Our story so far…
On August 24th, Stardock released the long-anticipated PC strategy game Elemental on schedule…
Except, of course, that’s not quite what happened. Stardock released the game a couple days early to beta testers and pre-order customers – the same version reviewers were given (v1.0) and the results were painful in two basic ways:
1. The new engine that Stardock developed turned out to have a lot of compatibility problems resulting in crashing and out of memory errors for a significant percentage (I’d go as far as to say as many as 30% of users – which is a gigantic number – anything over 5% is considered unacceptable). It’s not commonly known but the engine in our previous games (GalCiv II, The Political Machine, etc.) was developed originally in 1997 and enhanced over the years. Nowadays, most companies just license their engine from Gamebryo (Civilization V, Oblivion, Fallout 3) or the Unreal engine. You are now seeing why they do.
2. The above ensured ruinous reviews but even without them, the game UI and some of the game mechanics just didn’t live up to people’s expectations, and AI issues.
The purpose of this blog is to help answer questions so that we can move forward.
So here are some of the questions / comments I’ve gotten in emails and private messages and on various forums that I’ll try to answer:
Q: What is Stardock’s plan for Elemental going forward?
A: For the immediate future we’re going to go down two paths. First, the v1.0x versions will continue to focus largely on compatibility (crashing or weird video issues) as well as bugs and turning on multiplayer.
Then, we will work on v1.1 which will serve as our answer to player feedback. Enhanced AI, improved UI, a tutorial, updated quest system, new magic system, numerous other tweaks. This version will serve as the basis to make a demo version of the game.
Beyond that, we will be looking at player feedback. That will work towards v1.2 (October) and v1.3 (November). Once we are satisfied that the game has met reasonable expectations, we can then focus on the first expansion pack: Elemental: War of Magic – Book 2, Cerena.
Unlike Book 1, which is fairly short because it’s only meant as a kind of introduction (the game is mean to be played in sandbox mode. GalCiv and Sins of a Solar Empire didn’t even include campaigns, we are generally not very pro-campaign-y people as you can gather, campaigns have limited replayability).
Book 2, Cerena is the excuse to introduce more far reaching game mechanic changes and begin to add in the multiplayer modes we have long been thinking of (from custom servers that yes, will work on your LAN that has no Internet connection) to tactical-only modes.
That first expansion pack will be free to everyone who owns the game at the point of v1.3.
Q: Stardock should just put out an expansion and re-release the game as a Director’s Cut.
A: NO. While we do intend to release future new versions of Elemental beyond the War of Magic series, we will not be re-submitting Elemental “patched and fixed” for re-review.
A lot of people seem to think that Stardock knowingly released the game “full of bugs”. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. As people who have played through the various versions can attest, weird stuff is very machine specific. For instance, the illustrative outline on graphics causes no difference (not even 1 frame) on our test matrix machines and yet results in 20+ frames for others who have, on the surface, similar hardware configurations for us. The PC Gamer UK reviewer ran into a white tactical battle screen that we had never encountered before (nor had it shown up during the public beta).
The low metacritic score for Elemental (about 3 out of 5 average) needs to serve as a long-term reminder to us and anyone else who might think that you can simply put out a major retail game in 2010 with its own custom engine without a massive massive long-term beta program and a long-term QA process. If you can’t do that, then either license your engine or don’t expect people to shell out $50.
Put another way, the blistering feedback on Elemental: War of Magic should serve as a scarlet letter to make us “never forget”. So no, no re-launch of Elemental: War of Magic. It is, what it is.
For fans who are disheartened, look at on the bright side. We will be able to see how much effect word of mouth is. If we do a good job making the game live up to its potential and expectations, then we can see what effect that has on sales. And we plan to share those details with you.
As it stands today, Elemental has sold approximately 82,000 copies.
Q: I heard Stardock is laying off people, I thought your non-games revenue funded the games team.
A: It does. It funds ONE games team. But Stardock has been hiring up across the board to build a second studio. Only Elemental can fund that. “Stardock” is made up of 3 groups: Enterprise software (our #1 revenue source), Consumer software (Object Desktop, Fences, etc.) and Consumer Entertainment (the games). That’s not counting Impulse which is a separate, profitable entity that doesn’t get affected one way or the other by the success of the games or the enterprise software.
Q: Brad Wardell: You should just kill yourself! [I actually did get this]
A: I’m sorry our recent entertainment product didn’t meet your expectations but I don’t think it would be helpful if I manually modified my date of expiration.
Q: Brad Wardell – you have a martyr complex! You always take personal blame for everyone! Get off your cross! [yes, got this too]
A: That is my job. If you’re going to spend years railing about CEOs not taking responsibility when something goes wrong, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me not to take responsibility when things go badly on a launch.
