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.
Good beta testing requires an unbiased eye. We all have our biases, of course, but it's important that our biases be recognized and minimized as much as possible.
Someone in another thread pointed out that linking beta access with pre-ordering adds a bias -- towards fans. It's only natural that our feedback tends to that reflect our bias, try as we might to minimize it.
Note I said "tends to", I am not saying the feedback was too biased, or unusably biased, or the like. And note that I include myself in this.
There definitely was a lot of 'positive vibes' towards the game in beta, and a definite 'group think' bias in favor of the game and brad and SD (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing).
Then there was brad's reluctance to accept polite and respectful concerns regarding the game being release-ready starting back in June.
The bias and the reluctance made a dangerous combination.
But there's more -- there were often responses by some of the other testers to said concerns, responses that attempted to diminish said concerns and concern-expressers, and to dissuade folks from expressing similar concerns, and echo brad's out-of-hand dismissing of said concerns.
Such responses were well-intentioned but with hindsight we can see they weren't as helpful as they could have been. The game obviously needed more folks expressing concerns, not fewer, and the concerns needed more heeding, not less.
Standing up for someone one likes and believes in is admirable. However, sometimes the best thing one can do for a friend is to be critical (in a well-intentioned way, and 'critical' in the academic sense of challenging ideas, and not in the demeaning or insulting sense) and tell someone something even when you know they don't want to hear it. Sometimes the best thing one can do for a friend is to sit back and let polite and respectful concerns get aired, and not jump in and help diminish them.
I bring this up because I'm getting a deja vu sense in this thread. Some are offering polite and respectful concerns and I'm seeing some of the responses I describe in the "But there's more" thing I mention above. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm so concerned about not repeating the mistakes of the past that I'm imagining it. But then again, maybe not.
I hope I'm wrong. I hoped I was wrong back in June when I questioned the game being release-ready by Aug. I didn't sufficiently press that belief back then, to my regret. I don't want to make that mistake again, and thus this post. So my suggestion is to let folks politely and respectfully express their concerns. No need to jump in and defend brad or the game from them. No need to downplay the concerns or concerned, or diminish them. Just let them be. Given how things have turned out so far, if we're to err on one side it's best to err on the 'too much concerns', as we've seen how the 'too few concerns' approach turned out.
Well judging from your post Mr wardell i feel that you think elemental's debacle i bug related.
Well don't forget that as many reviewers said the game is boring and the tactical combat is broken.
Thing about game mechanics not only bugs...
@Brad: also remember... fans are not developers. Listen to your Beta testers about bugs, and about what ISN'T fun. But PLEASE don't let them ham you into making this another fantasyworldxxxxi remake. Just say no to elves and dwarves.
It doesn't have to be a straight copy of MoM or AoW2 to be great. But you do have to learn why those games were what they were, and then apply those lessons to the new mechanics.
P.S. For those that actually told Brad to die... Do us all a favor and have your genitals removed... we don't need trash like you breeding.
Um. Ok. Pot, meet kettle.
I hate drama. Time to go further with the game.
Funny thing is, I didn't really have many problems playing the game other than the occasional OOM crash.
I looooved the game at first and defended it vehemently despite it's many flaws and poorly handled release.
Now, I'm starting to see what many see.. it's just not deep enough. I find that in the end, I delay trying to stomp the AI just to make the game last and see how far I can research before I have to go after the AI.
The variety (or lack thereof) is what bugs me. Pretty much the same monsters always. Very little variety of equipment. Factions only difference to me is their traits which aren't significant enough to make them feel truly different to me. Spells feel very very standard and pretty boring. I was hoping for something Dominions3-like.
In the end, what's kept me from booting it up addictively like I did the first couple of days (I was pre-order) is that despite not actually having finished a single game yet (due to patches and lack of time to play), I'm not really dying to get back home to it. I feel like I've already seen about as much as I'm going to see. There's no sense of wonder. No excitement at new discoveries or exploring the fog-of-war. That's what it's lacking for me, the casual gamer who would play it (like I do Civ4) years later. Every faction I run into feels pretty much exactly the same. I want immersion, surprise, excitement at new things, and I'm not getting that now. I'm actually quite easy to please ( ) and I'm quite surprised at how quickly I went from fanboi-ish defense of the game to pretty much agreeing with all that say they hate the depth and lack of content.
Having said that, I'm really really excited for the changes to come.. let's hope I don't over do my excitement. Good luck SD, I'll see you in a couple of months.
Excellent post. As always, thanks for the candor and the planned time line for the remainder of the year as far as Elemental is concerned.
