-products since the Strugatsky brothers have already been immensely popular in Russia and are considered classics in Russian science fiction.

[Davidu]

It is true it's not a perfect adaptation but I S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a bit more than just a name ripoff. The PR there was pure genius: while aiming straight at the ex-soviet consumer that would know who the Strugatsky brothers were the producers were also popularizing (I think) both the movie and the novel to the rest of the world by wrapping it up around te Cernobil disaster (much better known to the world). Also both the book and the game have a catastrophic event create an exclusion zone full of anomalies that would kill you and artifacts, and also they both have the "wish granter", which is not the Golden Sphere (if I remember correctly) but a 2001: A Space Odyssey sort of monolith.

 

Maybe that's why Stalker was in production for so many years, game concept, adaptation and balance. I am really sorry they took out the vehicles :(

 

Anyway, spinoffs, adaptations and whatnot, those were great games that made the player aware and curious (at least in my case) of the original novels.

[MrFlibble]

Anyway, spinoffs, adaptations and whatnot, those were great games that made the player aware and curious (at least in my case) of the original novels.

Well, I can say for myself that I first played the Dune games and only then read Frank's novels :)

I think the real question here is whether the copyright holders of a literary work may or may not take the possibility of a video game spin-off into consideration at all.

Also some people have this stereotype that licensed games, being follow-up products, often come out rather bland and only moderately interesting, compared to games set in original fictional universes. Of course, there are lots and lots of counterexamples to this observation, but it is also true that over the last decade, there have been many rather uninspired licensed video game titles that were created with the sole purpose of generating a bit more income from the franchise and/or as "support products" to fill in every market niche possible.

[Davidu]

Yeah, I also first played the games and then read the books. As for the franchise, yes, it's true there were a lot of games spat out just to cover a niche, but only because a movie was coming out in force. Which is not the case here, unfortunately.