I love the idea. I posted it as an aside in another thread, and there's already a whole thread about it. Silly me.
I don't think it's necessary to beforehand rule out the possibility that we might pull it off. Because it wasn't possible for one group of people to come to terms with one company under one set of circumstances, doesn't mean that it cannot be possible for another group of people to come to terms with another company under another set of circumstances. This kind of deal is done individually, not handed out like license numbers for a fixed price.
And there ARE reasons that this set of circumstances is different. Not the least of them being concerned with what in business-life is called immaterial assets. They're things like the well-known concept of good-will which can be very expensive in cool cash when companies are traded. In our case, let's look at public relations.
Firstly, don't underestimate how much of a part of Maxis' public image it is to be the enganged kind of company who really wants to break new ground in as many ways as possible. If the kind of hand-over we're talking about was done in a successfull way that made everybody happy, it would be another trophy for them to put on the shelf and boast about.
Secondly, it's a potential threat that it'll be a serious hit for them to take if this turns into a legend of the kind of e.g. how SILVERHEART was screwed over by EA. The fact that they made people invest a lot of money in game-money on the expectation that they could make them grow and then actually pull out a profit, makes it look bad that they without a moment's warning make all these game-money worthless. That was probably not the way they thought when it happened. The developers needed to come up with a way to make it attract more customers, and this is what they came up with. The decision to slam shut the treasure box was out of their hands. Still, in hindsight it doesn't look good. There would be a blow for Maxis to take, the only question is if they'd consider it hard enough to be significant.
Thirdly, the intellectual property isn't really worth that much. Maybe like around the value of selling Windows 95 on the market now. New games simply won't be made on that engine anymore in the leage they're interested in. If we got to run it, we couldn't turn it into anything that would be in direct competition with them.
So, there's something to win by Maxis by making this deal, there's something to loose by not making it, and nothing to lose by making it. Why wouldn't they be interested? It would be a win-win situation. I think they're smart guys.
There can be many practical matters to overcome but no project worth making doesn't have a few hurdles to get over. The only thing that's certain is that if we just do nothing, then nothing happens. So why not talk about it? I'm game.
