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Descent FreeSpace and not just Conflict Freespace?

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 3:24 am
by Hunter
During my shower thoughts (FreeSpace edition) it occurred to me that I never figured out why Volition decided to give the title 'Descent FreeSpace' to their first game. Most of us know why they couldn't just use 'Freespace' because some software utility at the time had already copyrighted that name. I'm assuming the same applied to Europe? Does anyone remember why V decided to go with 'Descent' in the name? Why not just 'Conflict Freespace' for both markets? Or better yet, something like 'FreeSpace: The Great War' would have also worked.

It's something that bugged me this morning. Does someone have the official answer other than that it was a sales pitch by Interplay due to the success of Descent 1 & 2?

Re: Why Descent FreeSpace and not just Conflict Freespace?

Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:24 am
by Top Gun
I think what you said is most likely the official answer. Descent was very popular in the US PC scene back then, so Volition wanted to piggyback off the success of their earlier title. By all accounts Descent didn't perform as well in Europe, so they went with a unique title there.