There is a new article up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun noting that the gamer's bill of rights is no longer found on its website. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with what some would call a premature release of Elemental but they seem to think so.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/25/stardock-rescind-own-bill-of-rights/
Looks like a case of pulling a statement out of context and then trying to beat Stardock over the head with it. I remember the days when PC Gamer used to have some actual journalistic integrity, but those times are apparently long behind us.
The game is not only playable, it is very enjoyable. If you claim it is "unplayable," then please state your reasons, otherwise you really are not contributing anything except white noise.
There is an inherent difference between being "unfinished" and "containing bugs." Elemental, by its complete nature, will never truly be finished. However, the core engine is intact, and the WoM game makes use of that engine and is very entertaining. In my opinion, it is a finished product awaiting its next evolution, which is the Stardock team and modding community to sink their teeth into it. Those that think it is unfinished, really do not have any concept about what Elemental is all about. And even if you truly believe it is unfinished, they stand by the GBOR and you can return the product.
As for multiplayer, the servers will reportedly be online next week, I believe. To say that "there is no multiplayer" is completely disingenuous since it does not tell the whole story. A delay between single player (game launch) and multiplayer is a VERY common practice. Stardock has been nothing but forthright about their plans with the game launch, including the multiplayer component.
I DEMAND A HOTFIX FOR THE Gamers Bill of Rights to guarantee more girls in slinky chainmail 'armor' !
That practice was going on non-stop in the two threads that were locked. People were taking one sentence and using it out of context to try to further their antagonistic approach. It's actually a common practice of trolls.
I know they're called "games" and all, but do people who play them really have to act like spoiled children?
A prob is that Brad repeated that statement to another customer right here on this very forum. So probably more rage is coming your way.
But the guy over at PC Gamer showed a more apropriate way to deal with this statement when he stated that he'd rather not buy SD games on release day but a few months later than not buying them at all.
Maybe it's because I'm a developer, but I didn't form an opinion about the game based on 1.00 or 1.01, it wasn't until 1.05 that I started looking at issues with the game. I know from personal experience that when you push out a gold CD it just won't be ready, it is generally in the middle of a QA cycle so you're going to have to do a release day patch.
Since someone broke street date we didn't get to play the game as it was intended to be played, we played something with game breaking bugs. After 1.05 came out the game drastically improved for me, the campaign plays a lot more like a tutorial, I'm getting less wonky behavior and it feels more balanced in general.
The only unfortunate issue is that they had to cut features to deal with the broken street date, but again this is something I'm forgiving on as well, because it's something I've had to do many times when I find a show stopper close to release. Either cut features or fix things, so maybe I'm not the best person in the world to form an opinion about how they released it.
Agreed. While we are at it, have you seen the PC GAMER "article"? -> Elemental’s disastrous launch: stay well away
I don't think that I must comment on this writing.
ALL games which are released have bugs and crashes : all of them (except, perhaps, a few simplistic indie games). It's the price you have to pay, in the gaming-software industry, for increasing complexity to have richer content -- compatible with gamer systems that become more and more complex (such as : the high sophistication of recent, videocard electronics, architecture and drivers).
The Big Boss of Stardock (forum nick "Frogboy") was still on the forum yesterday evening, around 11:15 (my time : Eastern), when they were in the process of putting up 1.05 on Impulse.
I came back here this morning to learn that 1.05 had already been patched during the night (up to 1.05.016), and I noticed a hot-fix thread, initiated by Frogboy at 5:09 (Eastern).
It means that between 11:15 and 5:09, Stardock's CEO has had little sleep, and has been working hard supervising the 1.05+ final production process.
Earlier in August, Stardock sent to the printing presses version 1.00 for the retail, non-Impulse release. Then, versions 1.01, 1.05, and hot-fixed 1.05.016 have been made available, on Impulse, in less than 5 days.
No released game is perfect : far from it. What's important, here, is that Stardock employees and their Boss are working overtime (and posting on the forum, a very rare initiative for developers) to squash bugs and refine their game.
It's very normal for a post-beta game to have bugs. What's extraordinary, here, is that the responsible corporation (and its CEO) have accomplished in about one week the fixing and upgrades that most other companies would have taken at the very least one month to accomplish -- if ever.
