The creators of Space Quest are so disturbed about it, they refuse to play any space quest fan makings.
Lori and Corey Cole have also publicly said they don't like the idea of other people doing anything with their story.
Well this is news to me. Would you be able to provide any links to interviews where they state this? It's not that I don't believe you, I'm just kind of shocked that the SQ and QFG creators aren't interested in their stories living on. Actually the idea of the SQ creators being disgusted at the SQ fangames disgusts me. They should at least try out the SQ fan games, then decide.
As for kings quest: Why would they care? Afterall, KQ8 certainly showed that the creator's interest were elsewhere...
I don't know why it was made the way it was. I'm guessing that Roberta Williams wanted to make KQ8 like a normal Kings Quest, but was afraid traditional adventures were dying, so she made a 3d action/adventure game.
And I don't think the Porsche analogy was bad if you understood what I was getting at. But then, not everyone has basic cognitive skills... It seems it is easier for some to over-anaylze things rather than to take it as it's meant.
I see the point of the analogy, but the analogy is still flawed. The companies that own the rights to these adventures show no interest in continuing them. They aren't even interested in traditional adventures anymore. Heck alot of people don't even care about these old adventure game series. Whereas Porsches are still being produced and are still very popular.
Anyway, I can argue that intellectual property NEEDS to be protected until I am blue in the face. The fact that we all like fan games make it hard for most people to accept
There is nothing wrong with a company protecting it's intellectual property. I just wish they'd only go after the very serious cases.
But I know that if I were to make a game that I was pretty proud of, and I saw people making unauthorized sequel/prequels on it, I'd be a little perturbed. Sure, it's flattering that someone else is imitating my work, but that's my brainchild they're messing with! People always screw it up
What if the fans actually made a decent sequel/prequel, would you still be perturbed?
What if your didn't own the rights to your story and knew that you'd probably never get a chance to continue it?
If you were Porsche Inc, and some fanboy in Kansas decided he wanted to make his 2.5 cyl '67 stationwagon look like an authentic porsche, wouldn't you want to stop him? I mean, everyone will see his crappy-ass stationwagon and think porsche is responsible. To put it into context: If people could somehow clone this stationwagon for free, eventually there'd be enough crappy-ass faux porsche's on the streets, that porsche's reputation as a high-end auto manufacturer would be tarnished.
Let's take the analogy one step further and say that the crappy stationwagon that looks like a Porsche has big writing on it that says "DISCLAIMER: This is not a real porsche". That's how fangames are, it's blatantly obvious that they are not official games. So how reputation gets damaged is beyond me. Besides, if they think a released fangame is a shoddy piece of crap, they're free to take it out before reputation gets damaged. They shouldn't assume that every fangame will make the brand look bad. In fact fangames could increase interest in the series(if they're made right).