One of the benefits of having the “non games” generating steady revenue is that when we release a new game, we don’t have to downscale after release.
Typically in the games industry (and really most any industry that has “launches”) there is the “staffing up” phase and then the “staffing down” phase. That’s because a lot of positions become semi-idle after launch.
One of the decisions we made early on here was that we didn’t want to do this. We wanted to have a stable company culture where people knew their job wasn’t going to just disappear post release. We did this by implementing the following 3 business strategies:
Multiple smaller projects
Traditionally, when a game comes close to be being released or shortly after you’ll get reports of layoffs. What they are doing is lowering “overhead” until those skills are needed for the next game when they will begin to “staff up”.
What we do instead is there’s always another project to do. That’s why Stardock, a relatively small company, has so many different products.
Let me give a few specifics. We write our own forum software here. Why? Well, for one thing, it does have some long-term benefits like being able to integrate in lots of game or software related functionality. But another reason is to ensure there’s plenty to do for the web team between major launches. There’s a lot of projects like this.
One point Five Game teams
When War of Magic was released, we knew pretty quickly that it was going to fall short financially by a good margin. At the time, we had been staffing up for two concurrent game teams. This was, it turned, out, a mistake because without the WOM revenue, the games unit wouldn’t have enough capital to tie it over until the next game release. So there was downsizing.
What we’ve employed instead is the concept of 1.5 teams (or someday 2.5 teams possibly). By doing that, the staff moves to the next project seamlessly. For most of 2012, the art team and game engine team had already moved off of Fallen Enchantress and onto Game X. With the game released, more people will move to Game X while some will work on follow-ups to FE.
R & D
This is a broad category but essentially people get assigned to various types of tasks of internal improvement. Trying out different CDNs, experimenting with different OSes, new tools, new marketing services, etc. Sometimes these don’t pan out. But quite regularly, we’ll end up with something that helps all the teams (a new source control or a new set of tools that increase productivity).
Why we do this
Having low turn-over is one of the biggest advantages Stardock has. We’re a very small company that is able to get a disproportionate amount of “stuff” out the door. Think of how much better you are at your job today than when you first started? The longer you can keep people, the better. There is a real morale cascade when people know that releasing a product doesn’t mean saying goodbye to friends.
Speaking of Game X, what happened to Society?
In all honesty, this is what will probably hurt FE's reviews the most.
Why do you say that?
I knew the next game would be called Game X. Sounds cool! It's an MMORPG about dinosaurs in space.
I would disagree with this as well. There are a couple of bigger issues with FE that I expect will be addressed in the first patch/update. Art is subjective, for whatever reason apparently it doesn't "work" for you and that's okay.
Hmm... FE sequel? Galciv 3? Society? There was also an elemental RPG mentioned in a roadmap somewhere... so many options!
Galactic Civ3 or an old school rpg (like what Obsidian is doign with there kickstarter pc rpg) PLEASE (:
Because almost every one of the valid complaints I've read about the game in a review thus far have been related to either the dated graphics or an inadequacy of the engine.
Edit: Personally, I find the graphics adequate.
Keeping quiet is hard, tell them already!
It's not as good as this other game that came out with a billion bugs graphics-wise and engine wise!
Probably because they actually got their engine working properly and then stopped, instead of tweaking the engine to the last second and ending up with glitches!
Graphics are excellant for the fantasy atmosphere expected in a TBS game. One of the best aspects of the game. This isn't Oblivion.
I'm not discussing personal opinions here, just what I've read. Again, the graphics are adequate for me.
I hope Galactic 3 is the X game.. Lets face it GC series put you guys on the map... No reason to forget about what series and Genre got you there.
Just saying.
Personally I'm interested in a SoaSE 2 ... plus all of the above. Maybe '2.5' is a sneak peak at TWO game x projects in the pipeline?!
Well Ironclad needs to be the ones to start Sins 2, not Stardock. So that's not happening I'm afraid.
I'm sure they could work something out.
You know, having high turnover is probably the reason why games made by some other companies are riddled with bugs. When you know you're going to get laid off in a few months, you don't exactly have time to iron out every little problem before release. Or, you know, maybe you just don't put as much effort in as you would if you were going to be around to correct mistakes and so on.
I'm pretty sure Game X has to be the game Shafer is working on, and what game could be better for him to design then GalCiv? It has to be GalCiv3, and that would be sooooo awesome!
Edit: Just please keep space battles automatic but in videosequence. Keep the game strategic and AI friendly + add multiplayer.
FE's graphics do some things really nicely, and it did female armor right. However, I don't think I could ever be satisfied with the graphics, because I wanted customization like you got in a 3d fighting game like Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter. I wanted to spend hours in the customization, and the graphics just aren't good enough for that, and couldn't have been.
I strongly suspect it's GalCiv3. It's been five years since Twilight coming up soon, which was the timeframe Brad said five years ago. Also Jon's made references to a new game he's been working on in his blog- and it sounds like it could be GC3.
I've had this suspicion for months, but didn't say anything because it was suspicion and was concerntrating on FE.
If it is GC3, I would be happy with GC2+ fixes on the stuff that didn't work/was unfun+ expansion's worth of new content, but I suspect we'll get something different.
Sins- their next game is Sins of a Dark Age I think, and it doesn't involve Stardock as far as I know.
"With the game released, more people will move to Game X while some will work on follow-ups to FE."
Good plan: workers are fully employed and happy and customers are fully provided with FE stuff and so are also happy
Also the text was a good plan to flame up the question off: WHAT IS GAME X??
As for GalCiv2: Never liked it much and now there is a lot of competition in that genre. Namely ES, which is better (sorry to say) and constantly developed, but also many indie projects coming up. So GalCiv3 might not have so easy time, if it doesn't renew it's concept somehow.
My wish for a 4x space strategy would be to have a game which focus on realism and near-future, with space-race competition between earth factions and featuring aliens as primitive cultures to be found or as a huge menace in the end-game.
But I understand that the basic fundamentals of Game X have already been set
I thought Fallen Enchantress was GC3.
I had a feeling that the answer to the OP was "sell impulse." Ah well, can't always be right.
When I sacrifice my citizens for mana it's like the Korsth putting the weaker races into the incinerator. Woosh. Suddenly I have more power!
Not only do I hope that GalCivIII is the X game, but I hope they're using the same game engine to build it AND I hope they're using the exact same graphic style. This will maximize awesomeness.
If you mean not being limited to what graphics you can squeeze into 2GB of memory and having to aggressively unload things from graphics memory, then I would have to say yeah. But then given the (now expectations of most people, having nice unit graphics for GC3 is a serious consideration anyway.
Besides Brad wrote a few years back that the new engine for Fallen Enchantress would be used for GC3. Granted, a lot of time has passed, but it's nice to see how the plan has worked out.
Oh by the way I noticed that a couple of gaming sites already have placeholders for GalCiv III:
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/galactic-civilizations-iii/
http://uk.ign.com/games/galactic-civilizations-iii/pc-14277477
Those have probably been up for a while.
I'm actually looking forward to working on some mods for FE. Look at those technology trees, they actually support and properly show multiple tech requirements now. Which means that the same thing should be possible in GC3.
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