Petition

thehackercat · Post by **thehackercat** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 3:40

I wonder if it would be possible to legally pester (AKA petition) ID to give creative control of Keen to Tom Hall?

Of course, that's just a random thought that popped into my head this morning.

Still better, what if all the old members of ID (John Romero, John & Adrian Carmack, Robert Prince, Kevin Cloud, etc,) and work on the TUIT thing like they would have in the past?

Excluding native hardware of course.. I dunno though, some die-hard fans probably still have working MS-DOS computers. I have a couple.

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TerminILL · Post by **TerminILL** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 4:34

It would be possible. Iunno what iD would do, but we could have a go. (Funny, I was thinking this the other day.) So how should we do it? Forum topic, wiki page, custom-made PHP script, what?

Post by **KeenRush** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 4:45

I've become more cynical about it during the past few years, and I think -- sadly -- it will not work, unless you get hundreds of thousands of names. Which I don't see happening. And even that might not do anything. There has been this demand all along, people wanting Tom to get the rights and make TUIT, but iD just isn't giving them away.

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 5:22

There have been a few Keen-to-Tom petitions before, but none of them ever got any momentum. It's a niche goal, to be sure.

Lava89 · Post by **Lava89** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 7:35

This topic has been brought up before.

But it is good to see it re-surge. I think the only way for it to make headway though is for this thing to

A) keep going with enough steam and not die out like my own attempt and

B) go beyond the Keen community: I think if id software saw how many people liked Keen that could help matters (but not make it necessarily happen). So far I've only really seen stuff from the Keen community. Which is a given that we'd want to see a new Keen get made. Essentially we need to show them that not just hard core Keen fans want Tom Hall to get the rights back.

Djaser · Post by **Djaser** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 8:00

Petitions don't work, even if you had 10 million men signing it.

Post by **tulip** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 11:36

Wow this is about the nth time someone had an idea like this.
Search google and you'll probably find several petitions you can sign if you feel like it, but I wouldn't give it any hope.

Grandy02 · Post by **Grandy02** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 12:55

Sadly, the Keen community might just be not big enough to get really many votes in a petition. Many people around the world might like Keen, but only a small portion takes part in the community. And even if there were enough voices to affect id, it would actually convince them NOT to give away the rights to someone else, since they can still make money with Keen. Single people usually don't own the rights of a game, a company does. Mario is also owned by Nintendo rather than his creator Shigeru Miyamto, the game designer who works for the company.

At most, it could be possible that Tom Hall leads the development team for a new Keen game, but that wouldn't mean he gets the rights. But as long as it's a good game. Years ago, id actually showed their will to give the Keen franchise a bit of new life with the GBC episode, but the game was... you know about it. No big surprise with David A. Palmer Productions, who have created two other GBC platformers as part of the Gex series prior to Keen GBC. Never played them, but according to reviews, the have the same fate: colourful graphics, but mediocre gameplay.

Anyway, never give up. This year, a remake of the 1980s home computer game Giana Sisters was released for Nintendo DS in Europe and Oceania, and I don't think Giana Sisters is much more well-known than Commander Keen. I'm sure that a remake of this more than 20 years old game would have been less likely without the still existing fanbase.

Post by **Levellass** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 13:26

I imagine something like this happening;

1.) The petition starts, online naturally. It draws in the Keen community, and also those who have played Keen 9.

2.) Spreading out from there it gains support from other DOS communities and old games such as Doom and Duke 3D.

3.) The petition gains 10'000 signatures and is presented to ID.

4.) ID realize that people care deeply about Keen.

5.) Coming 2012 for the PS4: Commander Keen 3D! Keen's 10 years older, brandishes a laser shotgun and raps with attitude! That ought to appeal to the younger generation of gamers!

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 15:41

I've signed a petition before. It had like, 36 signatures total =(

I remember all the petitions to un-cancel EarthBound 64 for the N64, to push it's development to the gamecube, to bring it to the states, etc. They reached their goals with tens of thousands of votes, but all of them were bitter, dismal failures that nintendo pretended did not exist. I knew enough to have lost all hope by the time people were petitioning EarthBound for the Virtual Console and to bring Mother 1+2 and Mother 3 outside of Japan. I doubt a petition to give the keen rights to Tom Hall would do any better.

ZidaneA · Post by **ZidaneA** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 22:15

Grandy02 wrote: Anyway, never give up. This year, a remake of the 1980s home computer game Giana Sisters was released for Nintendo DS in Europe and Oceania, and I don't think Giana Sisters is much more well-known than Commander Keen. I'm sure that a remake of this more than 20 years old game would have been less likely without the still existing fanbase.

Giana Sisters is more famous than Keen..

Djaser · Post by **Djaser** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 9:44

ZidaneA wrote:
Grandy02 wrote: Anyway, never give up. This year, a remake of the 1980s home computer game Giana Sisters was released for Nintendo DS in Europe and Oceania, and I don't think Giana Sisters is much more well-known than Commander Keen. I'm sure that a remake of this more than 20 years old game would have been less likely without the still existing fanbase.
Giana Sisters is more famous than Keen..

Can you back up that claim, because I don't believe you.

Grandy02 · Post by **Grandy02** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 11:44

ZidaneA wrote:
Grandy02 wrote: Anyway, never give up. This year, a remake of the 1980s home computer game Giana Sisters was released for Nintendo DS in Europe and Oceania, and I don't think Giana Sisters is much more well-known than Commander Keen. I'm sure that a remake of this more than 20 years old game would have been less likely without the still existing fanbase.
Giana Sisters is more famous than Keen..

Well, I'd believe that when you mean Europe, where classic home computers such as C64 and Amiga have the largest following. But I doubt that goes for the region where Keen is from, the US. Not sure about Oceania. And in one of the largest gaming markets, Japan, people neither care about Keen nor Giana.

Also, I just noticed that Giana Sisters DS is neither available at Amazon.co.uk nor Amazon.fr. So it hasn't been released in all of Europe? Odd.

Google "fights" aren't the best method to determine what's more popular, but it at least implies that Giana Sisters (171,000 hits) can't be THAT more famous than Commander Keen (232,000 hits) from a worldwide view.

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 12:06

That's because the C64 was mostly hugely popular in Europe, not the US, while Keen was made in the US. I believe the US at that point was more into the NES, though I can't really be sure about that.

Lava89 · Post by **Lava89** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 14:34

DaVince wrote:That's because the C64 was mostly hugely popular in Europe, not the US, while Keen was made in the US. I believe the US at that point was more into the NES, though I can't really be sure about that.

By the time Keen 4-6 came out, the gaming world was already entrenched in the Sega vs. Nintendo battle.