And having done the sysop thing in FidoNet and MausNet, and later as a paid "wizop" at CompuServe, I entirely agree that it only takes a few permanently nasty people to spoil the whole community. Negativity catches on quickly, and even moderate posters get caught up, precisely as expected and intended by the trolls. Attention is a reward -- and I, for one, am glad that this currency is not awarded to people whose sole aim it is to get cheap kicks out of the turmoil they deliberately cause. Constructive criticism enriches the (game) community, bashing poisons it.
Word.
Agreed Brad.
It´s very relieving, at least for me, to hear those words from you. A launch like this generates a lot of ansiety and uncertainty.
Like I said somewhere else, I belive this is a raw gem. And now I have every confidence that it´ll get to shine like it was supposed to from the start.
It´s time to move forward.
DISCLAIMER: This is my comment to Brad´s first post. I haven´t read the whole thread.
Drama Cleansing Thread
It seems that the meaning behind this thread title is lost on many. I'm not pointing fingers, or speaking only of posts in this thread. No need for anyone to get defensive. Please keep those minds open.
The CEO of Stardock writes a number of candid postings accepting responsibility for a less than stellar release. Then presents a detailed plan for correction. Elementals lead developer posts a loooong to-do list of fixes. Immediatly after release a series of patches are offered. Stardocks response has been remarkable. What more can you ask. To my knowledge, no other game company even comes close to Stardocks level of support. So why the continued drama?
Stardock admits errors. They make public apologies. They immediatly release a series of patches. They publicly acknowledge fan feedback. And they publish lengthy to-fix lists. Stardock has committed to a timely fixing of the game. And now they rightly ask us to move on and get over the drama already!
To continue pointing out any shortcomings, serves no constructive purpose. If you are on a personal crusade to combat shoddy workmanship... more power to us. But your wasting your time here. Your too late. That battle is won. Stardock says they f'cked up. They're sorry about it. Now they fix it. Wording your criticisms with sarcastic negativity is pouring salt in the wound, your beating a dead horse, your picking at scabs to slow the heal. Don't be an ass. Be helpful and supportive. Say your piece with respect. Be real. Please.
I don't mean this to be destructive, but I have to point out a specific criticism I see here, that was put a lot more eloquently then I could.
This is an area where I feel disappointed. There's nowhere near enough of this in the game, and I felt this was one of the selling points of the game. I like shiny toys. The rare techs in Elemental seem to be the equivalent of Kinetic Streams II or Efficiency Studies IV though.
that said, I don't think this is a top priority to fix, and the game can still be fun without it, but it is something I feel needs to be added down the road- those rare techs needs to do fun things, and be common enough that players will run into at least one of them in most games, but rare enough that they can't count on any of these techs appearing in a string of games.
Another suggestion from this thread that I think is an excellent idea:
Copy Valve, and allow people to send bug reports and support issues through Impulse. Maybe when people hit send, have the game auto-send the files you often request and the other support files. This might make bug-fixing a LOT easier.
@Alborelli and WhiteElk
Yeah, I was trying to think how to say these very things.
I started many attempts that as far as I could see I was not being constructive/only adding drama, so I chose not to post.
But it is definitely past time to say how counter productive much of what is going on in the forums is. It really is.
But these last couple posts put it well.
Go ahead let yourself be cleansed, and let Stardock get to it!
Working on AI before fixes will break the AI, so it will be adjusted I would think but big things have to wait until the systems are redone, otherwise the AI will just get loss.Your "Fun", part is coming I think but it will take a little time to do so, my best advice to you is to shelf it for a month, come back and see what has changed. If your "Fun" is still missing repeat, it will be there, but the Engine needs a base first, then the extras.
Stick with it, it will get better.
Lee
I will buy this game today if I can have any assurance I'm not one of the 30% who will have incapatabilities. A demo would be nice for checking this out or at least a list of known h/w and settings troublemakers "you're probably ok if..." .
-D
50 x 82000 = 4 100 000 $. I'm not really an expert in how much studios should get out of a PC game, but this amount sounds reasonable to me. Anyway, I think that people who play Elemental divide into two categories: Gamers, who play any game, and compare Elemental to Starcraft 2, WOW or other mega popular game. Those people are the ones who hate Elemental and say it's not even close to other games.
Then there are people who are TBS fans (like me) and who really think that Elemental is an awesome game (of course, except the list of errors & bugs). I've played a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders, Disciples, PoxNora and honestly, I LOVE Elemental. Of course it needs some changes, but Stardock truly put a lot of effort in the game and you can definitely see that. It's truly a unique game, a breath of fresh air from all commercial games that come up those days.
