Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by ScarletFlame »

Probably the best photo taken from the E3 keen booth
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by proYorp »

There are no words to describe the amount of horror and disgust I felt after just seeing that first image in the stevivor article. I was cringing so hard I could barely even stand to cast my eyes upon it. My initial assumption from that image was that they just split our Keen into two people, so I'm vaguely relieved that they aren't quite that incompetent.

After recovering a bit from the shock, I mustered up some strength and watched a snippet in the middle of the intro trailer for 0.00001 seconds... and was assaulted by a scene of these two new Keen's, and some aliens (Vorticons I guess?), and some kind of new shadow-being Mortimer(?), sitting together at a table eating peanut butter sandwiches like they're all best friends, with some cheesy advertisement-type song playing. I just-- there are no words.

I have no hope for this game. It already looks worse than Keen GBC. If you really wanted to, you could maybe pretend that GBC was just a subpar fan game with a load of liberties taken. But this level of cringe is only possible with the help of a bloated corporation with 0 inspiration or connection to their product.

---

However, my biggest concern now is... what's going to happen to our community? I had often speculated to myself before what would theoretically happen to us if a new Keen game were to come around, even considered starting a thread on it (maybe such discussion should still be diverted to a separate thread).

Is this going to cause a rift in the community, people who reject the new game vs. people who are okay with it? So far this seems decently unlikely, as reception is 90% negative, even from people outside our forum. According to one guy's comment on the announcement trailer, "I've never heard of the original game and I'm still mad".
Although emotionally charged topics often have the tendency to get quite heated.
...Please guys, let's not take it out on each other. We can't let them destroy the community as well.

Is our forum going to be invaded by hundreds of new people who know nothing about the original games? Considering the circumstances, this also seems fairly unlikely, as I'm guessing most of the mainstream audience will probably stick to mainstream social media for discussion (and this place seems to be hard to find even for most Keeners). Additionally I don't see this game drawing much of a new crowd.

Now that Zenimax or Bethesda or whoever owns the IP is taking advantage of it, are they going to be cracking down on mods and fan games if they find them? I honestly have no idea about this one, as I haven't gotten into any of the other games that they own and am not familiar with how they operate with such things. However, if they're anything like any of the other big cumbersome companies out there, I'm going to be very concerned.

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To continue on with the community-related questions, what should WE do as a result of this? I wish I could ignore it and forget about it, but... it's too late for me. This exists now. And thousands of people know it exists. The blow has been dealt. Even if everyone here ignores it, that won't affect Zenimax hardly at all. So the question is, what do we DO about it?

Here's the thing. For the first time in a long while, some kind of spotlight has been cast on Keen. It might just be possible to use this as an opportunity to finally make our voices heard. Maybe we can coordinate with the larger population of Keen fans and do some kind of unified social-media protest, chastising Bethesda and insisting that they take their grubby fingers off this IP.

Now I realise that's a very long shot as an end goal, but at the very least in the process it could spread awareness about the situation and what the solution (lofty as it is) would be, and if enough people join in maybe Zenimax would take just a little bit of notice, maybe become just a bit concerned by the demands and maybe even fear for their reputation. They currently don't seem to be needing much help getting backlash and discredit, but if the outcry is directed towards demanding that they get Tom Hall in the equation, maybe it could open some potential doors if any opportunities arise.

I mean hey, it worked for the Sonic movie. Granted they have a much larger fanbase, and this is technically a bit bigger of an issue than a character redesign (though that likely cost millions of dollars). But several times this last year I've seen instances where a large number of people were upset, cried out, and got results. People are clearly getting sick of corporate incompetency. Furthermore, thousands of fans of Keen (a much greater number than our usual ~20 here) are very distressed by these developments. With this trend of public unity and achieving recognition from the corporation, maybe.... Maybe we could do the same.

---

Well now this is quite the brick wall of text....
So far this has just been a lot of thoughts and ideas that have just been bouncing around in my head the last two days. I'd really like to hear if anyone has any other opinions, points, or counter-points.
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Roobar
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by Roobar »

First and foremost I think we should not ignore this. No matter how bad it is. And yes, I also think this is one of the worse ways to tread long time keen fans. Bug either way, this has now become a thing whether we like it or not. And this game is obviously not much directed toward long time keen fans, but rather kids.

Anyway, there is, however, a small chance that they may cancel it because of the backlash. Not likely but still. Even if they release it, I don't think that it will affect our community that much. After the release I don't see hordes of 9 year olds invading our forum as well. We'll categorize the game as the worst keen by far and we will move on.

