Jeysie,
I don't disagree with the thought about flying completely under the radar. I thought that that was understood in the notion of being discreet; there's no point to playing both sides of it, clearly. I wanted to see the project handled more like SQ:TLC; NOBODY really needs to know about it 'til it's done.
But I don't think that "strong fan support" has anything to do with this particular situation, does it? KQIX had strong fan support. SQ7, comparably, didn't. They both faced the same offer from Vivendi (and made different decisions). Where do you see that "strong fan support" impacted this situation?
BTW, the experience one gathers working on fangames cuts both ways, so don't make the mistake of saying "experience" is a blanket positive. Yes, you get exposure, but you also have the black mark of having your work owned by a large corporation who has paid nothing for it. To potential employers, that can be a disincentive to offer a meaningful wage: "Why should I pay you a good salary when you're willing to give large amounts of work away to a well-funded major corporation?" As it is, publishers and developers tend to lowball new employees anyway; if the potential employee also demonstrates a blithe willingness to give copious amounts of good work away free to rich corporations, that just reinforces the notion that the employee does not value their own work.
Yes, you can talk about all the subsidiary good that MIGHT have been done as far as rallying the SQ community and keeping them alive. But that wasn't the goal, and in neither KQIX's case nor SQ7's was it a help in actually keeping the projects going.
BTW, I hope people realize that every time they download one of these fangames, they are perpetuating the situation by giving Vivendi their tacit "thumbs-up" to the "threaten with closure, snap up the rights for free" tactic.
--Josh
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