Silent Threat: Hit or Miss?

by: Old Staff - August 16, 1998 for Freespace Watch

It was only a few days ago that Silent Threat was "officially" announced by Interplay. Most people probably already saw it coming, even before there were rumors. After all, FreeSpace rocked in every ways but one – replayability. Ultimately, when a game doesn’t have playable multiplayer, it will eventually die. Warcraft II, which came out YEARS ago, is still popular. Yet the X-Files game, which came out just weeks ago, is already starting to fade. Why is this? Because, without multiplayer, games get boring and get shelved. And then the game vanishes from the gaming arena.

To me, Silent Threat is an attempt by Volition to delay this "Replayability Effect" as much as possible. Even with huge sites like Xanadu’s archive, not EVERYONE knows about it. By releasing Silent Threat, Volition WILL succeed in making FreeSpace’s life longer. 60 new missions are a lot, and the new weapons/ships are added incentives.

Yet another thing that caught my attention is Interplay’s deal "if you make a mission and submit it, you get a free copy of Silent Threat." This made me wonder exactly what Interplay’s and Volition’s goals are. Its obvious to almost anyone that Silent Threat is a game not being released for profit, but to make FreeSpace itself live longer and thus sell more copies. You must wonder how much time Volition is actually putting into this. I am willing to bet that 2 weeks – MAX – are spent developing this expansion. I would say of the 60 missions included, 30 of them will be from submitted entries. This is because, obviously, if Volition is going to be giving away thousands of copies of the game, it can’t spend much time developing the expansion. It can be said that they will give away more copies than copies it will sell.

So what does this do for the FreeSpace community? Well, because of it, we will no doubt see more missions incoming. Yet most of these will be first-time attempts, which generally are not worth playing (as a generalization; there are exceptions.) Volition will make little money off Silent Threat, but it will give FreeSpace players more fun before the game is eventually shelved. Silent Threat will also stir up some more news and forum discussions, which is always good (whether the feedback is good or bad).

So was it a good idea to release Silent Threat? Yes, it was. But is it something that will work twice? No, it isn’t. It will give players a chance to play more Volition-quality missions (similar to those by Peter Drake and a few others) and will encourage people to use FRED more, which eventually means they will play the game more. Silent Threat was probably never conceived until about a month ago, when Volition realized that multiplayer would never be popular. However, that doesn’t change my point that it is a great idea. Lets just hope it lives up to our expectations, for if it doesn’t, it spells certain doom for FreeSpace and all sequels.