From Norm Koger - A message regarding TOAW

Dr Zaius

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This was an important message from the old board so I thought I would re-post it here. This message was originally posted by Siberian HEAT.

Hello Brian,

I made a better than market value offer for the TOAW intellectual property rights a few months back and Take-Two wasn't interested, so the future of the game system is pretty much in their hands. I am not aware of any plans they may have for the series.

If I had the IP rights I would love to continue developing the game. I believe that development of the engine was frozen just as it got to the point where it could potentially have been polished into something truly great. Even the military was interested in development directed to their specific needs, and I had to back out of a USAF project with much of the work already done because I could not guarantee that the end result could be
licensed for their use.

I do own the code and could use it to develop a derivative game as long as it is not too much like TOAW. But that's just too much trouble. Even a year ago it only made sense to consider continued development of the engine if the IP rights could be acquired to boost potential sales of any resulting game. As time goes on, the marketability of any game engine declines. TOAW
is no exception. Today, I could no longer even justify re-submitting the offer that Take-Two declined a few months back. I think TOAW is still a great game with tremendous potential for expansion, but given my expenses for continued development and marketing under a separate agreement the true
current _market_ value of the TOAW IP is pretty close to zero. If Take-Two were to _give_ me the IP rights, I'd be happy to pick up where I left off. But that is not very likely to happen.

I have not abandoned wargames. The last couple of years have been busy. While I can not discuss my primary project, the fact is that I now have a serious real time, (or for operational games - interruptible continuous action) multiplayer, directX8 based 3d engine at an advanced stage of development. One of the ways this code will show up is a Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) operational/tactical naval game sometime in the next year. Once
that is mature I plan to develop it into a series of strategic / operational / tactical naval games covering the 1850-1950 period. (This is my "mental health" project, not the main goal of my recent work.)

I have a miserable record lately where it comes to answering email Feel free to repost this information if you wish.

I'm feeling more than a little burned over the status of TOAW, so I find it a bit depressing to visit TOAW related game forums. As I worked on TOAW I really felt that it would avoid the fate of TANKS! and Age of Rifles. That's why so much additional development went into the engine long past the point where it made financial sense. Here we are again. Now, although my unnamed primary project will be tied up with a publisher and potentially exposed to the same kind of fate down the road, I plan to keep my naval engine firmly in my own hands. At least one of these things is going to stick around for more than a couple of years.

Regards,

Norm Koger
Software Developer
 
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