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>).
If you read the original post, you'd know that they're doing both. Companies can do more than one thing at a time.
It was just hinted at that Demigod already has something in the works (Or maybe)
While I'm sure there's some items on there that would work on Linux/OSX, the majority of items are for PC. Why would you put time into developing something that's meant to help market games and allow for install if the people you develop for can't use the software in the first place? That's like me buying bike tires for my car with the logic being that the tires are smaller so I should be able to drive on sidewalks.
It costs more to market overseas, and with the inconsistencies between monetary values this simplifies things.
Stardock is a publisher and they would end up getting screwed by larger companies. If you want games from another publisher, install their distribution platforms.
Region restricted is likely due to cost issues or deals with the game creators, not necessarily Stardock. Or even currency issues. Set up a paypal account, put money into it, deposit the money into a bank in North America, and then create a north america Impulse account. I don't know.
I've not had problems with it - What are your specific requests?
I like Impulse because it has less advertising.
Eww. People come to Impulse specifically to avoid Steam - Steam is a competitor to Impulse and a lot of publishers have to sign exclusionary deals to use Steam.
- What? Why are you talking about Impulse if you're wanting to buy from somewhere else?
I'm overly confused by most of this. But I agree with Fistalis - Not necessarily because I have a shrine to him and Lord Xia and several others in my basement. Because I don't. I swear.
I have heard many people talk about expanding Mac and Linux support for games and game related software like Steam. These individuals have a tendency to claim that the Mac and Linux platforms are viable markets for game developers. Yet, these individuals neglect to point out that the Mac and Linux platforms make up around 12% of the 2010 total PC market ( 10.6% for Mac according to arstechnica.com and linux about 1.5% ). Thus if we assume that mac users are as likely as windows users to purchase and install some piece of game software, then it become obvious that unless the development time required to do the conversion was minimal and the expected purchases were significantly higher than average, the overall payoff would simply not warrant the effort. As for Linux, the PC user base is so small and the likelihood of OS distinctions in so high, that developing games or game distribution software is highly dubious under any circumstances. Honestly, since both linux users and Mac users can now easily add windows to their systems to play games, the demand for native implementations for these platforms seems to have dwindled to all but the hardest core of these OS users.
Thanks Kenata!
And from my experience with Linux - Almost all the games I've run across are open source anyway - So they'd cost money if they had to pay a publisher to distribute them. And with so many different distros of Linux it'd be impossible to make something as versatile as Impulse that would run smoothly on all platforms. I know a lot of software does so successfully, but only when it's specialized for a generalized version that utilizes specific desktops and such.
I feel like that particular poster was just listing whatever he could think of. If he has Impulse and EWOM, then obviously he's running a PC anyway.
I feel like this thread, while interesting and informative, has gotten away from the original point - The roadmap.
I approve of it, and I won't come back to this thread again - This shouldn't be a battleground for people seeking changes. This was Stardock's attempt to include us in the workings of the company.
I really hope that they announce a Demigod 2. Demigod had a great foundation that just had too many flaws on top of that foundation. Frankly, the MOBA genre is there for the taking. LoL is very nice, but HoN and the upcoming DOTA 2 are just ripoffs of a pretty old game at this point. People love the genre, so if you could put out Demigod 2 even with the same graphics but just more on top of the foundation you would do very well. Not just in terms of money, but I think that it would be a really cool game since that genre really needs a push to stop it from just endlessly copying DOTA (which was a nice start, but we can build on that and not just copy it again and again).
I'm also interested in Society, since thats a good idea too.
Frogboy also needs to step back a little bit more in any kind of multiplayer enterprise that he gets into. His attitude works fine for single player centric games and I appreciate all his posts here. But he was quite bad on the Demigod forums where he would chew out random people because others were making him angry. You just can't do that in a multiplayer game - people ALWAYS complain in multiplayer games and you can't go all ranty on random people because of it.
Finally a Party based RPG. I love building my own party and controling each member ala Baldur's gate/Temple of Elemental Evil etc.
Please, please, please make the combat turn based like those games and not RTSish based like Neverwinter night.
Neverwinter Nights 2 had hidden turns, which is what I prefer, like the KotoR games. Unless NWN was different than NWN2, I didn't play much of the first one. Impulse sales Drakensang. I would like the Elemental RPG game to play like that game. I fucking love the Drakensang games. And story wise they are a little boring, but they play very well and the second one has a good character creator.
No one wants to see a pic of your hand
Well I would go as far as saying that it is a "pretty good fantasy strategy game" however it has come a long way since launch. I think that FE will be what War of Magic should have been. Why? because I think SD has learned a big lesson with this flop known as War of Magic and will not repeat it for at least the next few games they make.
Some would say that I have too much faith in SD but I really do think they can pull off an excellent game. After all GC2 was fantastic and I see great things ahead for SD.
Brad I am looking forward to FE and the new RPG.
Agreed the TOEE combat system was without equal. Unfortunatly Atari did not suport the game like it should of. However the Modding community did a good job of supporting it.
Umm.... You do know they made GalCiv and CalCiv 2 right? They were not RTS, they were TBS. Last think we need it yet another RTS game. And these games were the best games the SD has made.
Have to disagree with you on that my friend. Civ V is the best in the series so far and I liked them all.
For me GALCIV 1 and 2 were a sort of improved or modernized clone of MOO2 and that is why I liked them so much. They replaced my favorite Sci-Fi TBS game. And personally I approve thanks Brad.
