“Fringe Cult” Classic Games

The Escapist has a feature on gaming’s “fringe cults”. These are the games that just somehow never went away, but grew into underground cult hits, deified by fanatical devotees. “Cultists” from three such games were interviewed about the games they love.

First up is Alex “Kalifreth” Avery, Operations Manager at Hard Light Productions, disciple of the FreeSpace universe. Hard Light is a niche fan community of modders dedicated to Volition’s first-person space sim Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War and its sequel FreeSpace 2.

Hard Light’s community produced The Babylon Project, based on the Babylon 5 TV series; Wing Commander Saga, an adaptation of Origin’s Wing Commander games; and Beyond the Red Line, inspired by the new Sci-Fi channel Battlestar Galactica series.

Avery believes Volition’s open-mindedness has given the game “fantastic drawing power, as what you can basically get here is a game that’s still seeing a lot of active development from some very talented people. Best of all, it’s free! ”

Volition has helped the modders out indirectly over the last ten years. Hard Light has come up with some simply amazing content, all of it free. Avery expects the community to still be going strong into the future.

The Fallout series, a post apocalyptic RPG with a fifties flare, has spawned “one of the most feared message boards on the planet”, No Mutants Allowed. Thomas “Brother None” Beekers, Sebastian “Silencer” Lenartowicz and Sander Philipse NMA’s admins talk about the game that inspired the outspoken BB with a bad reputation.

Philipse says, Fallout’s world felt more, well, worldly than anything that’s come before or since. “There are many games today that offer you sandbox-like gameplay, but very few of them also make you feel the consequences of the choices you are offered. If you muck something up, you’ll have to play with it. Most games either stop your game, or offer you an odd explanation as to why things did work out anyway. Fallout offered you the choices, and had the game world react to those choices.”

The BB true to its reputation, has been outspoken on the passing of the torch to Bethesda for Fallout 3.

“Part of me is happy that the franchise didn’t die with Black Isle Studios,” says Beekers, “but for the most part I realize Fallout is only a name, and the fact that Bethesda’s Fallout 3 is called Fallout 3 doesn’t mean anything unless they make it a Fallout game. If they don’t, I’m guessing I and other fans will be about as upset as we were with the release of Fallout: BoS [Brotherhood of Steel].”

The final awe inspiring game started Virgin Interactive Entertainment’s (VIE) SubSpace. The game played like Counter Strike with space ships. With cheating rampant and the whole system in jeopardy, Priit “PriitK” Kasesalu, designer of Kazaa and Skype, reverse-engineered SubSpace and renamed it Continuum. Scott “PoLiX” Binford runs SSCentral.com. Although the MMO was hit hard by the coming of WOW, Binford believes Continuum can make a come back.

“In what other game can you go from playing an Unreal Tournament-style game to an Infantry-style game?” 

Binford also says that the programing involved in the game’s collaborative development can often result in players finding jobs in the industry. He is confident that the game will continue for years to come.

In all these cases there are three things that give these games and their fans staying power; each game struck a familiar chord with players, fans are absolutely confident that the game will endure in a world where titles are outdated in just a few years, and players have bonded with a community of people who feel the same way.