4321

The best consequence here would be for Brad to stop directing games production at Stardock. He should fire himself from the director position. Someone else needs to lead the gameplay design and game production process, because he’s just put his whole company at risk by screwing it up so badly.

The open question is whether he’s capable of giving up that authority and then hearing and respecting someone else telling him “no, it’s not shippable.” I’m guessing he’s not capable of that, but who knows? Couldn’t hurt…

The most damning thing about this is that many, many beta testers were saying many of the same things as the reviewers for months and months and months before launch. Yet Brad somehow thought it was all being fixed internally, and that the external testers didn’t need to get their hands on the fixed version to double-check his belief.

This, more than anything, shows that Stardock’s attitude towards betas went disastrously awry – Stardock discarded their best chance at really polishing the game before release by treating all the “betas” as unrepresentative pre-alphas.

4322

You do realize that covering up requires actually hiding something?

“We fucked up” doesn’t really hide much, other than possible intentional malfeasence (which you seem to hint at).

Ask yourself this- what POSSIBLE gain could Stardock see from intentional malfeasence? Are they a hit-and-run studio? Were they collecting pre-orders and then disappearing from the country? If not, why would you intentionally plan to fuck things up, then admit fault as a cover up?

Intentional malfeasance would be better served by still pretending that nothing went wrong.

Take the man at his word. Watch and see what they do from here. It’s very possible that things won’t get fixed, but I’d take that as another fuck up rather than a long-running scam (with zero pay-off at this point).

4323

Laughing SO HARD.

Maybe the best evidence that this is spin is that IT’S WORKING.

4324

Brad is using some heavy language in that post, and being the worst-case-scenario type of guy that I am, I can only imagine the sheer gravity of what it is he’s talking about when he says something like “the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is” or when he says "there will be massive consequences for Stardock’s game studio" or even “I don’t think people yet fully realize the completeness of Stardock’s fail on Elemental’s launch”. I don’t even want to imagine what statements like these could mean, because as pissed off as I am about the whole debacle, from the ineffective modular beta we’ve all read reports about, to the wreckage of the game at release, to the forum drama, and to the subsequent customer dissatisfaction that follows all of this, I still want this game to be everything it could have been (for purely selfish reasons, I’m sure).

I have nothing personal against Brad, but when it comes to his own creations I think he’s a idealist, and this trait has a tendency to get in the way.

Can the game be fixed? I don’t know. Brad’s letter makes it sound like (to my purely negative brain translations) that it would be akin to putting lipstick on a pig, that the heart of the game is broken at its core (I’m thinking in terms of cpu/gpu/memory management, in addition to core game mechanics). I get the feeling, from that post, and my own experiences with the game every single day since release, that any genuine fix for many issues won’t simply require a re-tune and a polish, but will require the game itself to be largely re-envisioned, redesigned and rewritten from the ground up. I imagine something like this requiring much more than a small post-launch team, but instead a significant recommitment from the game studio.

Are they prepared to do this? I can only speculate, but Brad is already talking about ‘massive consequences’, whatever those might be. It all makes me angry, not because of whether or not I feel burned by the launch, but because Stardock is one of the very few game developers/publishers putting out games I go truly ga ga over. Anything that threatens their ability to keep doing this earns my ire.

Although Brad doesn’t elaborate, my own dark mind is filling in the gaps, and I don’t like what I see. Yea, for whatever reason Elemental crashed and burned, and I’m hoping there can be something redeemable salvaged from the debris. I want to love this game, and I can see the unrealized potential oozing from every facet of the game, but potential is all we have right now.

4325

Good grief, Perkins et al. Does your internal nerdrage require you to burn Brad in effigy for every word he speaks or writes now? He just said, in essence, “Wow, I completely fucked this up. I was too close to the project, and I greenlit it for release which was a gigantic mistake that is going to have serious consequences. Sorry, everyone :(”

What the hell was he supposed to post?

I mean, I’m as disappointed and annoyed by Elemental’s state right now as anyone. I savaged it in my review. I told my friends not to buy it, because it’s not terribly fun even if it is technically playable. But I don’t understand this need to turn everything into a personal crusade against Brad in particular and Stardock in general.

They fucked up a game launch. They didn’t kill your puppy.

4326

It’s been confirmed to me that yes, a personal access mask has been placed on me at Elemental forums so I can’t post. Only one person can do that, and only one person can remove it. Yes, Brad Wardel.

Seems my open and honest feedback on his “beta” before release wasn’t appreciated. A beta tester banned for providing honest feedback to him.

4327

Sounds like you’ve got the guy on a weird pedestal: clearly, he can’t have fucked up; rather it must all be a giant plot for world domination.

Comicbook villains twirling their mustaches rarely exist in real-life. Fuck-ups, on the other hand, happen to all of us.

Feel free to layout the how rest of Wardell’s plan for world domination through abysmal failure works, if you’re so sure this is an evil plot. I’m dying to read it.

4328

without putting the game on a test harness to know for sure, it looks pretty clear from the kinds of errors that they are managing memory very very badly. If so then the game is indeed ireedeemable. No one’s going to sit down and refactor a 4x engine that for a title that is already live. That’s not a “patchable”.

Yeah he should fire himself or the SD board will do it.

4329

As much as I dislike Brad’s politics and personality, kudos for him for his post. The game is unsatisfactory and he’s finally realized and admitted that. Most developers would just clam up and hope that the storm blows by. Good job on the whole personal responsibility thing there. thumbs up

I do think that anyone who asked for a refund but only received 75% back should get a complete refund. That’s one additional thing he could do.

4330

To my knowledge, Stardock’s a private company owned by Wardell.

4331

Yeah, I don’t know what Punch Line is getting at either.

4332

this may still have a board

unless he owns 100% etc. /shrug

4333

“We were so close to it we thought it was in great shape” is better from a customer relations standpoint than “we shipped crap because we thought we’d have it good enough fast enough, because we’d already committed to the ship window”.

4334

He owns it. Stardock is his.

4335

Matthew Gallant-esque snarking against the machine, I’d say.

4336

Please don’t. The amount of stupid in this thread is already dangerously close to tearing a hole through Qt3, straight into /b/.

4337

Yet more proof that it’s spin???

Dun dun dun!

4338

I don’t think you have much to worry about. Stardock will put another six to twelve months into finishing the game instead of working on the first expansion. They’ll end up with something that many people like. Not everyone, because you can’t ever satisfy everyone, but I’m quite confident Elemental will eventually be considered on par with GalCiv2 for quality. Stardock will go on to crank out a few expansions, assuming the world is willing to buy them. (It will be. Forgiveness is easy to earn.)

Brad will declare that they’ve learned their lesson and won’t repeat these mistakes in the future. This may or may not turn out to be the case, but he’ll believe it.

4339

Can it get any worse than the demands for a full appellate review process for game forum bannings, complete with opening briefs, replies, and sur-replies?

I’m still waiting to see the confirmation hearings on CSPAN for the Stardock Forum Supreme Court. I Wonder if Tom would be nominated as a Justice?

4340

It’s not much of a “plot”, it’s just standard shitbird spin to make the best of what he felt like was the best plan for the company, namely to release a game so they could get the revenue. They simply decided that releasing something crap now was financially more prudent than releasing something better six months later, which adds to costs. It’s not exactly a recipe for success, but they forecasted it to be less of a failure.

It’s not like no company has ever done this before.

This mea culpa salvages them some amount of goodwill from you and your fellow suckers for future releases.

They did fail abysmally, sure. But they also knew it, and the evidence of that is there. They are just trying to make the best of it now, as the truth would get them crucified.