This week I’ve been presenting internally our company business plan for 2011. Part of this is the Stardock Customer Report 2011 (which we’ll be making available publicly soon) along with our road map on the studio games (this doesn’t count future titles from our partner Ironclad who developed Sins of a Solar Empire nor does it address next steps in the Demigod franchise.
This journal entry will likely only be of interest to either techies or biz types. So if you’re looking for interesting game feature stuff, you’ll probably want to skip this.
The Road Map
Essentially every studio has a road map. They just don’t make it public for obvious reasons. Since we’re privately held, we can pretty much do whatever we’d like and one of the things we like is to keep our fans up to speed on what the heck is happening here.
So below is the road map for the studio developed (Stardock Entertainment’s studio) titles.
Kumquat
Kumquat is just our internal nickname for the engine. It was called this in honor of former Stardock developer Mike Duffy who created the predecessor “Pear” which we licensed from him after he left to start his own studio. Pear is what all Stardock games from 1997 through 2003 used (Entrepreneur, The Corporate Machine, LightWeight Ninja, Galactic Civilizations I). It was a fantastic game engine for its day but was 3D.
Kumquat is a new engine that was developed originally for Society which is the free to play MMORTS that we’ve been slowly developing for the past hundred years or something like that. We decided to have the first game that used Kumquat be a fantasy strategy game, namely, Elemental: War of Magic.
Now, when War of Magic was being made, we obviously had very high hopes for how it would be received. So we pictured having Elemental: War of Magic – Expansion 1…2…3. And then you’d have Elemental: War of Magic II and so on. But when Elemental: War of Magic was released it was very buggy and even after the bugs were largely fixed, the gameplay wasn’t what we had envisioned it being. We had cut or altered so many features from the original design to match what Kumquat could do – at the time – that we ended up with something that few were pleased with.
But work on Kumquat has continued non-stop and so in December it was decided that rather than continue the War of Magic line we would use the opportunity to create a new fantasy strategy game in the Elemental world that would succeed War of Magic and then just give that to everyone who bought War of Magic in 2010 it for free with steep discounts for anyone who buys it before it is released. That’s where Elemental: Fallen Enchantress comes in.
Elemental: Strategy Games
The effect of this is that we’ll eventually have War of Magic, Fallen Enchantress and <Untitled third branch>. This isn’t really very different than what we did with Galactic Civilizations II with the exception of the intention to have them be stand-alone and thus allowing the separate entities to continue to be potentially developed on their own path based on what players ask for. If the strategy games were primarily multiplayer games, we obviously couldn’t do this because you’d be fragmenting the player base. But these are primarily single player games that happen to have (fairly crummy) multiplayer support.
One nice thing about this is that it gives us, and players, a lot more design flexibility. Fallen Enchantress is a pretty radical departure from War of Magic. Based on what I’m seeing, I suspect most people will prefer that by far to War of Magic but only time will tell. But in any event, we will be making a v1.3 of War of Magic that will be on its own code branch.
As a game developer, I can tell you that this is pretty exciting stuff. Consider the challenges other strategy game franchises have. Some players would have liked to see Civilization V be more along the lines of Civilization IV. Others would have preferred it to be far more complex and others would have preferred to have it streamlined.
Elemental: RPG games
Now, as some people may recall, after War of Magic’s difficult launch, we had to re-evaluate our staffing levels and reorganize. This meant some painful layoffs back last Fall which came from people slated for the RPG title. After War of Magic, it was recognized that the game studio was being run like a hobby and not as an engineering process like our enterprise software unit. This meant we needed to bring in full-time designers and full-time project managers onto the studio. Thus, the second studio team, designated for the Elemental: RPG, got largely zapped. This year we will begin to reconstitute this team as we bring in a lead studio developer and some senior developers to help ensure that we don’t have another War of Magic episode.
The Mod Layer
As some people may remember, I was planning to take a sabbatical last year. Clearly that didn’t happen. I am still planning to do this sometime early this year. With Kael and Jon Shafer here now, I am comfortable that the games unit won’t need me to intervene. This will let me create what I’ve creatively named “Mod Layer”. The idea is to create a piece of middleware between Kumquat and future games that would allow people to make games using mostly Python. I’ve started the planning part of this with our DesktopX lead developer so that we can use Expression Blend to create “objects”, and then manipulate them via Python and render them in Kumquat. This way, modders can easily create a wide assortment of games that are either 2D or 3D and potentially portable to (at the very least) Xbox Live Arcade and Windows Phone (though I’d like to also do iOS but Xcode is the devil still so I may ask some Stardockians to make that part for me <g>).
