For those of you who have never heard of FreeSpace 2, it is a sci-fi space flight sim which was originally released for PC by developers Volition Inc and the publishers Interplay. Quite an epic in its own right, the game never sold its fair share of copies thanks to a myriad of consequential events which kept the game rather unheard of for quite some time. Suffice it to say, FreeSpace 2 is the last, best game to come out, in where you pilot a star fighter through space, unmatched in game play by the regrettably few contenders who have shown up on the field since.
From the time it was released, FreeSpace 2 came packaged with a mission editor with additional tools and resources to edit every other file in the game soon thereafter. In what may be considered a far happier time in PC Gaming days, where far more a percentage of big name title developers were still concerned with quality of product over the means to protect it, the ability to build upon the game was almost limitless.
Of the few people who heard of the game, a large percentage would go on to find the means to contribute their own creations to be used with the game, likely considering also just how easy modding FreeSpace 2 was compared to some others. Some of these hubs where players would gather, such as Hard Light still exist to this day. What happened was that a vibrant and long lasting community formed which continued to breathe life into the game for many years to come.
Eventually, many years down the road, the source code was released to the original game, allowing players experienced in code to actually build upon the engine of the game itself. This is exactly what happened, and the Source Code Project soon formed, a group of beloved members of the community who were able to introduce modern day graphics capabilities into a dated platform, on top of various improvements and additions that allowed content creators to have an unbelievable number of new options.
For a long time, there were those who claimed FreeSpace 2 was a dying game and the community would be soon lost, however this is has been proven to be not the case in any respect. Suffice it to say, the community only ever seems to grow and while the old faces slowly drift off to new fields, there are always still more fresh ones to replace them.
FreeSpace 2 deserves the title of being the one eternal game, not only for its active player base, but the continued evolution of the game itself. StarCraft may have a strong player base to this day, but it has evolved little and Total Annihilation, the next best candidate had to be remade as TA Spring in order to evolve, however such a feat is still impressive and deserves recognition.