Feature: 'Postmortem: Project Magma's Myth II 1.5 and 1.5.1 Updates'

Today's main Gamasutra feature, putting a different spin on the concept of the postmortem, presents a postmortem on the efforts of the voluntary Project Magma team in updating Bungie's classic real-time strategy title Myth II. As Project Magma member and postmortem author Alexei Svitkine explains in the introduction to the postmortem: "When Microsoft acquired Bungie, the rights to the Myth series went to Take Two Interactive.... Take Two re-released the game and sold it for some time, as well as contracting MumboJumbo to make the sequel, Myth III: The Wolf Age. Eventually, Myth II was considered too old and was taken off the shelves, to make room for newer games. However, the Myth community still remained, and a group known as MythDevelopers were able to get permission to make updates to games in the Myth series. In a joint effort, MythDevelopers and Project Magma, both consisting entirely of volunteers, released Myth II version 1.4. While many good things came out of MythDevelopers, it decided to disband in December of 2003, leaving Project Magma to handle updates to Myth II and the other games in the Myth series." Svitkine goes on to explain the unique problems inherent in updating the Myth series as a volunteer-based developer separate from the actual series creators, and you can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).