I think we're going in circles, so I'll stop. You have AI work to do anyways. One question though: wasn't Lightweight Ninja just a small side project Cari did? I always thought it was a one-person project.
It's unfortunate that people's negative reaction to a game so often degenerates into personal attacks. Agreed that there's far too much of that against Jon in particular on this forum.
I think it comes down to 2 things - first, people get incredibly invested and emotional about PC game, and imbue a much anticipated game with all sorts of wonderful virtues/promises that any game - no matter how wonderful - will have trouble living up to. Obviously Elemental was disappointing and many seem to have taken it far too personally and reacted with rage and personal attacks. And second, the internet makes it amazingly easy to slag and insult someone in ways that you would never do in person.
All this is not to say that Elemental was better than it was on release, because it wasn't. I think right now it's an okay game, but not great, and I look forward to Fallen Enchantress.
And definitely to an old school RPG - replaying BG2 from gog.com right now and having a blast.
The community here is fantastic. I know it's one of the things people I know from "the industry" comment on regularly. I remember last GDC talking to some guys at another studio and we were trying to theorize why the Stardock community forums are so much better to participate on than the typical one.
What we want to strongly discourage, or more specifically, what I want to strongly discourage is any temptation to personalize things as well as trying to zap any melodrama or any sense of entitlement on anyone's part (including us <g>). Otherwise, things stop being about the game and the cool stuff we can all make together.
Why are you guys fighting! You can't get a divorce! It's all my fault!
Wishing you guys success on the fallen enchantress! Looking forward to hearing more and more about it over the next few months. I've already seen some decent press on it.
I could not agree with you more. These forums really are filled with some good people, and I think that they are given a bad name by a few people who could be given a game to their exact specifications and would still be unhappy. While I can understand the general excitement and frustration which comes from being an on-looker in the game development process, I think it is easy for a gamer to overlook a very simple reality. When one buys a game they don't like or doesn't feel lives up to some set of standards, that person is out between 50-60 dollars. Most of the time, when a game development studio puts out a game, whether it is great or not, they have spent millions and the developers are putting their entire livelihood on the line in the hopes that the game is successful. Brad and the rest of SD used their talents and time in an attempt to make a great game, and while some people make believe they failed to hit the mark, to make it personal seems simply to be in bad taste.
I really enjoy Elemental! I'm glad to see so much support behind it. Great job!
Hopefully the Fallen Enchantress has Life Alert
Well said Frogboy. This endless negativity is getting pretty tiring. You'd think if people really didn't like the game this much they would just move on to something else.
2- People tend to get myopic -- they miss the forest for the trees. When was the last time someone made a brand new AAA title for the PC? Not a sequel. A brand new game? It's getting increasingly rare and War of Magic is one of the reasons it is so rare. It's hard to launch a brand new game for the PC that isn't horrendously buggy (unless you license the engine at which point it's going to be made for consoles and ported to the PC).
<snip>
3- Not to put too fine a point on it but life is short and I'm not inclined to put up with the personalized crap I put up with this past Fall. If people don't like Fallen Enchantress, then we're done. I'll take my gazllions of dollars and put them into areas we're better suited at. But I'm not going to deal with another season of bullshit. People need to repeat after this: It's a VIDEO GAME. We thought it was done and thought it was good. We were wrong. Terribly wrong. We have done everything reasonably possible to address that both in terms of the game and in reorganizing the games unit here. If that isn't good enough, then screw it. There's plenty of other areas to make software for that are far more lucrative and don't suffer the drama.
2- Come on, people have always considered themselves the centre of the universe. Surprised? People don't value things until they don't have them.
