Well in good news community space-sims remain strong in active development (and most are free!)
Off the top of my head:
- OOliete - Object oriented Elite
It is
Oolite. A Windows remake of Elite with the same simple graphics of Elite.
If we talk about high quality fan made games, you should see
Bablylon 5: I've found her. It is a cool freeware combat sim that is even harder than Independence War and inspired by it. You need to download "Danger and opportunity" base game and later you may install custom missions inf you want.
If I understand correctly, this B5 fan game was made by russians and it is a state of the art product, worthy of any commercial game, so it makes me wonder how much money is a real drive for innovation, or if innovation exists despite money. Probably they felt tired of waiting for company struggles to settle down and they made their own game to make their dreams come true.
Here a screenshot:
Orbiter is also at the level of a commercial product thanks to you, people.
In the realm of commercial (payware) arcade games,
Moonpod has been doing some low budget developments that are a bit eye catchy that preserve ludology and narratology of games, instead of being just a game engine with sound and graphics and no gameplay.
Ludology refers to the "rules" part of the game that makes it enjoyable.
Narratology refers to the entertainment value of a good story, as if game was an interactive movie.
There is an ongoing debate betwen narratologists and ludologists who claim that games should be studied under their views.
To me, certainly those are just two approaches that could be worked alone or combined.
If we talk about freeware arcade 3D shooters,
Bruno R. Marcos Star Wars games are very exciting (the best Star Wars games I have ever played, even better than X-Wing Alliance). Here a screenshot of the base game.
There are some addons that allow improved graphics (better meshes and textures):
Battle of Yavin
Battle of Endor
Notice that you need to install the game in C:\Program Files\<game directory> default directory so addons may work.
If we talk about big budget games, money matters for faster and very elaborate development, but also as the company sees no profit, games are left unsupported. Instead, fan made or community made software, seem to deliver at slower pace, but continued support.
For example, the old Activision's DOS/Win95
Mechwarrior 2 is playable in XP thanks to fan made patching/apps and support.
Activision's Win95
Battlezone is also playable thanks to fan made patches and support.
Instead, some games like EF2000 v1.0 is unsupported, Jane's USAF is unsupported due to lack of a fan base and community effort.
By the time games reach the cloud, there will be no way to revive games if companies are gone.
From a cultural perspective it would be a loss. It is the equivalent of having Star Wars when you were a kid and suddenly see it gone everywhere.
