On our Shock 1 & 2 General Discussion boards a week or so ago, someone posted a thread (thanks Stimpson J Cat) mentioning a thread over on Ion Storm's bulletin board regarding an update on a possible System Shock 3 (click here to view the thread). In that thread, Gwog (of PlanetDeusEx) states that he did some sniffing around and researching and he found out that a lot of different people own bits and pieces of the System Shock franchise. What happened was that when Looking Glass folded, they were in debt to several companies. They couldn't pay them back, therefore LG's assets were distributed to the creditors. Because of that, Shock 3 might be an unlikely reality, as hard as it sounds. That's just a summary, visit that thread to read Gwog's complete statement.

At any rate, I got in touch with Ken Levine (of Irrational Games fame, currently working on Freedom Force) yesterday, regarding this situation, and here's what he had to say:

i was at ea last week, and my gut feeling is that this is kind of true. yuck. lg left their financials in a very strange place. i spent a bunch of money trying [to find out about who owns what of Shock 2] and then gave up. hard to find. i had my lawyers look into it and all i got was a hefty legal bill...

Ken then goes on to say:

there's a bunch of problems with shock 3. first off, is how even if you can make the game, how do you make it successful at retail? second is, even if you get the rights, there are so many parties that own a piece of it, that it makes the game poison to most publishers as they're not keen on sharing the wealth. strangely enough, the easy part is actually building the game itself...

TTLG says: well, wouldn't it be possible just to purchase those pieces of the shock franchise from those companies? as for making it successful..was shock 2 a 'success' in the market?

Ken: yes, but that adds to the overall costs, esp. the up front committment of cash to a project, which is always the hardest to get. also, its several negotiations. it can become quite quickly a nightmare.
shock 2 was successful, but not Successful.

As to thinking Shock 3 will never happen, Ken says:

hey, i would love to do it, and so would everybody at irrational. no, i wouldn't say its the end of the shock universe. time has a way of figureing things out for you.

Well, there you have it. Feel free to make comments in our System Shock 1 & 2 General Discussion forum. I'm sure there is something us LG fans can do to help this situation, perhaps sniff around ourselves to find out what companies own what, how to get those pieces back, etc. Come on, I'm sure we have some lawyer fans that can volunteer to do this in their spare time, no? ;) (Also, don't forget to put your name on our System Shock 3 Petition).

The Taffer's Post this week is a break from the norm. I had tons of fun putting it together, and I hope everyone has tons of fun reading it, looking at the pictures, downloading the audio, and so on. This Taffer's Post is not for everyone though ... it has spoilers for nearly every LGS game, especially System Shock 1 and Deus Ex.

Hi How are you?

Iam sending this file for you to check

I'd like to inform you of a newly created mailing list devoted to first person shooters, primarily Thief, Deus Ex, and Shock2. I would greatly appreciate it if you could post the information on your site(s) for the other 1ps nuts like myself. Sub: 1ps-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Here is the blurb:

A mailing list exclusively for fans of the new breed of intense "first person shooter" style games exemplified by the Thief, Deus Ex, & System Shock series. Discussion of strategies and FMs (fan made missions) is encouraged.

This list was created because, of all the gaming lists out there, most of them tend to discuss other games of no interest to "our" crowd, so I thought this might be a nice way to keep the 1ps crowd happy. Every time I try to discuss a new FM no one seems to care about them and switches the talk back to Diablo or Baldur's Gate, which, after playing Thief, I find boring.

Hi everyone, I hope you all are having a good summer (or winter if you are in the other side of the world!) so far!
I just wanted to keep you all updated on the hosting situation and what not, so here goes:
I think I am planning on moving the TTLG back to my uncle's office (back where the server was a year or so ago) in a few days. We simply cannot afford the hosting fees of our current ISP, so in the next week or so, we will be down for quite some time, maybe just a few hours, maybe a day. This is just a heads up though. >p> Hopefully, once we move back, we -might- be able to host all the fan missions again, but don't take my word for it yet. We have to first move back, test out the bandwidth, see if we clog up their lines, and then decide what we can't/can host. I'll keep you posted. If you have any questions and/or comments, please let me know. Thanks!