The developer would like to add more games to the space sim series

Dec 5, 2012 10:56 GMT  ·  By

Chris Roberts, the original creator of the Wing Commander series, believes that publisher Electronic Arts does not care about the game universe of the space sim and would like to get ownership of the franchise back.

The developer tells PCGamesN that, “I had to sell it when Electronic Arts bought Origin, I can’t go back and visit that world without their say-so. But they don’t care about that world, I care about that world.”

He adds, “If I could get Wing Commander back, if it was mine to control and not EA saying ‘Here you are, have it for a game,’ then I’d definitely be interested.”

Roberts says that because he created Wing Commander, there’s a special connection that he shares with the universe and he is best suited to add content to it.

Electronic Arts has not added any new games to the Wing Commander franchise for some time and there are many industry observers who believe that the space simulation genre no longer has the audience that it needs to support itself.

Arena was the most recent Wing Commander game from EA, launched with little fanfare on Xbox Live Arcade in 2007.

The last core game in the series was Secret Ops, which appeared way back in 2008.

At the moment, Chris Roberts is using Kickstarter and his own website in order to power a crowd-funding effort for his latest project, called Star Citizen.

The developer says that he wants to invest some of his Wing Commander feelings in Star Citizen, creating a game world that he has full control over.

The universe will evolve constantly via updates and new features and Roberts believes that ten years after the game is first launched, players will still be interested in playing it.

Star Citizen will give the player freedom to customize his ship and assume any role he is interested in as part of a larger galaxy.