In addition, some of the issues are directly related to my specific decisions.
Q: Your act is getting old. Fool me once on Demigod, fool me twice, shame on me! [got this too in various forms]
A: The Demigod debacle ultimately resulted from a fundamental communication failure between the publisher (Stardock) and the developer (Gas Powered Games). It took us a long time to figure out exactly how the connectivity issue occurred (i.e. many months). Ultimately, and sadly, it boiled down to a miscommunication. When you host a game in Demigod (even now), you are given a dialog for your port #. It was believed by the Stardock team that Demigod handled direct IP connections and thus its raknet based port system would only be used when that failed. GPG, by contrast, thought Stardock was handling direct connections too. It turned out that that port # part (even now) doesn’t have a function and so 100% of connections attempts when to the Raknet system which overwhelmed it.
The reason why Stardock rightly took the blame is because, as the publisher, we should have looked at the beta tester connectivity logs and seen that 100% of connections were being passed to Raknet for the socket rather than the 10% anticipated. Add tens of thousands of users quickly and bam. A different system had to be developed.
But Demigod didn’t suffer from compatibility issues. It was very solid right out of the gate (for pretty much everyone) and was an excellent game on day 1. GPG did a great job making a great game. And Stardock did do a good job making a good backend. But one miscommunication between developers resulted in disaster. Only a much larger beta test would have discovered the problem. The system wasn’t “buggy”. Not that it does anyone any good now, but at least people can see and learn from what happened.
Point being, the situations are not similar.
With Elemental, the issue is the game itself. With Elemental’s MP, the system works because from day 1, Elemental’s servers are just hosted by Stardock. No P2P.
Q: What do YOU think of Elemental?
A: Elemental is the finest game we’ve ever released. Ever. At least, that's what I thought on the day we released it. However, I have come to the painful conclusion that we will have to dedicate more effort to making the game live up to the expectations of our customers as a whole. You'd be surprised how easy it is to confuse the enjoyment of making a game to the enjoyment of playing it.
Q: My post was hidden on the forums! I have a right to post my anger!
A: No. No you don’t. Believe me when I say I speak from first hand experience, there are entire forums dedicated to letting people post about their anger about something. The Stardock forums have never ever been some forum of free speech. And they never will be. If you’re looking for that, you should go elsewhere. I’ve been moderating “forums” since my Commodore 64 days as a “Sysop” and “Subop”. A few toxic users can wreck a community.
If someone needs/wants technical support, has a question, has a suggestion, wants to interact with the community, that’s great. Go for it. But if your purpose is to vent your rage on other users, us, the game, small animals, what have you, the moderates are instructed to take a very dim view of that.
After the release of v1.08 (this week) I intend to instruct moderators to be even more stringent on that sort of thing because we (as a community) need the Stardock developers themselves to participate on the forums.
While I have two decades of people telling me that I should kill myself or that <product X> is a “piece of shit” as well as various wishes that I get cancer and die “bleeding from every orifice) (yes, there are people out there that post these things) my development team are just normal people who are excited to talk to gamers who have cool ideas and we’re not going to subject them to haters (and most haters don’t have any idea they’re being hateful). Rule of thumb: Just treat people as if they’re right in front of you.
Q: You’re getting screwed in the reviews! I can’t believe <website X> wrote <Y>
A: NO. We’re not getting screwed. While some of the review scores do have a bit of “dogpiling” to them (relative to review scores given to other games) I have yet to read a single review that I felt was unfair in terms of the text.
If anything, I feel bad about putting some of my friends through this. It’s no secret that Tom Chick and Troy Goodfellow are friends of mine. The question isn’t how I feel about them criticizing or giving negative reviews of the release version of Elemental. The question is how they felt having to give a negative review of a game of someone who’s their friend? It’s called integrity. I’ll take a 1 friend who will tell it like it is over a 100 yes men.
So when I read the reviews, my first reaction isn’t anger but sorrow at having put people I respect through having to give something I know they were inclined to like and wanted to like through that. It’s also the reason I will not be re-submitting some “patched” version for review.
It also redoubles our collective efforts to live up to the standards we have set. We will be working on Elemental for a long time. We love it. We live it. And together, we will make it awesome.
Now, let’s move past the drama. Let’s do the things that need to be done going forward to have fun and create something that will stand the test of time.
Hahaha sweet, the fanboy name calling comes out. Good thing you read what I wrote. For the record I never said it was perfect, I have put up ideas of what should be fixed....I just commented on someone on a forum presuming to tell them how to do there job. I'm pretty sure they know how.
Rune_74 and Jam3, this is why we can't have nice things
Please take it to PMs, for the rest of our sakes, if you are incapable of acting like adults. No more of this "waaaah he called me this" crap.