GC2 was a very good game. Brad has pointed out himself the flaws that keep it from being great in various spots. (Note: great game are two words I use VERY sparingly, if ever). This is why I am amped for GC3, no matter what happens with Elemental, because I can also see Kael's lore ability really helping to flesh out some of the GC2 universe, and I can see Jon coming up with a couple of fun new mechanics , which Brad's AI could handle. (I think Jon would have some real good ideas on starbases and how to fix that micromanagement hell)
With the beta builds of Elemental, you could see somewhat Brad's complaints about GC2, and his idea of fixing it. It may not have worked all that great in a fantasy game- but I can see it working really well in a space 4X game, with some minor modification.
My hand is beautiful!
You'll also notice I haven't purchased a single one of those titles. And after a 5 year history of purchases stopped buying games from D2D when they started selling steamworks games. If I want a steamworks game i'll just buy it through steam. If i want something i Know i won't have to deal with steam i buy from impulse, previously D2D.
Selling a steamworks game is cutting your own throat. Once people already have steam installed to play a game why would they bother to purchase a steamworks game from you again? Especially since you download it and activate it with steam no matter who you buy it from. So selling steamworks based games only proves to drive customers away in 2 ways. 1 the ones who like steam will simply move to steam to purchase their games from them. 2 Those who don't like steam are less likely to make purchases from you for supporting a service they abhor.
Btw the list you linked to is just a list of games available THROUGH steams retail service.. not games that use Steamworks. Steamworks makes people HAVE to use steam in order to play the game. Many of those games on that list are available without forcing you to use steam(some are available on impulse as well as D2D without the steam activation requirement), and have nothing to do with steamworks.
If you look at your list(only the ones with steamworks check marked).. there's only roughly 10 steamworks games per year.. the majority of them being Either Valve produced or small indie devs. One hardly needs to carry those few games that choose to use steamworks in order to compete in a retail market that includes a huge number of titles.
Regarding Steamworks - I am entirely in favor of Stardock selling games that are also on Steam. However, Steamworks is a big part of reason I don't use Steam (the other being that the sort of games I like to play are mostly only on Impulse anyway). If Impulse can get those games without the DRM, then they should. But having titles with that DRM on Impulse will only serve to alienate the userbase, and, as Fistalis said, encourage people to just use Steam instead. There are things Impulse must do to remain competitive, but this isn't one of them - and most of them are the things they're doing anyway.
You'd have to cut Gamersgate now also, as they're doing it. I prefer Impulse, but I'll tolerate Steam- for MP games. I don't consider Steam DRM bad for MP games. SP I stick with DRM-lite/free as much as possible. The real problem Impulse has it its market share, and lack of a defining genre of game (stuff like Shira Oka, Suguri, could be a good place to form a niche)
The thing is that Steam is (mostly) already DRM lite on most of their games. All you have to do is log in once (not a problem since you downloaded the game from them), set the game to offline, and you can play it all you want without needing anything else like an internet connection. Steam works because most people have no problem at all with this level of DRM. A small number of people make Steamworks out to be some kind of demon, but its really not intrusive at all - most people who do say anything are really just objecting on principle. I just dont see Impulse getting much of a niche going with its lesser number of games on the basis of DRM free since most people arent bothered in the least by Steam DRM.
I appreciate the point that Steam is kind of getting a monopoly with this kind of stuff and that should be fought. But most people just dont care as long as the price is right and the DRM is so unobtrusive.
I don't mind Steam. I use it for many games. But we're not going to bundle a third party store with our store.
thank you for the policy, frogboy, personally I will NOT allow anything that hints of water eg ice,water,steam,rain,snow, hail or plasma, near ANY on my computers, and also try to get my customers to keep water in all it's states at least not in the same room as their computers.
harpo
I find Steam invasive and overbearing. The "offline mode" is merely cosmetic. You go into offline mode and you get a little piece of text that says "offline mode", that's it. Try logging in with your buddies Steam account after they're in offline mode... surprise! Steam account is somehow still in use. Then send your buddy a message when they're in offline mode... surprise again they recieve your message. For being offline that sure seems like a lot of online activity.
The advertisements drive me crazy for something that is supposed to be a paid service. Actually it's just rude. After buying Civ 5 and installing absolutely nothing from the disc but having it interface with steam for 1.5+ hours to actually get the game, then launching steam and watching popups every time I wanted to play it, i'm officially done with steam. they can keep all the games I bought with them i will never touch it again. If Impulse ever turns the way of steam sorry to say but I will cut all ties.
[/rant]
I know you want a second crack at Demigod. Demigod 2. Do iiiiiiiit >.>
Its obvious GPG put Kings and Castles on hold for Demigod 2 =D
It would be suicide for Impulse to use Steam's DRM, as one of the biggest selling points of Impulse is that it doesn't use Steam DRM. With Gamersgate requiring Paypal to get their prices, Impulse gets first-crack at all single-player games for me.
I just wish Impulse carried some of Gamersgate's library, but a lot of that is out of their control- I know I tried to get one set of games onto Impulse, but the publisher didn't want to.
Yes I have to agree Steam is pretty good. I only use steam and Impulse and they work well. Steam is better because it has more features but I attribute this to Impulse being new still. I'm sure they will improve over time.
Steam's features are good for MP integration- usually what I want out of a client though is for it to stay out of the way unless I want it to do something.
Steam is like a car with all the features, but those features make it a little unreliable
Impulse is like the little Japanese car that just works but doesn't have a ton of frills.
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