Imagine this: a massive multiplayer game gets released and is available in the stores and isn't even playable. Imagine the same game remains in the same state for a couple of months, with barely any of the customers who paid for the game even being able to connect to the game's servers. Imagine the game still barely resembles anything that has been advertised by the developer and the publisher almost one and a half years after its release. A gamer's worst nightmare? No. It's happened, and the game's title is Mankind.

Space. The final frontier. These are voyages of French developer Vibes, on its continuing mission to discover new ideas and develop new games, to explore strange new genres, and to boldly go where no man, no one, has ever gone before: creating a massive multiplayer space conquest game in a persistant universe spanning over nine million planets. Thus was born the premise of Mankind.

"What a great idea!" thought little Morn and ordered a copy of his game in early 1999. Big tears did he cry when he installed the game only to realize that the account creation section on the Mankind's webpage was unavailable, with only a message from the Vibes (the developer), telling him to wait a couple of days while they were fixing the game. At least they promised that his 12 month license that came with the boxed game wouldn't start until they had fixed all the bugs -- so all was good. Or wasn't it?

A couple of months later little Morn received word from Vibes that the highly anticipated patch had been released on Mankind's website, that the game was now in full operation and that the 12 month license would now commence. So he quickly reinstalled the game, fired up his browser, and downloaded the patch, giddy like a schoolboy in anticipation.

And yes, his heart started bumping a little faster when the game actually -- for the first time ever since Morn had bought it -- connected to its server! It greeted him with a wonderful intro screen and some powerful welcome fanfares, making him get all excited about his nearing career as the ruthless leader of a mighty space empire, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind him on the planets of his enemies.

Until he saw the graphics. Tried to use the interface. Heard the sound (the little of it that was there). Realized that most of the screen text was still in French (a language as unknown to him as Lisp or Swaheli). Was suddenly, and with no warning, returned to Windows. Went back to the web site to read that the game was still not completely done, and for now all players would have unlimited money, and all units equal power.

"What a crock", thought Morn, and played some more SiN.

As it seems, almost anything that can go wrong with a computer game did go wrong with Mankind. So many weirdnesses have happened that I find it difficult to write a funny and entertaining text around them, so I'll just present them as a simple list. Here goes:

• The game was released in France in December 1998; shortly after that a German version was also released. There has apparently been a UK release, too, but no US release from what I've seen. Up until Summer 99 the game simply didn't work. Players could not connect to the servers or experienced severe difficulties keeping their connection up. Even today there are severe problems with the availability and stability of the servers.

• Cryo, Mankind's publishers, had the balls to release and advertise a "Special Version 1.5 Enhanced" edition of the game. With the arrival of patch 1.5 in mid-99 the game got only marginally more playable (read: you could connect).

• I recently got hold of one of those "1.5 enhanced" copies of the game and have been, er, trying to play it since. The CD box contains a little "scratch me free" field that covers the unlock code I need to activate my account, with the somehow oddly composed words "Warning: please read carefully the MANKIND licence before scratching the code." The license is a very interesting read indeed, as it contains the following phrases (the most interesting bits highlighted in bold):

  "3. LINKED SITES. Vibes is not necessarily affiliated with sites which may be linked to this site, is not responsible for their content, and does not endorse them. You access any such linked sites at your own risk." - Uh-huh. I thought I was reading the manual, not a web site.

  "4. GRANT OF LICENSE. a) VIBES grants you ("Recipient") a limited, non-exclusive, nontransferable, royalty-free license to install and use one (1) copy of the software accompanying this Agreement ("Product") on a single computer located on Recipient's premises, solely to test the compatibility of Recipient's application or other product(s) which operate in conjunction with the Product and to evaluate the Product for the purpose of providing feedback thereon to VIBES. All other rights are resevered to VIBES. Recipient shall not rent, lease, sell, sublicense, assign, or otherwise transfer the Product, including any accompanying printed materials. Recipient shall not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Product except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by applicable law. Recipient may not disclose the results of any benchmark testing of the Product to any third party without VIBES's prior written permission. VIBES and its suppliers shall retain title and all ownership rights to the Product. (b) Any bug reports, test results and other feedback made by Recipient to VIBES shall be the property of VIBES and may be used by VIBES for any purpose. Due to the nature of the development work, VIBES is not certain as to when or if errors or discrepancies in the Product may be corrected. (c) Recipient's use of the Product is not subject to confidentiality restrictions. Recipient is free to discuss features of the Product or details with respect to Recipient's use or intended use of the Product, provided that use of the Product shall take place solely at Recipient's site. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Recipient may not demonstrate or show the Product to third parties without the express written permission of VIBES."

