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.
I hear you there, definitely. I kinda almost half suggested it, but I remember my father who still has 56k. Box for him!
Frankly I find it quite heartening that a CEO is putting his hands up and saying "you know what we kinda screwed the pooch"... because lets face it more often than not when thier is a hiccup with most games out there in consumer land their is very little in the way of explanation, apology or attemp[t to rectify issues in a timely manner. So for that Brad you have my respect.
As for the game itself..well were it not for the dx issues preventing turn porgress after a certain point, and the out of memory issue preventing any advancement past a certain point then despite the various bugs and so forth I would quite honestly be playing it daily because it is the kind of game I enjoy.. Stardock makes the kinds of turn based games I enjoy. Now that and the fact you guys did Gal Civ 2 which itself had some issues early days but was refined over time into a wonderful wonderful game gets you my patience on these issues and my trust that they WILL be fixed.
So thanks for the explanation, thanks for the apology and thanks for the gesture with the first expansion, it is appreciate
STARDOCK ROCKS!!!!!
Demigod is still not fixed, btw, and probably won't ever be. Great core game, but connectivity problems still exist and always will - killing off a great game. I personally was a fan boy for SD, but will absolutely not pre-order a game that they are either publishing or developing. I will wait for the reviews - and next time, I will listen to them. I'm really disappointed that SD didn't mature after noting demigods problems (a big MP beta would have identified the major problems - though it would still be in the state it is today even if that was done due to the miscommunications you described.). And common sense should have indicated that if there are quite a few changes occurring after the last beta, there should be another beta to weed out the problems. So whoopie - maybe you learn from your mistakes this time.
Completely agree there... not many folks decide to shoot themselves in the foot and call it a win. Making money and getting a great reputation are generally the goal...
Anyway, if you read through that without getting terribly annoyed, I think you have a great plan to fixing things. I do hope that elemental is a success for you even with bad reviews. I, for one, am done with buying games you publish or develop (heh - I even bought your book, Brad, and I don't even read fantasy ) until either reviews are generally positive or you release another game and it isn't jacked up at launch. Glad you've committed to fixing this...
In case Brad comes across this... what was the deal with joystiq and that "source" that had a few controversial things to say? Is the source full of crap?
Here's the original post that I copied and pasted from joystiq.com
Brad apparently got in touch with joystiq and the same post was updated with this. All of the quotes from the "source" were redacted. Note the 2nd paragraph's removal:
edit - and look - i get the title - drama cleansing thread - so you obviously want to get past all the negative crap and move forward. That whole anonymous "source" crap got under my skin, so I'd appreciate it if you'd address it. It logically sounds like a bitter ex-employee that was fired. If its total garbage, just say so. Thanks.
I must be one of the lucky ones, I have read about lot sof crash problems but haven;t had them. My experience was that it was a solid release, and a fun game. My biggest complaint has been some tactics that the AI does (such as blocking mountain passes, it is too easy to get bottled up early game imo) and the pacing could use some work. And I am not sure exactly what was missing, but that "MUST play one more turn" magic just wasn;t there. GalCiv2 still holds more of that kind of magic for me - but I still expect that 6 months out that is going to be changed and I have kind of expected that with how the beta went.
FrogBoy and team really sorry this did not go well. I hope it doesn;t change your future plans of early involvement of the fans with the beta. I think the proglem with Elemental Beta - which I stated before - was the Beta testers never got a feature complete game to test, all the intentionally broken beta versions were fine for testing individual systems, but it would have been great to do some beta testing on what ended up being the 1.0 "early" release. As advertised, this was drastically different from any previous beta version - I think that was the mistake that has caused a lot of the pain.
Thanks for taking the time to write to your customers and taking accountability for the end result of Elemental's launch.
I have great faith that the community and fans will do a great deal to help the dev team mold the game into something very special. I don't doubt for a second that the team is even more dedicated and determined to elevate Elemental to the standards of a classic. I wouldn't go so far to say the ongoing project is one of redemption, but I do feel that there's a deep seeded desire to prove something right. Keep going! I'm rooting for you all, and I hope those who were laid off can be brought back in time.