If one positive thing happened from this is that some long gone keeners have returned and some people are now talking about keen. For a very long time, keen is now relevant again goddamit.
Last edited by Roobar on Wed Jun 12, 2019 7:17, edited 1 time in total.
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55Aavenue
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by 55Aavenue »

@Roobar: I agree with what you've said. With the overwhelming amount of dislikes and negative comments I've seen on the youtube trailer, I don't think its likely a whole new crowd of Keen fans who love the new mobile game will exist. I knew that our community would reject this new game but I'm pleased to see the general public is rejecting it as well. I'd be far more concerned if the reaction to this new game from the general population was positive, but its not.

@proYorp: I hear all your concerns, and I share them. But at this point I'm optimistic by what I've seen so far. Its likely the new game will not do very well, and Zenimax will probably move onto other more profitable things rather than bother to try to get Keen right. So at this point I feel that in the long run, not too much will change. But we may have to add a section on the wiki acknowledging that a Keen game worse than Keen GBC exists...

Of course only time will tell.

If anything, I say anyone who is currently working on a mod (this includes myself) should take this as motivation to work on their project and get it finished! We need to get some more good Keen games out there to balance things out!
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by Benvolio »

The existing community will not fall out over this.

If the PCKF were to get flooded with idiots who think this new game is great, then (given the calibre of this new game) they are likely to lose interest after a fortnight. Thus not exerting a permanent effect on our community.

And worst case scenario even if action is taken to remove our content, it will only be a short time before this new game becomes old news and falls down the prioroty ladder commercially. Just as the once-bestselling original keen games receded in popularity to the point where we have been completely left to our own devices for decades.

We can bridge this difficult time if forums and keenwiki go down, by sending paper newsletters and 3 1/2 " diskettes to each other!
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by Roobar »

OK here's the real reason why they went "mobile" instead of making a new platformer game.

It's because of profit. Anyone surprised? Of course mobile games nowadays make nearly all their money from a small percent of overall players. That's in-game purchases for you. Ads also got their share. It's a big slap in the face for all the current generation of keeners, but they needed to use the keen franchise as an excuse to produce something in the mobile division that would also generate attention and profit. And profit speaks more than outcry as it seems. Our community and keen fan base overall isn't sufficiently large for them to making a keen game specifically for us to be profitable, nor for our protests to matter. And that's all there is to it.

I would also like to finish this post by posting the thing that saddened me the most:

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The Tom Hall revival dream, the true sequel - it's over. It's never gonna happen. That's it. :'(
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Bonevelous
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by Bonevelous »

Roobar wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 16:37 OK here's the real reason why they went "mobile" instead of making a new platformer game.

It's because of profit. Anyone surprised? Of course mobile games nowadays make nearly all their money from a small percent of overall players. That's in-game purchases for you. Ads also got their share. It's a big slap in the face for all the current generation of keeners, but they needed to use the keen franchise as an excuse to produce something in the mobile division that would also generate attention and profit. And profit speaks more than outcry as it seems. Our community and keen fan base overall isn't sufficiently large for them to making a keen game specifically for us to be profitable, nor for our protests to matter. And that's all there is to it.

I would also like to finish this post by posting the thing that saddened me the most:

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The Tom Hall revival dream, the true sequel - it's over. It's never gonna happen. That's it. :'(
Ah, that absolutely crushes me. :(
Check out Flixxy the Fox: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6378

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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by keenmaster486 »

"half a hot dog" my arse. Clearly a dick reference; not appropriate for a kids game.

This isn't a game, it's just a cartoon drawn with a wonky, incorrect art style, with something resembling a "game" tacked onto it.

Seriously, this is something an 8-year-old would come up with if you asked him to make a new Commander Keen game, after giving him only the bare facts about who Keen is.
  • It's a kids game? Maybe the original was, but this shouldn't have been.
  • Story does not center on "original" Keen but instead on not one, but two of his children? No. There was no reason for this other than that it is a kids game.
  • Cartoon style with no right angles anywhere? The characters have obnoxious, insipid, stupid-looking evil grins in every frame? Everything is drawn out of proportion? No thank you!
  • Game is not even a 2D platformer or a FPS? NO! WRONG!
  • Addition of uncreatively named sister with irritating hair? INCORRECT! Imagine if she wasn't there. Then nobody would have anything good to say about this game. If its only redeeming factor is that it has a female character somewhere, then that's not a redeeming factor, it's just something they did because they're afraid of the office SJW. What a cheap hack.
I will be ignoring this... honestly it kind of makes my annoyed enough that I want to make a REAL Commander Keen successor now. It should have been an FPS, heavy on the CK/Wolfenstein/DOOM Blazkowicz lore, with a stellar, grand, and dramatic story, in which a fully mature William Blaze, CIA agent (of course) has to defeat Mortimer once and for all. There's a lot of potential but damn these clowns running the marketing department at Bethesda (which seems to be controlling the other departments) are just idiots.
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by aintnofuntime »

