In a press release issued in Feburary, Bohemia condemned Codemasters for describing Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising as the “return of” or “official sequel to” their original OF game. Whilst the trademark is currently owned by Codemasters, Bohemia still own “100 percent” of the rights to the original game, and they believe that the naming of this latest game infringes on those rights…
According to Bohemia Interactive, they simply want fans to “understand that Codemasters’ new game is not from the same development team that brought the classic original”.
Codemasters on the other hand, seem completely un-phased by these protests.
Clive Lindop, lead AI designer on the game said that the complaints ”seemed almost unrelated to what we we’re actually doing”.
”Their argument seemed to be almost purely about naming, which of course for a dev team hard at work doesn’t really mean a lot. It is Operation Flashpoint. It is all about delivering things that Operation Flashpoint was about. So in actual fact it didn’t really even blip on our radar because it seems like such a minor point. I’m sure for the marketing guys it probably meant a lot more and maybe there was a discussion about that, but to be honest when you’re doing development you tend to get into the habit of judging a game when it’s out and you get it in your hands.”
”It’s not even set in the same place,” He added. “I think it would make more sense if it was a follow on to the original story. But it’s not. It’s a completely different scenario. None of the other characters are brought over. It’s a whole new scenario, a whole new setting, new engine, new technology, new AI, it’s all about pushing that barrier out further to what can be done in that genre of game.”
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is due out from Codemasters for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC this summer. ArmA II is currently confirmed for PC some time this year.