  I think all this speaks for itself. But there's more:

  "5. TERMS OF AGREEMENT. a) beta test: The term of this Agreement shall commence on the date Recipient receives the Product and shall continue until terminated upon the earlier of (a) VIBES's written notice to Recipient, (b) the commercial release of the Product by VIBES, or (c) a maximum of 12 months starting from the date the Recipient receives the Product. Upon the termination of this Agreement, Recipient shall cease use of the Product software. b) Commercial release: The term of this Agreement shall commence on the date Recipient receives the Product and shall continue until terminated upon the earlier of (a) VIBES's written notice to Recipient, (b) a maximum of 12 months starting from the date the Recipient receives the Product. Upon the termination of this Agreement, Recipient shall cease use of the Product software."

  Particularly interesting in this section is the bit about the agreement being terminated 12 months after the purchase of the game. When you buy Mankind, you are supposed to buy a license to play it for 12 months. Shouldn't those 12 months start when you actually start playing the game, instead of when you buy it? Especially considering that you can't even create an account right now (see next point)?

  Here are some other funny bits:

  "7. PRODUCT MAINTENANCE. VIBES is not obligated to provide maintenance or updates to Recipient for the Product. However, any maintenance or updates provided by VIBES shall be covered by this Agreement. Servers on which operates the Product are subject to maintenance operations whereas scheduled or not and such operations, no matter how long they last shall not be considered as an alteration of the use of the Product."

  As I understand this, it basically means: if the servers are down, I don't have the right to complain, no matter if they're down for an hour or for half a year. Shhyeah, right.

  Last but not least:

  "8. DISCLAIMERS AND LIMITATIONS ON LIABILITY. ALL MATERIALS ON THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS". [...]" -- uhm, okay. Website. Alright.

• Luckily I didn't need to scratch the code free (and thereby accept the license agreement), since Mankind's web-based account creation is (and reportedly has been for a couple of weeks) unavailable. In other words: if you buy the game today, you can't even start playing. (Paired with the "12 months" bit from the license agreement mentioned above, it basically means that you'd be instantly paying for online play time which you can't actually use.)

  They even had the balls to put up a notice saying, and I quote: "- ON GOING UPGRADE - New players registration is temporarly unavailable. The registration service will reopen later this evening. Sorry for the delay and see you soon in the Mankind Universe." Days seem to be very, very long in France.

• Not being able to play the game myself, I went to a Mankind IRC channel and talked to some french mankind players. One of the things they told me was that even today, there are still many bugs and missing features in the game. Up until a couple of days ago, there had been a bug which allowed you to simply steal money from all other players. By fixing that bug, Vibes reportedly introduced new bugs.

• The same people also told me that Vibes are already working on Mankind 2. I wasn't able to confirm it, so take it with a grain of salt, but if it's true, I seriously wonder if I'll get a free copy of Mankind 2 for my unused copy of Mankind 1. I have the feeling that I won't.

• In late 99, some clever programmer hacked his way through the Mankind protocol and used the information he gathered to build a Mankind client emulator, which basically enabled him to cheat in a multitude of ways. The simpler cheats involved scanning any section of space for enemy players, but the spectrum reached to nastier cheats like cloning your own starships or making them jump to any position within the exisiting universe. Vibes/Cryo reacted with a lawsuit, and probably rightfully so, but the real lesson learned from this was that the protocol Vibes designed for the communications between server and client must have been, well, utter crap.

• Last but not least (and this is merely my own, personal opinion): Even when it works, the game is a horrible piece of crap. The graphics are mediocre (although the website and intro artwork is pretty nice), the interface is worse than Star Wars Force Commander's on a bad day, and the controls are so horrible I'd rather play Quake with a three button keyboard.

Now, there is a Mankind community out there, and a pretty strong one at that. But from what I've been told, most Mankind players have simply decided to accept their fate and see Mankind as a huge "role playing game", with clan wars taking place rather on their webpages than within the game. When asked for the things Vibes did right with Mankind, one of the players I talked to simply stated (after thinking about the answer for a moment): "The communication system. It's like a mini ICQ, and you can give money and units to someone."

Mankind is so broken, PC Gamer UK recently gave the game their first (and only) "N/A" rating, saying it was so utterly terrible and incomplete that it wasn't really a game.

I want my DM 70 back.