The Future of Freedom Force: Help Make it Happen!

[BentonGrey]

Howdy folks!  After a conversation with Spyder yesterday, I decided to try and contact the former members of Irrational Games in the hopes that they might be willing and able to release the source code for the Freedom Force games to their fan community, still loving and creating for their games 15 years after their release.  I tracked a lot of them down to Ghost Story Games, and I think I've got a method of contacting them.  We'll see.

I don't know how realistic this dream is, but it occurred to me that such things have happened in the past.  In order to demonstrate that there are still folks out there who care about these games, I've also created a petition to gather support.  Please take a moment, check it out and sign it.  Please give me some feedback about how I can improve the petition if anything occurs to you!
https://www.change.org/p/former-irrational-games-make-freedom-force-open-source-freefreedomforce?recruiter=39862529&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

We could finally fix some of the problems with  if we had the sourcecode (or rather, folks smarter than me could!), and we could make modifications to the games themselves, which would be amazing.  I hope you'll hope with me, and maybe something great will come out of this wild idea.

[crimsonquill]

Signed and added the hype for the petition on other social sites I visit.

- CQ

[Incredible Bulk]

Done and signed will this be posted on steam?

[BentonGrey]

Yes, I had to get five signatures for it to be publicly viewable, but we've got that, so I will post it on Steam and GOG and on my ModDB page.

[oldmanwinters]

Woah, that would be amazing!  Hope you get a favorable hearing, Benton!

[Teal Titan]

Freedom Force is absolutely one of my favorite games, and I would absolutely love to see a with a 3 at the end of it. Maybe give the game a bronze age of comics feel or even the modern age. I think a humorous "dark" and "gritty" Freedom Force game that tackles the topic of comics getting way darker but in a parody like way would be a lot of fun.

[BentonGrey]

Howdy TT, and welcome to the boards! 

Yeah, I would have killed for an FF3.  Unfortunately, that seems very unlikely at this point.  Did you ever see the concept art for the Bronze Age FF3 that Irrational was thinking about?:
https://irrationalgames.ghoststorygames.com/insider/from-the-vault-freedom-force/

What we hope for is, since the company is gone and the game is basically abandonware, that the powers that be might release the source code.

On that front, I've got an update:



I tracked the former Irrational folks down to their new company Ghost Story Games:
https://www.ghoststorygames.com/

I sent them a message along the lines outlined above, and I got this response:

Thanks for reaching out and for your love of Freedom Force. That game was a great experience and part of our studio's DNA. While we would appreciate the interest in bring FF back to life, we no longer have access to these files.

Best of luck with your efforts!

I've followed up with a request for a lead on where to go next, so let's hope they can and will point us in the right direction!

This was always a longshot, and I'm afraid it's going to be longer if we're appealing to some corporate types instead of those folks who made the game and have an emotional investment therein.  Still, I think that we have a chance.  I'll keep y'all updated, and in the meantime, if you haven't signed the petition, definitely do so!  If we can show evidence of a significant interest in the game, that's going to help our case one way or another!

[stumpy]

I would love to see the source code for Freedom Force and FFvt3R. So many little things to tweak/fix/add... :-)

But, I wonder... Are FF and FFvt3R still being sold by GOG and/or Steam? That might restrict the ability of IG (or whoever they've morphed into at this point) to release the code. I don't know one way or another, but it wouldn't surprise me if those stores require some agreement that the developers of games on their stores legally can't release what would essentially be an open-source version of the game, at least for some period of time. Of course, Steam already has open-source games available, so this may not be an obstacle.

(There may also be issues with EA/Crave as well, though it might well be that any deal Irrational had with them is done and gone. After all, IG self-published FFvt3R.)

[stumpy]

That's possible, DJ. But, Irrational self-published FFvt3R, which is the code base I think we'd most like to see released.

For what little my opinion is worth, if anyone besides Irrational itself has rights to that code, it would be Take-Two, which bought Irrational in '06. But, buying a company doesn't necessarily mean getting exclusive publication rights to all of the IP the company produced in the past. It's quite possible that Ken & Co. still have control of that. So, who knows?

[BentonGrey]

All good points.  I'm afraid my request for more info has not been answered yet.  I'm going to give it until the end of the month, then follow up again.