Your statement is patently false. I take exception to it. People who love the game offer feedback. People who are disappointed offer advice. People who are outright upset record their dissatisfaction... with respect and then move on. Thats all good. But the people who go on and on, and on some more; in a rude non-constructive manner are quickly becoming unwelcome by the community at large. And clearly the developers have alot of work ahead of them. So the polluting of the forums with non-constructive, and now pointless negativity, is having a detrimental affect on the games development. So 86 the hate, and bring on the help.
Look what you've said: "I'm pretty sure they know how (to do their job)"
Yes, we all think that way too. That's exactly why most people are angry here: they know how to do their jobs, so why haven't they done it?
You will answer "they are doing right now", and we all know that too, and we all appreciate it.
The problems are the lies, that's what we can't cope with. We read the excuses about the state of the game, yet several, I mean, an overwhelming amount of evidence appoint that the excuses are all lies, they don't hold against a simple thread search into the past. And sometimes they are so incredibly lamme that we feel like we are way smarter than them, hence the posts you see where you think people are telling Stardock how to do their job, but in truth people are just pointing out that the excuses given are so weak, that even us, who don't work at the industry and know nothing about their lives at work on a daily basis, we can see that if the excuses given were true, there were many simple ways to work around the problems, so "why didn't you do it?". See what the problem is now?
I see a lot of your posts on the forum Rune, and the fact that you take the posts intentions wrong 80% of the time really stands out. I'm just answering to you now cos I want at least to explain this so maybe you can start seing things from a different perspective.
I think that was the first problem of Stardock: based on Brad's own words, looks like they generalize every criticism as being "trolling" during the beta and ignored a lot of good feedback.
And there's a great deal of evidence that points this release as being a rushed one motivated by financial decisions.
Brad will never admit it, as it would be a suicide to say that. But the same way the game was rushed into the shelves incomplete, his excuses were also rushed and need more polishing, cos they are quite contraditory with things he published in the past.
You can choose to forgive and forget all of that, and I'm all for it too. But you can't bash people just cos they want to push things towards the truth. It's also necessary that Stardock take this hit, so they learn not to do this again, ever.
Finally, I'm not trying to show that I'm smarter than you, or that you are wrong, or that you couldn't perceive all of this by yourself, or anything like that. I just want to point to you that people are differente, and there's a reason why people don't want this events to pass by without notice. So I ask you to at least try to understand their motives.
Cheers.
Really? Then why does Sins show up as Stardock Entertainment? And going into Stardock Entertainment in Impulse, you see Sins listed amongst their developed games? Also I recall Brad and other people from Stardock mentioning "as we did in Sins" like they developed it. And they post in the development section of Sins forums...Maybe it was a collaboration game?
Funny, I became a huge Stardock Entertainment fan because of Sins. Looks like I was "worshiping" the wrong gods....Anyone know if Ironclad has any new games in development?
Your being an ass Zero. Your attacking the forum members with generalizations. And your attacking Stardock with assumptions. I've seen no constructive purpose with your recent postings. Be free to offer advice and feedback on the game. But please stop the negativity.
BRAVO!
Can we please lock this thread. Ban the obvious trolls, and move on. This post should be the last post of this thread or any like it. Had this been a Blizzard, Firaxis, or EA board, haters would have been banned and their ability to download updates/patches blocked a long time ago.
Nonsense. There is a HUGE difference between posting your opinion in a civilized way/giving constructive feedback and whining/flaming constantly or quoting some flaming posts from other forums [Good example: Official WoW forums....you know what I mean I guess. ].
Just how exactly is garbage like this in any way tolerable? It's flamebait, plain and simple.
There's pleanty of blame for the state of this forum to go around. Far too much of it is being heaped on one group, and nowhere near enough on the other. Some of the flagrant fanboyism serves no purpose other then to pick fights.
Yeah I know. The mods are very tolerant...still. Tbh I would release the ....even "temporal silencing" helps a lot regarding improving the forum quality.
That could work as well I guess.
Actually Brad it is OK to have traditional fantasy races as well as unique ones so please say YES to Elves and Dwarves and Goblins and such. The more races to chooes from the better.
Remember a great many of us do like the traditional Fantasy themed world as well.
Well Trolls are in, so I don't see why Goblins, Elves and Dwarves can't be in too.
Best regards,Steven.
Explain to me what fanboyism is, because you guys sure like to throw that around if people don't spout doom and gloom in every thread. I have offered ideas and critiques on different functions. Since you all want to focus on me, yes I did post on QT3, but god if you read that thread at all, it had nothing to be with being a fanboy(such an easy term to use if you want to dismiss something) it had everything with being a human being. It was disgusting. Granted, I will admit I came down a bit hard on the guy going on about how to use beta testers, it came after reading the 100th, you should have done this thread...(all I said so many experts or something to that effect)which this forum seems full of. Flagrant fanboyism, sheesh.
