Hi Ben, do you have any specific ideas on what we can do in order to try to help to bring back the game? Besides telling my friends and signing petitions of course.
Contacting NECA through Facebook/email/Instagram/etc. Tell or show them your interest level in the game and how you’d love to see it in stores again. Given the legal cesspool that prevents anyone from doing much in the way of production, they may only be swayed by obvious demand (of a serious quantity, far beyond petitioning) and straight cash. I’ve thought about trying to buy the rights away from them, but it would likely take far more money than the entire community could come up with together.
I know of several tabletop websites that like to do features on “retro” games that maybe we could reach out to and have them do a piece on the game?
Sounds cool! Feel free to list them here or contact them about it of course. If they allow guest posting, it could allow them to save time if a Pirates fan did the writing.
Thanks for asking and it’s a question I’ve thought about. Outside of hiring legal help to actually get to the bottom of the patent/IP issue, it’s tough to do much that would help directly. I also like the idea of getting some of the game’s past fans back into the community, but that hasn’t worked for me so far. I hope the rights can simply expire at some point, but until then, I feel it’s just a case of stimulating demand in the market so they’d feel financially incentivized to actually do something about the product.
I’m not nearly the only one with ideas though! I’d love to hear what other people think are good ways to try and restart the game.