So great job Stardock and keep on improving this jewel!
I don't post much, but have been with Elemental from when it was being talked about as a "MoM Spiritual Successor".
I bought Elemental and could not play it until the 1.07 patch without major slowdown and crashes (still get crashes on occasion but that's what saving is for), and I think that the tactical combat is lackluster to say the least.
And yet, I am charmed by the game. Stardock has truly created a marvelous base, a foundation that a great game will be built upon. Keep up the work and you will win back any lost faith, and prove that you guys are the best in the business.
Really, this is why I bought Elemental. Stardock has a dedication to seeing their games come through right, and I am glad that the games are not the sole source of revenue. We see companies diversify to increase the markets they are in for profit--have you looked at just how many different Oreo products there are out there right now? Stardock's games, on the other hand, truly seem to be works of craftsmanship and pride.
I bought Alpha Protocol for the XBox 360 earlier this year, and the game was thoroughly dumped by Sega and Obsidian almost immediately after launch. It was a great premise that did not come through, and ultimately booted out the door. I do not recall seeing even one update for the game since launch. Obsidian was off to work on a new Fallout, and Sega didn't want to waste their money on a product seen as going bad.
Elemental has nowhere near the problems of Alpha Protocol, but what encourages me to buy more Stardock-developed games is the response to issues with the game. GalCiv2 had many, many updates that created a much more satisfying game. I have no doubt that the improvements will come in multitudes, and the first expansion being a freebie comes as a welcome surprise.
Most of us here have the game already, and to those who are doubtful about the future of the game, I suggest sticking around. Lessons are being learned, our feedback is being listened to, and good things are coming.
its amazing how many of you are gushing over the candor of the post - a post that still contains elements of being out of touch with the state of the game and what it needs and the reason for the way it is...
atleast they are determined to speak frankly and support the game in the future whether or not the right decisions are made
Supposedly they have a patch in QA. If only they were making a sequel
If you have technical issues, and SD can't resolve them, they do offer a full refund. That said, the performance is improving rapidly, so it's less then 30% now. A Demo is going to be made, so if you want to wait for that, SD will still get your money then.
It's not that much. They make the full revenue on Impulse purchases, minus whatever the costs of bandwidth/maintenance are. My guess is $40 revenue
On retail, I think during the GCII wrapup with what went wrong, they said profit was $15-$21.
Average the two and it's probably around 2-2.5 mil revenue on a 3 mil total budget. This game is probably going to end up breaking even, especially if they do an expansion pack for sale (2nd XP) later on down the road. I wonder what percent of GCII buyers ended up getting DA and Twilight- my guess is over 50%.
So what do you suggest we do?? Keep beating a dead horse?
100% agree.
If you were a beta tester and have sour grapes about a bug report you sent in that didn't get fixed, please move on and get over yourself. EVERY beta has testers like you...your not that unique, nor smart or insightful. Get over yourself.
Lets just move on and let Stardock do what they do to fix this thing. Help when you can, or have time, but do like Brad says...post as if you are talking right to the person in front of you. Keep it constructive, positive or negative(and yes, negative criticism can avoid being rude or sarcastic. not within my personal skill set, but I have seen it done.).
Well I think that is the point. We might as well sit back and let it rest because they are going to do what they want to do - which has been proven already. With bug reports not being investigated or feedback being ignored regarding delaying release due to bugs and unfinished mechanics to blasting posters giving honest feedback. Now saying forum mods will be extra vigilant here on the forums just is another way of saying - that they are going to do what they are going to do. I have read beta feedback from posters giving their concerns in a constructive and honest way but still were ignored and blasted by Frogboy. And I am just amazed how that can be forgiven so easily.
You just don't want to believe they are doing these such things and no one wants to call them on it due to fanboyism. Look at the post on QT3, he said similar things to his own testers here in these forums. The point is people don't change - if you think he will your wrong. To really change he should stop posting altogether on these forums and let the mods retrieve the information for him. He is way to close and personal with the game and put his foot in his mouth too many times and it turned out to be very destructive for him and his career, all the employees past and present at SD, and the game.
I look forward to the continually evolving and improved game play from Elemental. I also look forward to the first free expansion for me! Although I think I desvere it, for the initial release was very rocky. Here is to picking oursevles back up, dusting off our knees, and get going again! We all have had our moment to be mad, sad, regretful about the initial release of Elemental, but now we are done need to move on! The future is bright, and I for one am glad we are moving past this bump in the road.
G00b
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