If my memory serves me well, three years ago, Suzerain said something along the lines that the storyline is being kept, "locked" somewhere in Scotland or something. My point is what if a professional studio reaches Suzerain in the future to buy/make use of that storyline considering the videogame industry would be much more mature than now and professional coders actually have the tools to make a game of Middle-Earth's magnitude.

I mean this day may even not be so far away in the future, even shooters -like Crysis- nowadays, are made in an immensely vast and realistic game worlds, while RPGs, at last, start to take in account the myriad small details that make a game world immersive (I know Stalker is not really an RPG, but it had many aspects of an immersive universe, gloomy atmosphere, need to eat, sense of being alone in the middle of nowhere etc etc).

In other worlds -and again if my memory serves me well- since the storyline was such deep and true to the Tolkien's universe, Memod may not be entirely dead, it's just in stasis, we just don't have the tools to make such a game circa 2000s, it seems as absurd as a movie of LOTR's magnitude in the 50s, it's impossible, but considering the pace of the progress of technology, in our days, it won't be alien to have Memod alive in 10 to 15 years (by 2020) and kicking.

What I really want to say is that you this wonderful company of Tolkienites that you -people- had made when Memod was alive, has not to go wasted, just because a game of Tolkien's universe scope is impossible, nowadays. We'll need such enthusiasm in the near future, when a "memod" will not be a so "out there" idea. Personally I cannot make any concrete promises, but I can say for sure that myself -along others probably- may revisit this idea in the -not so distant- future with concrete plans in mind, I can only ask that Memod's spirit and ideas won't go dead in the following years.....

READ THE PINNED TOPIC!!! (http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=10645)

If you had bothered, you would realise that MEMod cannot, and will not, ever be released, in any way, shape or form, because to do so would be a breach of copyright law, and would have serious legal repercussions on everyone who helped make it.

THAT is why nobody else has tried to bring MEMod back.

actually, it'd be perfectly legal if it were to anyone lisenced to use the IP... ie, vivendi universal, etc.





"considering the videogame industry would be much more mature than now and professional coders actually have the tools to make a game of Middle-Earth's magnitude"


BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHaaaaaaah. The Industry's "mature"?? yeah, right. no fecking chance. the industry is about as mature as a 16-year old drooling at lara croft's tits.
We had the technology in 2004. hell, we had the tech in 2000. the coding is not the problem. What's needed is a change to the marketing departments, the sales staff, and the 5-minute attention-span focus testings from ADHD-suffering designers who've had dopamine injected directly into the brain stem by marketing department cock-gobblers every time they look at the latest and greatest layer of sh*te pushed out by Endemol or EA.

Suzerain.
Even more bitter, jaded, and cynical about the industry than I was in 2004...

True, but if they had any intention of doing that, they'd have done it years ago. They probably can't remember what Memod even is by now, let alone the great story written for it.



I completely agree. Perhaps thats slightly stronger than I'd have put it, but still absolutely right.

I have followed MEMod from its conception, I know exactly what's happened and/or how.

My point is that the videogame industry is already getting to a point where it starts to make some serious money and reaches in places which never reached. The videogame industry, even, started as a joke rivaling the pinball machines in the good ole pubs. I know that code was never the problem, I also know that coders are, I am one. I want to say -however- that things -by definition- start to get more professional from the point that big players come in. What we already saw from "big players" 'till know, is the likes of EA, blasphemous money machines trying the ADHD ridden players.

But that's not my point, my point is NOT what Suzerain or anyone else knew of the videogame industry, my point is, that it finally reached the critical mass to break in the mainstream, the first gamers are already 30 something, some even touched 40 and they are the ones becoming the establishment. It's not for me to give you what happened with the mediocre sequel #3 of the Halo series. It's not just the hype and the marketing, it's that videogame industry indeed becomes one with the pop culture, like movies did 70-80 years ago, and like movies had their citizen Cane in the 40s videogames will have their masterpiece in the 2010 I can assure you of it. It's one way trip were only the worthy will survive. I know exactly how games are still made today, believe me, this can't be the future, gamers will be forced to stop drooling before some polygon titties as the only main theme and they'll demand the real thing, entertainment.

That's how and why memod comes into play, I have never said that my team and I will purchase from Vivendi the LoTR's rights and make use of Suzerain's plot to build a real immersotainment, no, what I'm saying that that's a possibility, not for me now and here, but for someone like minded in a more able place of me and a really determined team to make sth worthy, it doesn't even need to buy Vivendi's right, you can finish the game before anything and either present it to them and/or actually find a funder to make the work for you in the promise of the first masterpiece in the VG history. I'm not the daydreamer that you may think, I'm the one who knows exactly what 40-50 something will want in the place of mindless teen entertainment, remember Citizen Kane was a masterpiece exactly because it never touched the teens-20somethings.

The VG industry, still, is to its infancy and that's exactly why Memod would had failed given that it was a commercial game, you can see the dumbed down version of Morrowind thriving while deep RPGs of the old (90s actually) dying from people's memories, even, but that's not where the industry goes. 'Till know it was moving in unison, we have/had trends, never niches. Daggerfall made some money, but Morrowind made a lot more that's why Oblivion was a natural continuation, you can see this happening to shooters, look at Halo, people are dumbing down / make simpler their games because that's what the trend says, we even have a whole console for dumbed down games named nintendo Wii, but brace yourselves for this will be the death of videogames' industry as a unison. That's exactly why the break into the mainstream is/will be important, people will start to demand sth different, hence the niches, exactly what happens to Movies or even the press as a whole. A niche would never be fulfilled by a multimillion project (the cost of a ME's magnitude game), in opposition it will be done so by some relatively cheap projects. A modified Cry engine can give you what I'm talking and we're even before the start. Coders are immature because they either have to be so, so that sell to their audience or because they're not paid enough and can't take their work seriously, but the creation of Niches stays exactly in the middle, you know what your audience need, you *know* you'll be paid if you deliver it, there are whole industries thriving upon this logic, Apple is a great example of such a company, they know they will be payed, they deliver.

A lengthy explanation, I know, but I think it's also time to move those who think that the bastard offspring of the pinball industry will become the Videogame industry of the 21st century.

we reached critical mass years ago.
the vidoegames industry is bigger than Hollywood. the average age is into the 30's, the marketing figures indicate growth in each area for the next decade.
we no longer in infancy. we are big business - a multibillion dollar industry.

however we are infantile. the market is unable and unwilling to depict anything even remotely adult (count the number of games that have sex and love as themes in them. now count the ones done well.). the problem is that we've yet to see any true interactive art out there. portal's close (that closing song is genius), but its still derivative. there's very few truly exceptional products out there.


MeMod is simply an idea. game ideas are ten a penny. its nothing special.
it's not the citizen kane of games design, by a long shot. it's barely a script, an outline for what mihgt've been.
I've seen a thousand designs, written a hundred that are as original, or better. a good idea is'nt what matters in the industry, but a good implmentation that will sell.
and untill the economics of the industry change significantly, that will over-rule any art.

sadly.