('-')y
I've been following the development of Elemental for a few months and was planning to buy it upon release, but I became a bit concerned when I saw mention of AI code and other features only being started between beta 4 and gold. I'm a professional software dev myself so I know what that can lead to. Based on that I decided to hold off to see the post-release feedback, and have been following it all rather closely since then. While I was simply being cautious, the amount of issues that were revealed were far higher than I expect anyone imagined.
I wouldn't second-guess the devs to say whether or not something is technically finished or not, but it seemed pretty clear to me the game at release wasn't in a state where I'd have been happy to play it and isn't there yet. I'm not suggesting that statement is true for anyone else. Some people are happy to play early alphas and betas and others prefer to wait a year or two after release for games to be patched. To each their own.
I'm not intending to dredge all the past wrongs up yet again either. It's been dominating these forums since release, and it's debatable how useful that is at this point. Exorcising those demons is a large part of the reason for this thread I expect. All Stardock can do is learn what they can from the experience, and do what they can to make Elemental the game we all want it to be. Honestly from what you're saying here and elsewhere Brad, I think you're on top of it on both counts. I have every faith the end result will be a positive one even if the road there was a bit rocky.
Personally I'm looking forward to buying and playing the game. For me it's not a matter of "if", but "when". Maybe v1.1. I don't know, but I'll keep following the progress. There's still plenty of sales for Elemental to make in the future, and I hope once the issues in the engine are worked out it'll make a good foundation for future projects.
The one thing I question about this is that Stardock is a privately owned company. Who exactly would these capital investors be if that is the case?
No idea - could all just be complete rubbish and the anonymous source was just some jerk on the internet.
The Mob or the Tooth Fairy.
Just because Stardock does it's own development and publishing, doesn't mean they don't have financial backing.
Been playing since Beta 3, still waiting for the game I bought the limited edition for to truly arrive, but I think I've been converted into a Stardock loyalist. Seriously wish more people had the balls to say what you've said here. You ever thought about politics Brad?
Well at least they are honest when they fail, unlike EA.
This is probably the weirdest video game release of all time! I'm upset for the following reasons:
1. The developer with the best A.I. in the industry releases a game that is heavily criticized over its shoddy A.I.
2. The extremely long and heavily supported extended beta period did exactly the opposite of what it intended to do, leaving the launch day version feeling like more beta.
3. New firsts for Stardock like tactical battles and multiplayer either aren't implemented yet or don't work.
4. My install disc ended a long installation with an error and had to be downloaded. Took about 2 hours just to get the game running.
5. The campaign that was supposed to be an improvement over the GalCiv campaigns is also taking a toll from critics.
HOWEVER, I will hang in there and support Stardock and Elemental for the following reasons:
1. Promised support and evolution of the game for years to come, and judging by what GalCiv 2 ultimately became is more than enough reason to be excited for that.
2. First expansion free! What a way to apologize!
3. The Limited Edition is friggin' beautiful! The best reason NOT to download a game in a loooong time. Puts the Starcraft 2 Limited Edition to shame.
I wish things hadn't turned out this way, but as long as Stardock brings the level of support we've seen on GalCiv, I'm not worried in the least.
p.s. Why all the whining about the learning curve and not understanding the game? It's kind of part and parcel of these types of games. It took hours of scouring the forums and wiki to learn GalCiv 2 and I fully expect to need to do the same here.
Honestly people have you ever heard the saying "IT'S A GAME" i mean yes they made a mistake, but why be negative about it i mean they know the did a shit fest but still there working to fix it that more the most people do so give them some dam breathing room for gods sake
p.s. who ever is sending those asshole of remarks to Brad all i have 2 say is.... go screw yourself and a dam pull of acid there working there asses off for 3 DAM YEARS people
lord the idiocy rate of gamers of late is scary
My apologies if the following seems hateful, not intended that way, but here goes:
Your quote here is something you've said a few times now and it bothers me a little. Mainly because I don't quite know exactly what you mean by it. You've spoken a lot about the engine bugs and the engine not being ready, but I haven' seen much of an admission from you that many of the actual game elements are currently either:
1) Not balanced
2) Have bugs of varying seriousness
3) Don't have good synergy with other game elements
4) Are a little bland and non-strategic (unit design, tactical battles, spells and spell books, etc.)
