Ender's Game tabled by Chair

by Alexander Sliwinski on Dec 14th 2010 4:00PM

Chair Entertainment co-founder Donald Mustard has confirmed to Joystiq that the studio's Ender's Game project has been put on indefinite hold. Announced in early 2008, the downloadable game was to take place in the story's "Battle Room," a place where the protagonist partakes in simulation combat.

"We have and had an amazing design for the Ender's Game game," Mustard assured, but "one of [parent company] Epic's primary objectives is to create original and unique franchises. I don't know that Ender's Game fits into that strategic objective anymore."

"So, probably not," Mustard said of the project's completion. "Not from us."

Still, Chair maintains a good relationship with Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card, who wrote a novel set in the developer's Shadow Complex universe. "If anyone decides they want to make it," Mustard added, "I have some ideas I'd love to talk to them about."

Tags: chair, Chair-Entertainment, delays, Donald-Mustard, Enders-Game, Epic, Epic-Games, microsoft, playstation, ps3, xbox

Reader Comments (46)

Maybe now we can get a Shadow Complex 2.

@Killerlampshade
I'm sayin'!

@Killerlampshade

Yeah the first one sold really well! What gives with the sequel?

Good, this kook doesn't deserve recognition from a new medium. I know you shouldn't judge a man's work by his character, but I also believe in protesting his work if it gives him a larger stage to push his inflammatory and dangerous ramblings.

@leobebes

wut?

@Vcize

"How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. […] American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die."

-- Orson Scott Card

@leobebes
Yep, he's a total kook, absolutely agreed, and i really dislike many of his public rants. But he writes a mean book, and I love the Ender books/series.

@leobebes
Good thing I found his books pretty dull and trite. Nothing really different or forward thinking.

I'll give him credit that they do seem to hit an audience but I found them to be a big pile of meh.

@Mmmmz

shut your mouth, heathen. Ender's Game is awesome. i've read it five times.

@leobebes

I think this book is absolutely brilliant, and pity the pathetic minds of people who think is political speech should lead to his product being kept from other mediums.

If you don't agree with his politics, just speak yourself. The answer to speech you don't agree with is simply more speech, not persecution.

Why does everything have to be politicized. It gets pretty boring when 90% of games approach morality from the exact same direction, and the reason is that a certain subset of people are intellectually intolerant. That's a lot more offensive than anything Card's ever said.

And again: the book is really interesting, and would have made for a terrific game. The dynamics of how the space-ants worked was interesting and different enough that it would have made for interesting tactics.

ah but i like these books

Pandas of sadness graze upon the bamboo of my soul.

Well, that's a bummer.

Eff that.

I am so bummed. I LOVE the book series (even if the author is a bigot). It's a shame that this game has gotten shelved.

SPOILER ALERT:

I wonder if the game included a bonus level where you wrestle someone to death in the nude in the men's bathroom.

Eh, Ansible Wars would be a better game anyway.

@WiNGSPANTT from TopTierTacticsco
No way, dude! After the Battle Room portion of the book, things got less interesting. And the final chapter was terrible.

"Ender's Game" Reading Pro-Tip:
Just put the book down and walk away when Ender graduates from the Battle Room school.

@Erluti

Spoiler:

No way! The last chapter adds more depth to all of the characters than most other books could in their entirety. The creation of Hive Queen and The Hegemon is integral to the evolution of Ender's character, making him more than just a puppet, more than just a mindless warrior. It also sets up the rest of the book series.

To ignore the last chapter, in my humble opinion, is blasphemy.

wasnt expecting the game to be any good anyway, better it was canceled than sully the franchise with a subpar vg
@Erluti
blasphemer. without the final chapters enders game is just a story about some kid goin to space camp: lame lame lame

@PreGHz

More Spoilers:
The fact that it was a real war and not an exercise in space battle portion was super predictable. And then him being arbitrarily able to psychic-ly talk to the bug people only to find out that they never really wanted to hurt anybody? Now he's going to rebuild this race of bugs? What a joke.

Knowing that there is a whole series of books based on that ending seriously disappoints me.

@Red Son Rising
"without the final chapters enders game is just a story about some kid goin to space camp"
And it would be SUPER AWESOME.

@Erluti

You've made up your mind and no one can change that. All that I would caution to the people reading this is to not take what you say as gospel and to give that last chapter a chance.

Also, it seems like you like lasers more than philosophy. Perhaps the (Ender's) Shadow series would suit you better?

@PreGHz
Actually, I liked how he formed strategies and looked at the game creatively. It struck a chord with me because I love playing games and figuring out ways to approach the game sideways and not as a normal player would approach a game.
That's why the latter part of the book didn't interest me so much, it was just a bunch of battles.
At the time I read Ender's Game, I also read Dune, Starship Troopers, and Foundation. All of those were really good and not just a bunch of battles. Ender's Game I couldn't put down, until that turn in the story where it was just disappointment after disappointment, and the ending was so silly to me it ruined the whole experience of the book for me.

