2K Games President says XCOM: Enemy Unknown was inspired by “love of turn-based strategy,” not fear of bloodthirsty strategy fans
Long-time fans of classic turn-based strategy game X-COM, disappointed by the revelation that 2K Games’ upcoming game XCOM would be a tactical first-person shooter, received very welcome news with the recent announcement that 2K subsidiary Firaxis Games would be releasing its own XCOM game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, that would be truer to the franchise’s strategy roots and have more in common with the original game beyond “there’s aliens in it and you shoot them.” In an announcement to the press concerning the new game, 2K Games president Christoph Hartmann said:
“We at 2K Games are very proud to be the publishers of Firaxis his upcoming title XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The decision to create a traditional XCOM strategy game alongside 2K’s upcoming first-person shooter reboot of the franchise was made due to our respect for the original and our belief that the XCOM universe can support many types of gameplay, and not because of 2K’s supposed capitulation to an alleged campaign of terrorism and intimidation waged by one or more organizations of militant turn-based strategy aficionados who may or may not have coalesced and decided to abandon peaceful methods in favor of violence in the aftermath of our announcement that our new XCOM game would be a shooter.”
However, some sources within take to indicate that the company’s decision to publish an XCOM strategy game from its subsidiary Firaxis was not made entirely by choice.
“Those old-school strategy fans are fucking animals,” said an anonymous source within 2K. “Less than twelve hours after the news about our XCOM action game broke, 2K’s United Kingdom branch office was in flames and we were getting letters written in human blood from a group calling itself the ‘People’s Revolutionary X-COM Resistance Cadre’ demanding the release of what they called ‘a purified X-COM unsullied by the hegemony of Western Late Capitalist bourgeois Halo players.’ We told the press it was a gas leak.”
The next few months, according to this source, saw a steady escalation of the PRXCOMRC’s efforts, which would include threatening letters and phone calls, arson, assassinations, leaving the mangled carcasses of vivisected farm animals accompanied by signs bearing cryptic slogans such as “SECTOID AUTOPSY” in front of the homes of 2K executives, and a relentless campaign of hostile, poorly spelled comments and systematic down-voting on GameTrailers.com.
Image captured by security cameras at 7:43 PM, April 23rd 2010, at 2K Games headquarters in Novato, California, 9 days after Christoph Hartmann's press release announcing that in the new XCOM "Players will explore the world of XCOM from an immersive new perspective"
After a series of unsuccessful attempts at reprisal, 2K’s management capitulated, according to this source, resulting in 2K agreeing to the militant group’s demands at a secret summit held at Camp David in October of 2011. Our source added, “Negotiations nearly broke down at the last minute when a militant splinter group of PRXCOMRC, which was called the Popular Resistance X-COM Revolutionary Collective- so they also called themselves the ‘PRXCOMRC’,and you can imagine what a pain in the ass that was- announced that calling the game ‘XCOM‘ was unacceptable and demanded that the original hyphen be restored. Then a radical faction of the British wing of that group demanded that the original British title UFO: Enemy Unknown be used instead… God, it was a real mess.”
However, Hartmann has vehemently denied these allegations, saying, “Nonsense. 2K Games does not negotiate with terrorists. Our decision to publish a second, strategy-focused XCOM game has nothing to do with anything involving terrorist bombings, the severed digits and/or heads of of hostages being mailed to 2K headquarters, proxy wars waged by armies of bloodthirsty Maoist guerillas, or daring late-night raids on 2K headquarters by a band of renegade Russian Spetsnaz commandos lead by a former assassin for Israeli intelligence who faked his own death in 2003 to become the deadly soldier of fortune known only as ‘the Golden Jackal.’ It’s all about our love of turn-based strategy.”
Yesterday:
Big game companies stop backing SOPA, Fascism, possibly Satan
Tomorrow:
N-Control apologizes for their marketing disaster, we apologize for ours
Leave a Comment
N-Control apologizes for their marketing disaster, we apologize for ours