As for the fanboy label it is precisely the unwavering certainty you possess, despite evidence to the contrary, that they know better than everyone else, that anyone presuming to suggest changes or pointing out flaws in the processes they employ is presuming too much that is getting you painted by that brush.
Please. NEVER lock this thread. Instead keep funneling all the Drama here, to keep the rest of the forum a bit cleaner!
Yes, really. SD was heavily invloved in the Sins development process, and helped out on it a lot, but ultimately, Ironclad is the developer of Sins. If you look on the Impulse store page for Sins, it says "Developer: Ironclad Games."
And to quote the Wikipedia article about Stardock:
"The first third-party game Stardock published was Sins of a Solar Empire. The publishing arrangement worked out between Stardock and Ironclad Games was unusual in that the two companies integrated their teams at every level."
Ironclad developed it, with some help from Stardock, Stardock published it.
Yes, Ironclad is working on a new game, but no one knows what it is. The only thing we know is that it won't be in space and it will be a strategy game.
I will say that those people who choose to assert that we are "liars" or worse are not welcome in this community. There are plenty of web forums that welcome vile, nasty people. But this is not one of them.
Your probably one of the top developers who have my trust in the industry. I own all the galciv's, sins, and run impulse at startup on my PC. I value your DRM stance, the Gamers bill of rights, and believe you will make us whole on Elemental. I don't think you have or are lying but I do think that you can't empathize/sympathize with your dedicated loyal fans who pre-paid for Elemental to participate in the beta who now feel scapegoated in your failings on the product. Alot of us feel, brought into the process, summarily excluded from the testing(because we never got iterative passes once a you gave us a feature complete version(late july build)) and now partners in the share of the blame. You made a mistake in your handling of the beta group and the beta process and have not really addressed that point. All I want to know, and I think alot of others do is
1) Do you blame us in any way?
2) Do you feel like you adequatly listened to us and valued our opinions?
3) If you do a pre-paid beta again will you a) track every properly submitted bug as well s provide resolution before release to your beta group, provide a communitymanager to go through ideas/suggestions and track respond to them appropriatly?
I think the problem is that some of your statements have been contradicting others, while others is a matter of opinion, that is hard to relate to.
My own gripe is that you praise Elemental as one of the best games Stardock has ever made, and while I agree that it has great potential, calling it a good game at the current state is for me clinging to abstracts. I love the ideas you're toying with, but from a designer and gamereviewers standpoint, hardly any are thoroughly implemented within the game. Have a game that allows research, dynasties, fantastic creatures and magic is a dream come true to me, but the way things are right now, all the potential is going to waste.
I do, however, have confidence that Elemental will be one of the best games in it's genre some day, but I just can't praise you for something that might be happening sometime in the future. To do this, you will have to kill your darlings, and while you are getting there, more need to be pushed to the slaughterhouse. I hope you will look more to Master of Magic, and how they handled things, and I can't wait to see if the 1.1 patch with the new magic system, will bring us closer to this.
Agreed. Funnel all the drama here. Clearly some people have a lot they need to get off their chests. Better here than elsewhere on the forums. Keep on cleansing people, keep on cleansing.
That's a legitimate gripe to have.
But me saying that Elemental is the best game we've ever made is my opinion. Someone else not sharing it doesn't make me a "liar".
I come from the modding world. So my biases in what makes something worthwile to me are on my sleave. For instance, I'm the guy who paid $50 for Campaign Cartographer (http://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3.asp). I like making and building things. GalCiv I and GalCiv II, fine as they were, did not offer nearly as much "stuff" as Elemental does. That's why I am in love with Elemental so much more than anything we've ever done.
I am certainly devastated (and I can't even begin to express how crushing this experience has been) at how the game was released. But it wasn't about honesty. It was, rather, obtuseness.
If people do this over and over, then they are either very upset about it and are having difficulties calming down, or, more likely, it's just some troll seeing what he can do.
These situations shouldn't be tolerated to the detriment of the community, certainly, but it need not reflect so negatively on the perpetrators themselves.
There are plenty of people on this forum who are disappointed with the game's launch and have expressed it reasonably. They've offered suggestions on how to improve things or pointed out where they saw mistakes.
It's quite possible to voice your displeasure without resorting to disparaging the developer's character and essentially throwing an internet tantrum.
Honestly, what does coming on the forum and frothing at the mouth accomplish? How does it improve anything at all?
I just don't see how being "bummed out" about the game's launch gives someone the right to come here and be vitriolic, even if they only do it once. I also don't see how it helps anything.
/shrug
Edit: I'm not saying that Cruxador has acted this way, merely responding to his argument.
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