@Erluti

I read this while I was in high school and thought it was fantastic.. I agree with PreGHZ - the last chapter adds so much in terms of the themes presented in the book as well as the compassion / ruthlessness that the characters experience. This book is filled with so much that you can write numerous essays on a variety of different topics.

I'm really not sure what you are looking for in a science fiction book - perhaps a simpler or more atypical ending would have pleased you?

@Erluti

I'm in agreement with the others here... it doesn't seem to me that you "get it", and I would simply say that the book or that style of storytelling isn't for you.

Mind you, when I say you "don't get it", that is not as if to say that you /understand/ it... but rather, that it doesn't speak to you.

It's just like me saying the same about kitting, or nascar, or programming... I don't get it as in, I don't see the appeal. It doesn't invalidate those activities, or make them dumb... they just don't appeal or speak to me.

In this sense, with Ender's Game, "you don't get it".

bahhh, I need an edit.

*Mind you, when I say you "don't get it", that is not as if to say that you *DON'T* understand it... but rather, that it doesn't speak to you.*

@WiNGSPANTT from TopTierTacticsco

As much as I liked Ender's Game, the other three books in the series were so full of communication theory and philosophy that I thought they far outstripped the first one, even though there was significantly less action.

I love the pun.

Table?
Chair?
MUSTARD?

Methinks there must be a woman working at Joystiq for them to be making so many kitchen references.

I don't know about what the game would've been like, but TERRIBLE book.

Decent book, crazy author, but if you want a game that has pure three dimensional weightless combat in a science-fiction setting, go get Shattered Horizon. Only ten bucks, awesome awesome awesome graphics, and great gameplay. Flyan' around space with a jetpack and guns!

I've always wanted to play a game based on the battle room... I had no idea this was even being made ;_;

Shadow Complex was a fun Game.

Battle Room and Command School would have made an awesome gravity defying team based shooter along with a space RTS

Love the book and the guy.
+1 to reading the last chapter.
Although I'm pretty okay with the game not coming out. That kind of thing would be super hard to properly recreate

My only disappointment is that by canceling this game, they will deny me the opportunity to point and laugh at all the hapless fools online bearing names like "XxXEnderxXx" or "Ender43311421" or "End3rW1ggin769".

:|

@UnnDunn

Is something keeping you from laughing at those people now? (not because they used the name Ender or Wiggen (in my opinion), but rather, that they insist on butchering the (already terrible) English language with their ridiculous "hip" slang, leet speak, cluttery symbols and trash?)

@Tephlon Oh no, nothing is keeping me from laughing at them now, but there won't be that extra wry sense of irony that will come from their incompetence at the game.

Too bad, it would have been quite interesting as a smaller game with very "realistic" physics, or at least physics true to their description in the book, a PVP RTS with much more focus on using your units creatively because they're all the same, a unique departure from the class-based RTSes of our day

No...Zone Of The? Then no sale.

I bought a hardcover edition of Empire from a Christmas Tree Shop store for $2 a loooong time ago, and still haven't read a word.

Shows how much my ADD ass enjoys reading.

*sad face*

Glad less money going to this creep and his causes the better.

Any word on if it had a prepubescent shower wrestling level?

Advent Rising Twoooooooooooooooooo. Majesco, get your fruitless hooks out of it so Chair/Epic can do it RIGHT!

Amazing series of books, amazing author. I had no clue this game was being made but I would have bought it.

If you want a quick taste of Cards other work check the special features to the movie I Am Legend. Card wrote one of the apocalypse shorts. Epic.

Ender's Game tabled by Chair

Reader Comments (46)

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:04PM Killerlampshade said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:24PM Erluti said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 8:10PM whylekat said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:07PM leobebes said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:14PM Vcize said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:21PM leobebes said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:41PM ferret said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:49PM Mmmmz said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 7:30PM maveric101 said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 10:44PM Dustin F said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:08PM quackdocter said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:11PM Artemis Entreri said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:16PM CerealDorkVest said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:18PM PreGHz said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:23PM WiNGSPANTT from TopTierTacticsco said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:29PM Erluti said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:34PM PreGHz said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:35PM Red Son Rising said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:43PM Erluti said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:44PM Erluti said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:57PM PreGHz said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:18PM Erluti said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:23PM ToTheMoon said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 6:10PM Tephlon said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 6:12PM Tephlon said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 6:22PM A Sandwich said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:24PM Johnny Locke said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:30PM Churchbus said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:43PM warmonk said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:51PM finitetoast said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:52PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:16PM Bruce Wayne said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:30PM Thomas Zane said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:38PM CorneliusPrime128 said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:47PM UnnDunn said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 6:14PM Tephlon said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 7:58PM UnnDunn said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 6:50PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 7:20PM smoothy said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 8:12PM Levi said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 8:13PM Kirkpad said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 8:34PM commonperson said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 8:54PM Don Cheeto said

Posted: Dec 15th 2010 1:08AM Darth Tigris said

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