3-3.1- I don't think it will be the end of Stardock gaming but if it were to happen, so be it. Some people doesn't deserve the effort (be in gaming or anything else).3.2- How will you measure if people like/dislike FE? Most people will get it for free so sales seem useless. It cannot be returned as you get it for free if you were one of those who bought it soon, so returns cannot be used. Drama Empresses of Doom and Boom in the forums? It's a fact that they are more present and loud than those who are enjoying the game. And if it's only a matter of their noise, apply strictly the forum rules: this is your house and they are guests, put them (and/or us) in their place (I'm sure that the EULA of the game doesn't say things like: "You are allowed to PM the CEO and tell him to kill himself or to spit all your venom over the forums without anything constructive to say."). Website reviews? Usually, mostly meh no matter the game.3.2.1- Along all the process of FE, you are bound to see the Inquisition in action. You are bound to see more than one post about "EWoM sohuld have had this", "You should do as we say in topic 'A' or you will repeat EWoM's mistakes and the game will suck again",... Oh yeah, my faith in human kind is as inexistent as usual. 3.2.2- If you move your gazillions elsewhere, don't mind dropping some (not necesarily gazillions, just some thousands dollars, no need to be greedy) into my bank account. Unexpected charity is most welcome. (a better job is always better but they seem to be really scarce lately with the excuse of the "Crysis")
Wow, so much to comment on. First of all Brad there is no one else in the position you are in to make the kind of magic happen that you and your studio are capable of. I am not willing to take that for granted, and I think the way you do business is spot on and a model for the rest of the industry. If I had hundreds of people highlighting my failures (real or perceived) and filling internet posts with speculative comments about my personal abilities and accusations about my intentions, well I don't know how I'd feel but probably about the same way you're feeling now. I would be reminded of the fact that most are not of an age or maturity level to even engage on a meaningful level.
Second, I am very happy to hear about your "game plan" for 2011, while I have some concerns like others about whether it is worth it to develop 2 separate games, and whether some things will be cut from either one, I think you have the right attitude about it will sort itself out. It's good to hear you are not abandoning anything.
Very encouraging to hear about the plans to expand upon the Kumquat engine, and the possibility to port to other platforms. The idea of a robust and fully integrated mod layer has me excited to say the least. Keep it up.
-Trog
frogboy, I admit that I havve made a couple of negative postsback in july/august , but back then my aim was to try to improve things a much as I could,,and since then I have only posted actual crash level issues such as my collection of OOMs, and a single question regarding the nolonger appearing population size based quests, and make suggestions that might help to work around any issues that are present and irritating to me as a limited time gamer and programmer.
harpo
Could there maybe the little chance of an oldschool scifi RPG in the future? It's not that i don't like fantasy but most RPGs have a fantasy setting and there are just very few scifi RPGs.
btw: I'm one of the silent majority which likes what you and Stardock do for PC Gaming.
PS: Sorry for my bad english.
Quoting Frogboy, reply 21I'm not sure how popular our concept of an RPG would be. We're talking pretty old school stuff. No first person. Just old third person, party (Baldur's Gate / older Ultima). Very niche.
Where do I preorder?
On the RPG, if the game itself is interesting, I'd be all for it. I'm skeptical about RPG "gameplay" though. Seen too many Final Fantasy "games" to not be wary about the genre.
@Frogboy
In december (if I recall), I read that a playable demo would be available early 2011. I don't see it in the road map (and it's probably not the place to put it), but we are a bunch of friends who are waiting to play the demo because we think we will like this game, but since money is rare, we want to try it before.
Do you still have plans for a playable demo and if yes, approx. when do you think it'll be available?
Regards.
How could Elemental possibly be construed as a AAA game?
Where's Toby been? Haven't seen him post in a few weeks. Is he on vacation? I doubt it, probably making him work 16 hour days while Kael and Frog lounge around.
High production values, wide release to retail like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, I am thinking that constitutes a AAA game. It may have had some serious problems, but that doesn't make it not a AAA game. That is different than a high critical score.
What are you trying to accomplish with your posts? They reveal more about you than they do about Stardock. All your posts show me is someone who, if in charge of the same situation, would turn tail and run. Someone who would get knocked on the mat and refuse to get back up. Stardock is acting like Rocky, you're acting like a 2 year old crying to mama. If you think Stardock peed in your cheerios, then GTFO and don't let the door hit you in the ass.
Glad to hear of some good future gaming prospects!
Elemental is coming right along, but I do hope that the Fallen Enchantress hasn't fallen in a, errm, bad way. None the less, I'll pick her pieces up, rest assured.
You guys (Stardock) have a certain steadfastness towards your products, and it is much appreciated here.
Cheers
I think it's largely because you and others from Stardock regularly participate in forum discussions instead of leaving it to "community managers" with you guys receding into the background and becoming faceless targets for the trolls.
Future RPG ?
I think you should fix your previous games first .
Translation: Drive across country by looking in the rear-view mirror.
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