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It
isn't just about one game...
It's
our Last, Best Hope for the ENTIRE gaming community...
Support Babylon 5: Into
the Fire
Go to the FirstOnes'
website
for more information.
Other Sites to head for to Support "Into the Fire"
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Here's a review of "Professional Bull Rider", which Sierra opted to produce instead of Babylon 5: Into the Fire.
Platform: PC, unfortunately
Category: Sports... kind of...
Maker: Sierra Sports
Reviewed by: ANT CausticHoo boy.
I complain a lot about how developers never seem to finish games before they release them these days. I feel the exact opposite way about Profressional Bull Rider, though -- I wish it had never been finished. The end result is about as much fun as a barrel of monkeys... dead monkeys, that is. Smelly, rotting, defunct, dead monkeys.
Bullriding does NOT make a good video game, no matter how well it's done. There's just no way to properly simulate it. In Professional Bull Rider, you try to make your cowboy lean in the direction the bull is leaping. If you succeed, you stay on. If you don't, you fall off. This is fun for, oh, about three seconds. Then it gets really old. You can also play as the bull, in which case you can perform such moves as the "Spin Left" and the "Power Rabbit Hop." This is fun for about five seconds. You do the math.
Professional Bull Rider is pure drivel. Why Sierra would stoop so low as to make this game is beyond me. What a waste of perfectly good CDs.
ANT Caustic
What exactly is Babylon 5: Into the Fire, you might ask... it's the continuation of the popular Babylon 5 television series, in the form of a space combat simulator made for the PC. It promised to be one hell of a game, and it was well into its development. After working on the game for two years, with only six months left before completion, on Tuesday, September 21st, the publisher that was to market the game, Sierra.... abruptly canned the project.
Their reason? Well, some might say that it was because B5:ITF sucked... however, those people should know this: Sierra cancelled Babylon 5, Middle Earth, Orcs, and a host of other games that were under development... and then turned around and decided to produce, in their stead, a game called "Professional Bull Rider". I shit you not.The real reason they cancelled the project was this: Babylon 5: Into the Fire, became another victim of the bottom line. It was purely a financial decision. But even then, Sierra is making a deadly mistake, one that has cost them a legion of fans who were eagerly anticipating many of those titles, as well as having to write off the previous two years' worth of monetary investment into making B5:ITF as a loss... and now many fans are boycotting them, refusing to buy ANY Sierra product, including Tribes, Homeworld, and Half Life.
If fans stand idly by and let this sort of thing happen, it will be as if we are approving of such actions. Sierra doesn't care that many of the developers working on B5:ITF actually felt enough loyalty to the company to MOVE OUT of their hometowns to stay with the company when Sierra moved. You don't find very many such people around who are willing to stick with the company like that, not to mention people who also happen to be very talented at what they do. How did Sierra repay this loyalty? They fired them. One-hundred and five employees lost their jobs, and perhaps more importantly, their dreams. The games and projects they worked on were much more than just products to make money for the company... they were works of art. And Sierra takes all of that and throws it all away.
The president of Sierra, Dave Grenewetzki, said that gamers are "the guys whose only color on their face comes from the computer monitor and the refrigerator." He just insulted the entire gaming community.
Sierra claims to be "leading the way", providing games that the market demands (like "Bull Rider"??), but all that they are leading the gaming industry into is extinction, if other companies follow suit. What Sierra believes is that they can churn out low-quality, cheap-to-produce titles with programming code built by 10-year olds, that will make them rich. Well, let's show 'em just how wrong they are.
Support Babylon 5: Into the Fire, and the principles that this cause stands for. Go to www.firstones.com and help out. Sign the petition, boycott Sierra, make your voice heard. Check out online e-zines and gaming magazines for more information about this event. Show those suits that they can't treat game developers and fans like shit and expect to still have customers. Send out this message to all the online gaming sites you can find, tell Sierra just how stupid they are, and ask fervently (but politely) that another game publishing company purchase the license and code from Sierra, pick up this title, and finish the work that the development team for this game has poured heart and soul into for the past two years. Thankyou.