(Take the example of Heroes of Might and Magic 5, in 2006: the first patch was released by major corporation Ubisoft many, many months after the initial release. We were stuck with bugs and incomplete features for a long time. Producer Ubisoft and developer Nival almost never came on the official forum to keep their anguished customers informed about anything.)
People who believe that versions 1.00, 1.01 and 1.05 were premature "beta" releases don't know anything about the computer-game industry, and especially, they don't realize that it is extremely rare that the CEO of a game-development and game-production corporation (Stardock playing both roles in the case of Elemental) will post on a forum, answer complaints, and spend the major part of his evening and night directly involved in the fixing of a product.
(I do hope that my post raises BoogieBac's spirits!)
I guarantee my rig is superior to yours, as it is superior to 99% of peoples rigs and I had trouble at the release of starcraft 2 as did probably mostly everybody else. The game wouldn't install correctly, I had to run the repair tool several times, the game crashed while playing the campaign, I had to uninstall and then reinstall, etc. It was not because of my rig. The first patch they put out fixed most of the problems though.
I had very little problems with the release of elemental but I know others have had problems which is unfortunate but I think that people way over exaggerate and over dramatize the situation. It's a game, relax, if it takes an extra day or two to get it working than just have some patience. Your complaining about something of very little importance and I am sorry but if your life revolves around gaming that is just sad.
In all seriousness, how do I get in on that? I absolutely want to do it. More power to all the folks that have the vision to see this as a great game. I see it as broken, and while I'm not sure I categorize it as "unplayable", it is not what was advertised. I'm not a beta tester.
Is there a form somewhere, or what?
The Gamers Bill of Rights is more a statement of Brad's belief about gamers rights in general than rules Stardock ever intended to 100% commit themselves to. It effectively became a bit of a PR thing, but it was intended more as a way of pushing the rest of the industry into realizing that gamers are generally good people and should be treated with respect rather than as criminals.
As to Stardock and Elemental, they are following the same path they have followed since Gal Civ II (original version) became a hit and got pirated as much as purchased... They release games on DVD in a technically functional state with all basic features enabled so that people who want to play offline can, and so pirated versions are only of this version of the game. They then release a ton of fixes and minor improvements in the first week, a few more for the next couple months, and then after a while they release some major improvements, all for free. These improvements are intended to encourage those who pirated the game to go out and buy it so they can get the updates and the improvements, effectively making the pirated version a demo that will hopefully draw in more sales down the road.
I am sure Brad would prefer to stick 100% to the GBR, but he knows he would have to sacrifice game quality, features, and long-term support to do so, so he walks the middle ground, but the edge of the middle ground closest to the GBR instead of the edge furthest from it like most publishers.
In another thread Frogboy told the person in question to E-Mail sales@stardock.com and tell them he sent him.
So, I guess this is what you need to do.
Gees. I hope Brad is keeping a list of all the review sites that are stabbing him in the back and makes a mental note to NOT let them review any future Stardock releases. After his craptastic review the guy even linked back to a bug report here on the forums as "proof" that the patch didn't fix something and brought back a previous bug. That guy's balls must be the size of two small cars parked side by side.
Hmm....fascinating. So your saying that they release games unfinished on purpose as a weapon in the war against piracy. That's one I've never heard before. Do you have any links to them saying that? I would think that this would be a very short term solution at best as pirates could just wait for the final version to come out and pirate that. Plus it carries with it all of the bad PR from reviews of an unfinished game.
This is of course true and everyone who's at least moderately familiar with modern game development knows it. However, most gamers' knowledge of the subject is minimal at best. They think that a perfect, bugless game is possible, they are entitled to it for the price of $49.99 or less and if they don't get it, that's because of developer/publisher laziness and greed.
I think that parts of the GBoR have been a strong influence in fostering and reinforcing this atmosphere, given how often it is quoted at developers in a similar situation to this. Thus, I can't help but feel it fitting (if sad) that these people are now giving Stardock the same kind of unfair crap that other developers have been receiving.
And it's going to stop them... how exactly? If they don't get sent a reviewer copy, then can just go buy one and review that.