I guess it scares me that right now your belief (from what I can tell) is that if you removed all the crashes and engine bugs this would be a great game. As much as I'd like to, I just can't agree at all.
Quite frankly, this game has the potential to, and possibly will be, the best game I've ever played. But right now its not even in the top 50 based on game play alone (ignoring engine bugs, crashes, etc.)
When you say its the best game you've ever made, you're obviously not talking about the bugs. I get that. I just *hope* that you're talking about the grand concept & where the design is going, rather than where its at now.
Because, and I'm sorry if this sounds hateful or some such, right now I would have little faith in someone to fix elemental if they actually thought it was a good game in its current state (again, engine bugs aside.)
*Shrug* If so, maybe elemental is just not for me. But thats possibly a worrying sign for Stardock given that I almost exclusively love and play TBS games and have played and loved MoM, AoW, Warlords, HoMM, Kings Bounty, Fantasy General, Elven legacy and the Civ games.
82,000 units sold and an estimated 30% have compatibility/stability issues? Wow, no wonder the forums have been chock-a-block with vitriol.
Brad, you're the first CEO I've ever seen release sales data this way. Given the context, that's really gutsy. Another reason why I'm sticking by SD on this game and any subsequent ones.
Not having a clue about what game development (let alone business management at the executive level) is like, I can still relate to how you got personally emotionally invested in the game to the point where you could not see the forest for the trees and failed to follow up on QA issues as a result. Maybe you need to write a book about this experience. Even negative lessons are very much worth learning and wisdom is after all said to be learning from other people's mistakes.
Labors of love are intensely personal experiences. After all, every parent thinks their newborn is the prettiest baby, even though a bystander may gulp and wonder what is wrong with the parents' eyesight. Elemental is a bit like that and some of us like it, warts and all, knowing that it will likely grow up to be just fine or better.
I'm glad that the moderation will clamp down a bit soon. Negative feedback is fine as long as it is constructive and leads to solutions. Hate messages are just wrong.
Thanks for the update on game changes in the work. Are we likely to see them break saves? I expect so, but best get the word out early so there won't be any last minute awshits from the unwary or unwise.
As the highway patrol says to the accident lookielous, nothing to see here folks, just keep moving on...
The idea was great. The realization sucks... bugs bugs and bugs. I should wait till november patch.
I look forward to 1.3 when Elemental is stable and is a joy to play. However, I seriously hope that Book 2 doesn't simply become a mechanic for making the game what it should be first. I hope that you'll bring Elemental up to the 9/10 it deserves before launching into the expansion. I guess, basically, what I am hoping for is that you realize that it is more than just busted code that is hampering the game. Yes it crashed out. However, it needs pizazz, a core set of addictive, awesome, basic mechanics, before a major expansion comes on to significantly alter things around. If everything worked perfectly for me, smoother game, great UI, then I would still say that the game is in the 6s/7s. I'm sure you'll make Elemental grand, but don't short-change elemental itself. Otherwise "Book 2" is just a gimmick that should be Elemental v1.4.
I'm sure these lists have been hashed out before. However, for some constructive criticism here are things I think would give the game some of the necessary pizazz are, in no particular order:
I'll post once I think of some more. I think you've got the skeletons of a great game here. Takes some cajones to make a game in the image of MoM et al. I'm hoping to goes more the way of Age of Wonders than Master of Orion 3.
still trying my elemental --doc
85K in sales - and that wasn't good enough? What did you guys expect? Good lord, SC2 sold 90K last week, worldwide, 60K domestic. but that's SC2.
What did you expect for this game? How many returns have there been then? What would it have taken to keep on the 2nd team?