proYorp wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:06 There are no words to describe the amount of horror and disgust I felt after just seeing that first image in the stevivor article. I was cringing so hard I could barely even stand to cast my eyes upon it. My initial assumption from that image was that they just split our Keen into two people, so I'm vaguely relieved that they aren't quite that incompetent.
Dude, chill. It's just a mobile game. No one's gonna remember this game ever existed in a couple years.
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by ScarletFlame »

keenmaster486 wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 23:36 honestly it kind of makes my annoyed enough that I want to make a REAL Commander Keen successor now. It should have been an FPS, heavy on the CK/Wolfenstein/DOOM Blazkowicz lore, with a stellar, grand, and dramatic story, in which a fully mature William Blaze, CIA agent (of course) has to defeat Mortimer once and for all.
10/10 would play. My thoughts on how Bethesda/id would reboot the franchise would be that they would make it an FPS, since it's what id is most known for, and PC platformers aren't very popular anymore. It wouldn't be a grimdark dramatic FPS (the wolfenstein reboots already exist lol), but a very bright, colourful, and goofy FPS, kinda like Splatoon meets Chex Quest.
proYorp wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:06 Now that Zenimax or Bethesda or whoever owns the IP is taking advantage of it, are they going to be cracking down on mods and fan games if they find them?
I highly doubt it. Commander Keen doesn't create a large profit. It's why the games on Steam are worth pennies, and why Bethesda made a cost-effective mobile game rather than a big budget 3D platformer. Doom on the other hand, is a million dollar franchise, which is why Zenimax cracked down DoomRL, because of the possibility of lost profit. As long as Commander Keen remains the obscure PC title it is, Zenimax won't crack down on the Keen fangames.... at least not yet anyway.
proYorp wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 6:06 However, my biggest concern now is... what's going to happen to our community?
We may gain a few members, but I don't think the community is going to change at all because of this. Someone will have to update the Keenwiki to add Keen Mobile though. :dopekeen

In other news, John Romero gave his thoughts on the Commander Keen Reboot!
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by Quillax »

Well, looks like another one of my childhood favorites has been messed up by people that have no idea on how the classics worked. :dead2 Personally, I think it looks even worse than Keen GBC; at least I find that game to be tolerable and mediocre at best. This one, however, just looks bad in every possible way. I'm not a big fan of the rather grotesque art style they went with here, I would prefer something that looked like the classic cartoons, like the Warner Bros. cartoons (after all, didn't Tom Hall take some inspiration from those cartoons when making his games?). Heck, I'd even rather have a Keen game that looked like a black-and-white 1920s cartoon. (I'd actually like to see someone make a mod/fangame with a style like that!)

I can see what you mean about your concerns, proYorp, but given that Keen GBC didn't make much of an impact (if it really did at all), I doubt this game would do much for our community as well. As some other people have said, I'm sure this will most likely be forgotten in a year or two. You got me there on the possibility on cracking down mods and fangames, but if ScarletFlame is right, I don't think we should worry about that at the moment (and I hope we won't have to worry at all). I agree with 55Aavenue on that people should use this as motivation to work on their mods - to get ourselves more good Keen games! (I would even start working on one if I wasn't occupied with another project!) I'd wait until the game comes out before any of us decides to add Keen Mobile to KeenWiki. :dopekeen
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by NY00123 »

No matter how similar or different is the new game to the originals, it does look like the news surrounding it have reminded some individuals about the 90s titles.

Additionally, at least until around June 18, Keen 1-5 are offered on Steam for 82% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/9180/Commander_Keen/

Both of these must've leaded, even if temporarily, to some new posts/topics in the Steam Community Keen 1-5 forums (often about getting technical assistance), as well as more posts here, including even at least one new topic.

To continue on the topic of tweets, here is another snippet from the past:

https://twitter.com/georgeb3dr/status/1 ... 9594784768
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by AlphaLurker »

I rather like the new designs! and the fun animated intro.
with the dozens of references and tie ins to past installments, and think at least some people working on this must genuinely care about the franchise.

not big on the gameplay though.
maybe their hands were tied by Corporate, or some suits made demands.
perhaps if this does well they'll have more freedom to make an excellent platformer in the future?

I'm just so happy to see Keen back in the limelight, even if it isn't the most stellar of entries.
I for one will be giving this game a play when it comes out
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by DoomJedi »

Well, watched the trailers....this is not Keen. Butchered thing, not Keen canon, style, character...and twin sister??
This is bad.....so bad. Disappointed.
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Re: Commander Keen Mobile Reboot

Post by RoboBlue »

So... where is it?

I've never seen a mobile game announced more than a few days before release, and they're usually announced at release date.
Almost all of the people who would've downloaded it on a whim have now either completely forgotten about it or moved on to replaying the original games.
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