By some of the devs responsible for Jumpgate and the unreleased Jumpgate Evolution, a Kickstarter crowdsourced effort to bypass the publishers and managers that prevent these kinds of games getting released:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1065318294/squad-wars

If this looks like your cup of tea, they need your support!

Jumpgate:  Playable in late 1999, beta phases 2000-2001, official release July 2001 (EU), 21 September 2001 (NA).

Shut down by NetDevil's purchaser Gazillion on 30 April 2012.   :(

The way I heard it from the NetDevil guys, JGE was shut down by their owners (some company in SF) when the NetDevil studio was closed in 2011.  It had been going nowhere since Draker left anyway.

The guys originally responsible for Jumpgate (and for the Jumpgate Evolution effort that was killed by their publisher) are trying to crowdsource a space combat MMO called Squad Wars.

This looks like an attempt to glom together the best features of our favorite space combat games into a scenario-driven online dogfight battle-arena game.  If that interests you, take a look here:

  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1065318294/squad-wars

The guys originally responsible for Jumpgate (and for the Jumpgate Evolution effort that was killed by their publisher) are trying to crowdsource a space combat MMO called Squad Wars.

This looks like an attempt to glom together the best features of our favorite space combat games into a scenario-driven online dogfight battle-arena game.  If that interests you, take a look here:

  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1065318294/squad-wars

Originally posted by syrusmag3

I think they are taking a smart apporach to making a game then seeing if it is sucessful instead of spending years working on a game and a year later it goes down the toliet

You mean like Auto Assault did?

I have a lot of respect for the ex-NetDevil guys.  They were doing some interesting stuff.  They'd survived for something like 12 years as an indie studio before they got bought up and the new owners ran the studio into the ground.  Going to keep an eye on ENDGames.  At least they seem to release products.

Talked to the guy I knew who was at NetDevil.  This game is dead.  Not because particular creative people left, not because of some lawsuit, but because its whole dev team was laid off by Gazillion sometime in Feb.

Money or not, it looks like Gazillion isn't taking the game forward anymore.  If the developer gives up, I guess... it's over.  Maybe they were upset they were beat to market by BP?

Actually, NetDevil hardly exists anymore except on paper.  I knew a guy who worked there, and apparently Gazillion pretty much destroyed the studio after they took over.  There have been a bunch of layoffs lately, and it sounds like Fortune Online is going to be cancelled along with Jumpgate Evolution.  NetDevil's gone.

Yah, this looks bad.  I heard from a friend at NetDevil that the JGE team was laid off about 2 weeks ago.  What you've found sounds like the same thing.  He also got laid off with a bigger group last night.

Kiss off Jumpgate Evolution, I'm sorry to say.  I was looking forward to the game, too.   I know a guy who was at NetDevil, and he said the JGE team got laid off by Gazillion about two weeks ago.   He just got laid off last night, too, with a lot of the rest of the studio, and he said that everyone thinks Gazillion is just closing down the studio.

Doesn't sound like he'd heard anything about the game IP being sold to a Korean company.  He did say it was funny/odd, because apparently NetDevil was the only studio that had released or was close to releasing any products for Gazillion.

OK, I've got something.  Guy I know at NetDevil changed his LinkedIn to say he's not at NetDevil anymore.  I mailed him to ask what was up, and he says there were layoffs.

Guess which team got hit hardest?

Originally posted by Mystik86

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Tyring to make another game while being sued by Codemasters for failing to make Jumpgate Evolution. Priceless.

 

A shitty FB game at that... For shame.

 

I believe some companies are large enough to have more than one development team.

I remember in some interview years ago the original Producer Hermann was talking about fast, inexpensive development with a small team.  Now that they seem totally bogged down, I don't think their process is cheap anymore.  That will depend on how big their dev team got, though.

Gazillion just announced this D&D-style F2P browser game.  My guess-of-the-moment is that all this "reboot", "rethink" stuff is because some exec is driving the whole company to make cheapo quickie F2P browser games to make the company some fast money (maybe to pay off lawsuits?), and they're being forced to turn JGE into one of those.

That would be a damn shame.  What they had showing in 2008 looked like a game I'd want to play.  Very sad.

I think the potential is exceptionally interesting.  The trick is to have something worthwhile in-game for those governing players to manage, without giving them the potential to damage the core infrastructure systems the game requires to operate.

In the negative example being chewed over, I'd say that if the system in FoM permits a cadre of players dominating the server to actually damage the game's ability to welcome new players, their system is out of balance.  That example does not mean that the general case of player-governing games is bad, it means developers need to be careful what powers they grant, and community managers need to stay cognizant of what is going on in-game if they want their product to remain successful.

And remember, the definition of success for a business is "profitable".  Just because you hate a product's gameplay or community does not mean its operators don't consider it a success despite whatever happened to you when you were playing it.  Majority rule can be a serious bummer for the minority.

edit:typos

Yah, JGE seems to have a stake in its heart, but if you go here and click on "Update Center" you can see their recent patchlog.  "Dev Activity" shows tweets too.

Too bad there's no blog for Jumpgate here like there was for JGE.

"Short end of the stick" is almost the definition of Jumpgate.  No, not Jumpgate Evolution, the 'who knows if it'll ever release spiffy new game' by the same company.  I mean the real, original Jumpgate that's been kicking around since 2001.

This space game has been around forever, and its developers never marketed it.  It's old and looks dated but commands a very loyal following.  The guys who run it are still patching and updating it, and you have to wonder why they keep doing it.  I guess they're paid.

But the game has hardly had any attention, has never had a big team running it, has limped along doggedly for years, neglected by its masters.  It's a hands-on flight-sim space-shooter semi-RPG, a bit like Privateer.  There's really nothing else quite like it.  I'd consider it the epitome of "underappreciated".

It would be nice to see Rift do well on the basis of the innovative features it brings us.  However, I've been disappointed in Rift since I learned that it was in fact going to be a watered-down version of the innovative, dynamic world that the designers had originally planned (under its old name, Heroes of Telara).

This does not mean I think Rift will be a failure.  On the contrary, it may still be a modest success, and still be modestly innovative, which will be good for Trion and good for the industry.  After the last several major releases we've seen last year, we could use even a modest 'win'.

Depending on how strong your need for "RPG" is, there are a number of MMO space games around, many of which are small and need players:

Taikodom, Black Prophecy, Jumpgate Evolution, Vendetta Online, and Jumpgate all exist right now or are supposedly due for release soon, and all let you fly your ship to a greater degree than EVE (which is the biggest, deepest and arguably best space game around right now).

I have to agree with those who say the writing and the rating in this review do not seem to coincide.

The EVE we play today is NOT the EVE that released in June 2003.  That is part of why keeps winning awards like this, and deservedly.  The game has been enhanced dramatically, has grown and evolved successfully over the years.

EVE is the opposite of the pushed out the door by the publisher, flash-in-the-pan, over-hyped clone-of-some-other-game, cancelled after several months of mediocrity MMO trend we as players (whatever genre we prefer) have suffered under for most of the last decade.  I hope to see more studios developing quality entertainment for us of any sort based more on the EVE model: gradual growth, gradual enhancement of a core gameplay that works.