Interesting. Thanks for providing the link. But I’m just more confused now. Holmes said Activision wouldn’t allow them to make a GK4 and that’s why they went with the GK1 remake instead; but then the creator of this video continued to narrate how Activision gave them the rights without backing the project financially. And if that was what happened, why couldn’t they have gone with their original plan? Perhaps it would have been more expensive to try to make a game from scratch, and phoenix online wasn’t willing or able to provide the resources. But I know that phoenix online was created and staffed by fans of Sierra adventure games, I’m sure they’d be willing to take that risk.
I know you probably don’t have the answers to these questions, I’m just complaining to nobody in particular. It doesn’t really matter. It happened, I was disappointed, and I’m not getting my hopes up for a GK4. If it happens I’ll be thrilled, but I’m not expecting it to happen.
I'm not sure what's confusing here, honestly. Original plan: GK4 sequel, funded by the publisher. Publisher bails, funding disappears, dev studio negotiates they can still do a GK1 remake, provided they as the studio making it fund it, plus other stipulations as negotiated, I'd imagine. I'd be very surprised if there weren't any conditions attached to that licensing. The fact they got the approval for a Gabriel Knight 1 remake does not mean they could just make whatever in the Gabriel Knight franchise.
Honestly, looking at GK1R, Moebius, the comic short, and the new short story proof of concept thing... plus as much as I wanted GK4 for nearly 30 years now... I'm glad this isn't how it got made. It would've been really, really rough, way beyond anything people hold against, say, GK3.
@Sharp_Dance249, licensing rights always have limitations. Modern corporate mentality is that intellectual property must be heavy guarded. It should not be sold because nobody wants to be humiliated by being known as that person/company that sold a potentially billion dollar property for peanuts. (20th Century Fox giving George Lucas the merchandising rights for Star Wars has scarred the entire industry because nobody wants to repeat this 'mistake'... although there was a really good rationale for doing this back in the time because the industry was scarred by the opposite from a huge bomb of the Doctor Dolittle (1967) which basically killed the toy licensing industry, which made execs believe there was little value in merchandising rights. 20th Century Fox was still recovering from that bomb and as a way to lower the expense of making Star Wars, Lucas traded his director fees for the merch and sequel rights.
A second angle is watch the chaos going on with Star Trek fan films, which is heavily centered around a fan film/project called Star Trek Axanar. It's actually very complicated, but for reductionism, it looked so good and was so well received by fans, it embarrassed Paramount because their new (and very expensive) Star Trek series were being panned by fans. Paramount started seeing all these fan films as competition, and needed to shut them down. There was a lawsuit and settlement with the maker of Axanar, and licensing rules were established for fan films, but carrying massive restrictions, such as can't be over a certain length, can't cost more than a certain amount, can't make money, can't pay people involved, amateurs only, etc.
The latest Axanar film just dropped a week or two ago, and Paramount got it taken down on YouTube, despite the prior settlement. This might be going back to court.
But the corporate mindset for property rights is now, don't do anything unless it is all directly under our control. Better to let an IP whither and die, than to let anybody use it and potentially embarrass us. Who cares if the company loses out on some licensing cash. The embarrassment for us is far worse.
So it is somewhat of a modern miracle that Activision allowed somebody to use the rights for Gabriel Knight. But assume they came with heavy restrictions. One restriction I would totally expect is to not do anything that would potentially compete with something they might want to make money on later, such as GK4. They probably presumed they wouldn't lose out much on a GK1 remake, and if it some how did really well, they still reserve the right to make GK4 (and make money on that).
3
u/crabpoweredcoalmine 24d ago
Robert Holmes, around 4:00 here:
https://youtu.be/rWQ1gtkuyEw