That might seem like an odd thing to say about your own company’s activities.
But when you look at what Nightdive have done in the last twelve months, it’s less surprising.
In March, Nightdive announced they were being acquired by Atari in a deal worth $10 million.
In May, they released their long-anticipated remake ofSystem Shock, in development for eight years.
Nightdive are currently working on an overhaul ofStar Wars: Dark Forces, due out in 2024.
In short, it’s been a busy year for the remastering maestros.
With that in mind, what was its reception like?
“It was a complete surprise,” Kick says.
But the reception to System Shock’s faithfulness ended up being much more positive.
Why aren’t they like this anymore?'"
And the praise from them, some of which has been delivered publicly [and] some privately.
It just really blew me away."
“The ending has been completely reworked based on feedback from the fans.”
“We’re not holding it back.
We’re working with our publisher, still going through the cert process,” Kuperman says.
“That release is not 100% under our control.”
Given the stress and the risks involved, is Nightdive likely to do something like this again?
Kick confirms that, not only is he interested in pursuing similar projects, it’s already happening.
“The Shock team has been hard at work on the next thing,” he says.
And so they’re in the process of working on that now."
All of this has severely damaged Atari’s brand.
“It just seemed natural for us to join forces there,” Kuperman adds.
“Now we have legal in-house.
We have finance teams.
None of this stopped fans and followers of Nightdive from fretting about the company’s future anyway.
But six months on, does Nightdive reckon these concerns have been allayed?
Kuperman relates a story of one follower doomposting at Nightdive on social media.
It took all my forbearance not to respond back and say ‘Wanna bet?'”
“That was a lot of fun.
Everybody needs to play a game that’s just silly every once in a while,” Kuperman says.
“It really does capture the zeitgeist of its time.”
“If you had never played the game before, you wouldn’t notice anything.
And it was almost like playing it for the first time again.
So we pushed that a lot further with Quake 2.”
“Instead they’re like, well, there’s a Star Wars game over there.
How about that?”
“It was years of begging on our part,” Kuperman says.
The Dark Forces Remaster is due out early next year.
Kuperman puts Nightdive’s own successes down to not over-scoping, not pursuing growth too fast and too hard.
“We ran our company lean and mean” Kuperman says.
“The projects that we did were all cash positive for us.”
And we deserve to be treated better than that."
