Our (future) competitors. (In the meantime, we are often customers!)

I bet they're all just shaking in their boots right now!

• [Edge of Extinction] Being in a different literary genre, this is not really a competitor. However, it's interesting because it's being built by Cybernet using their OpenSkies library, mentioned earlier on this page.
• Earth and Beyond A space RPG -- definitely not a flight sim.
• [Parsec]: A sort of "Quake in space" with a simplistic flight model like Wing Commander. Free, but not Open Source. In development, LAN demo available.
• [DarkSpace by PaleStar]: Got this link from a posting on JG's board. Looks like another combat-based MMOG space sim. Commercial. In development, open beta, both central and user-run servers.
• [Infogrames], publisher of Independence War. (Graphics-heavy Web site that only an LPB could love.)
• [Elite 4]: Elite was the grandaddy of them all - here's what the original creator is doing now. Note that they license their game engine (for big bucks I'm sure).
• [Reverse Engineered Elite rewritten in C] This guy took the original BBC Micro assembly version and reverse engineered the entire thing and then rewrote it in C. There's dedication for you (or is it insanity?)
• Oh yeah? I'll one-up you. I warned you about this: [Elite in Emacs Lisp]! if you look at the credits on this page you'll see that he based it on the C source of the guy who did it in C ...
• [Galileo] A freeware, open-source-esque, space game in the vien of Elite. Started in 1996 and still apparently crawling along. Check out the Discussion section on the [Design] page - they have a lot of stuff about The Shape Of The Game (that is the shape of their game) thought out in a fair amount of detail. Wow, these guys have even more ambitious ideas than ours, in some ways. Good luck to them, then. - DWM
• [Orbiter - A Free Space Flight Simulator] - wow, check this one out - about the only thing you don't need to do to use this one is go and sit in one of those contraptions that spin you around at a gazillion G. You should probably do the rest of the flight training though - the graphics look awesome and the physics is, apparently, spot on. I second that -- wow.
• [A Tale in the Desert] - This MMORPG's interesting from a research perspective. It's apparently a combination of puzzle and RP gaming. No fighting, all building. I'm wondering how successful they will be. The designers also intend an endpoint to their story, at which point the game will actually end. That mystifies me a bit, or at least makes me think they don't really plan to make money.... - Istvan 4/9/02

JDH Yes this one does look interesting. I like the idea of a voting system but I don't know how well it would actually work and I suspect that it might not work quite as glibly as they suggest on their web site: If a majority of players vote in favor of a law, eGenesis will have a programmer change the rules of the game on-the-fly. Our technology allows us to modify the game rules without bringing down the servers or interrupting game play. It's not that I don't doubt that they can deploy updates in such a fashion - rather that I suspect that they under estimate the amount of work that may be involved in some rule changes. It should be fun to watch! (I have a picture of the lead developer shaking his head and holding his head in his hands while saying - I told them not to say that!)

• [Darker Sector] - This is actually a fan site for a MMORPG in development at Digital Extremes. They're using parts of Epic's Unreal engine for a "game that mixes deathmatch game play with Everquest style persistent world serving. That means you play as a character with stats and a reputation that will follow." quote taken from the FAQ
  
  

• Star Wars Galaxies: This is an online MMORPG games to be released this december by Sony/Verant (The same people that created EverCrack, err I mean, EverQuest. At first I was afraid that they were muscling in on our turf, but then I released is more of a EverQuest in space game (characters that walk around on alien landscapes) so now I'm not so worried. Anyway, here is a link to the game site. [Star Wars Galaxies].

• Here is an interesting link to an article that talks about the future of online games. It's a good read because they talk about the history of online games, and the huge future they see. [Check it out].
  
  

• Here's another link to an article about the bright future of video games. Times a wasting! [link].

• Second Life: Haven't played it, and I'm not sure how fun it would be (at least to me), but there are some pretty amazing ideas in here. Some of them (e.g. player controlled economy) reminded me of stuff that's been discussed here. Worth checking out. [SecondLife]