Your use of "IT'S A GAME" does not fit here whatsoever. The video game industry is huuuge... the development of video games is not a game, it's a multi-billion dollar ordeal. It's a living for thousands of people. In return, they expect to get paid. Great. However, if they release crap, people are going to be upset. They paid money, they expect to get something of value in return.
Since you don't seem to believe the gaming industry is an actual industry and is just "fun and games," I'll try to put that in another perspective. Say you bought a brand new car for $50,000. This car had been hyped up to be awesome blah blah blah. So, you go out and buy the car only to find the wiring is messed up, so to adjust your mirrors you have to fck around with your radio. To use cruise control you have to use the window controls. Well okay, that's not the end of the world. Then you see the leather seats are fake and cheaply made, they started fraying after the first day. Then after a week, your whole engine block falls out because they used paper and glue to try to hold it in there. But hey, "IT'S JUST A CAR" that you paid money for, and it doesn't work.
Well, in the meantime https://forums.elementalgame.com/395529
How can u not know that having a 1 month Beta test is not long enough. Did you honestly and truly think anything prior to the late July build was a beta? Wikipedia is pretty basic but
""Beta" is the software development phase following alpha, named after the Greek letter beta. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. "
"A feature complete version of a software is not yet final, but contains all intended functionality of the final version."
It's a pretty reasonable definition. We got the late july build, which was the first build any objective person could potentially call feature complete, then I think there was .98 a day or two prior to release. We didnt actually get to test. Your problem was that there basically wasn't a beta test.
You have still failed over and over again to address the hundreds of people who have pointed this out over and over again. You not even denying it your ignoring it entirely. Not to mention any form of address to the pre-order folks about them not being at fault and sorry to the beta people who were screaming the point as loudly as they could on the forums.
You didnt test correctly with your user group. It's that simple. Every other reason you've given: new engine, group think, loss of objectivity, etc, is minor compared to how you handled the beta test. We should have had probably 6 or more iterations from a feature complete version before you even thought of shipping.
Dear Brad Wardell,
It is quite pleasing to see your post, though I think it came a little too late. Maybe that was the time needed for some reflections of your part, I don't know. Still, better late than never, right?
Sometimes people can get harsh. Angry people plus the anonymity of the internet equals no social restriction. Then people post their most basic feelings, without anything to restrain them from talking whatever they want. But it's mostly an outflow, harmless.
I think after your post we, who decided to keep our Elemental instead of getting a refund, can only wait and hope for the best. Give you a final credit, to see how this will end. Personally, I think we have a good chance of being happy by the beggining of 2011.
I'm also glad that you released a "patch calendar" with decisions on how this will work. I don't like searching for bugs when the game is so buggy, but I love testin and opine on gameplay and balance issues. Since you now told us that this will be your concern only on patch 1.1 and beyond, I'll just wait for that to re-start playing again.
I really hope Stardock have learned a lesson from all of this, for there is clearly a lesson to be learned. We've all discussed about those lessons, and this post will not revive them.
But I want you to know, if you're reading this and if you give a damn, that your post, this simple attitude of yours, was really meaningful, and we will look forward to see every word being implemented during patch launches and Stardock actions towards new games.
Best regards, from a simple brazilian gamer and customer.
Well I believe the community could have been more helpful with warning Stardock unfortunately at the end of every beta version we were told don't worry the next version is so much better and nothing like the current beta. When testing beta4 we were being told the same story so many of us were quietly in belief some magical internal version existed which was hiding all the easter eggs, gameplay balance, spell diversity, creature behaviors, weaponry designs, etc., . Also during beta testing we were so limited with tiny maps on a single fixed map something which should only be for BETA_1. BETA_3 should have been testing 2 VERY LARGE maps with up to 16 AI opponents and/or human opponents.
You REALLY need to quit placing all of the blame on yourself... it's not like you are working with a team of developers who are all androids and robots. They are people who know the differences between what's right and what's wrong. If none of the Stardock developers gave you warnings about the game then an internal anonymous voting system should be designed so none of the developers feel any pressure from you or another team member about blowing an emergency whistle.
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