And when you get down to it, what's factually incorrect in the article? There are crash problems, bugs, polish issues, and a total lack of multiplayer. Brad really did say that if people don't think it's finished, they shouldn't buy Stardock games anymore.
So, what's the actual problem with this article?
That's unlikely to work for anybody other then the person it was directed at.
Though really, opening it up to more really unhappy people would be good PR and reduce the number of complaints. (And some good PR would be useful right now.)
It's already open to really unhappy people. It's always been. It's just that people would rather go on the forums and rant nonsensically about some part of the BoR instead of emailing and asking for the refund.
Liked your posting better when you put some thought into them, Tridus. Been going closer and closer to just trolling lately
I heartily agree. Not only has Stardock never let me down, it has repeatedly surprised me with (to me) out-of-the-blue enhancements to games I would consider mature, like GalCiv2. Past behavior like that points to the pride Stardock takes in their products. I have no worries that this game will not only have it's bugs methodically squished, but the game play to evolve and grow with time.
When I purchase a Stardock game (which I always buy at release), it's like getting a puppy - always entertaining right from the beginning, and fun to play with as it matures.
Release day grousing is par for the course with nearly any release, from any developer. The proof in the pudding is what that developer is (or is not) doing with that title months down the road. Stardock has shown a history of commitment to continual improvement to their products.
I'm having a blast with Elemental.. Very enjoyable.
YES, there were problems with 1.00, but the last couple of patches over the last couple of days have been good to me.
I'm looking forward to playing more and where Stardock take this. Shame, that as usual, stuff on the net is all overblown "guff" and people just need to CTFO (shock).
I don't think that's actually true though Annatar, some people have tried and simply been told no.
Any other game released in bad shape would get slammed by critics too. The difference is most other devs didn't create the "bill or rights" or set such high standards for themselves (and others by implication).
Most other devs wouldn't be working so hard at time of release to patch things up and unless you're a big fan of Stardock games, you might not have faith that they will get things right eventually. The question is, should you need to have such faith or should the game have been in better shape at time of release? I think most neutral parties and hell, even I, a huge Stardock fan, think the game could've been in better shape at release.
Dunno. For me the difference between .99 and 1.01 was huge but the game is finally getting there in 1.05 hotfixed - I finally felt the "one more turn" hook and had to pull myself away from the late game last night (early this morning). Part of it is steep learning curve - but that's something most reviewers will recognize and accept. Moreso it's stability and balance issues, IMO.
I've been wanting to start a thread called "did elemental beta fail" because either the game was released too early or beta failed. The drastic changes in builds over just a few days make you wonder.
While I agree with you in principle, the downside is that reviews are more about marketing than they are about informing the public. As such, it's important for a game to show up in as many reviews as possible simply to make people aware that it exists. If Stardock didn't give certain publications access to an early copy of the game for review purposes then those publications could very well simply ignore the game altogether, which means less exposure. Although given how it seems that reviewers are gearing up for a backlash against Stardock, less exposure might have been better in the long run.
The game could use more polish, but at the same time, very few people have had a lot of time to play with 1.05 compared to 1.00 and 1.01 (1.05 went up around midnight ET last night, and I imagine most people have jobs), so there is a bit of 'version churn' going on I think. The broken street date doesn't help-- I imagine we'd have seen a much cleaner equivalent of Day 0 if there wasn't 1.01 in the middle taking up Stardock's resources.
I won't make a lot of excuses for Stardock, because there are clear indications that this was a rushed product-- the poor manual and poor in game documentation come to mind, which is very bad for a game this complex. HOWEVER-- this is the state of gaming with awful QA cycles for all games, where even console games these days are having release day patches. What annoys me is that the major game houses get free passes around bugs and issues because of their leverage with the gaming media. Someone earlier (in this thread or another) posted correctly what a train wreck Civ IV was for a long time-- it was getting "fixed" by the community months faster than it was by Firaxis. But no one called them out, because they're Firaxis.
Brad made a ballsy move with the gamers bill of rights, and there are parts of Elemental which clearly don't live up to it. This appears hypocritical, which is a fair view. What isn't fair is the double standard that Stardock is held to and the rest of the industry isn't.
I look forward to playing 1.05 tonight, the half hour I played last night was promising, and I look forward to the continued future patches of the game.
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