Oh, there’s certainly a joke there. It just isn’t the ha ha funny kind.
Can we trade The Punch Line in for Matthew Gallant? The quality of our pathological anti-Stardock crusading is slipping.
Unlike The Punch Line, I won’t rabidly attack all things Wardell, but I do have some questions to raise about the sincerity of the whole “We were so blind!” defense.
Why weren’t review copies of Elemental sent out of this was the case? Each and every one of us on this board should know what this means. Nobody who believes in their vision as much as Brad is claiming to have acts this way.
Why the hybrid patch for pre-orders? Why not just release the “best game we’ve ever made” for them if you know it’s fine?
Why the completely rigged crowd-sourced beta process? If you set things up so that you’ll only get feedback from your most dedicated and sycophantic of customers, should anyone be surprised that a launch like this is the result?
Why all the pre-release language like “tactical battles are boring, magic is boring”? If you’re so blind to all the problems of the game, why make posts like this one?
I think it’s pretty well known I don’t like Beta 4. I’m not a troll. I’m the designer. I’ll bullet point my gripes:
* Casters should not get to cast spells more than 1 per turn.
* The UI makes me cry. Clickity click click click. What’s going on?
* Goodie huts are boooring.
* The spells are booooring.
* Tactical combat is boooring.
* The spell books are confusing and make me feel violated and I’ve already consulted my attorneys about the issue. (Sorry Stardock, it’s too late already)
* The spells are all the same and boring.
Which mirror many of the launch complaints that Brad was apparently so blind to. If the complaints he thought were going to come in reviews were points of polish, why list all of these systemic issues with less than a month to go?
I think that the sad truth is that Stardock both intentionally set things up to happen this way with their beta process AND knew far more than Brad is pretending with his apology. I’m not saying it’s a fabrication, because there are clearly some nuggets of truth in what he’s saying, but acting like they had no idea what was wrong is just more bullshit, imo.
kerzain
4404
Wait, is he Anti-Stardock, or anti fanboy?
Galadin
4405
Wow, Punch Line definitely gives a bad name to us low post count types!
I was back in the old Demigod thread defending the heck out of Brad and Stardock for that release and what was happening. I didn’t join in this time (short of the talk about the book) because, well, Brad was just in the wrong this time. I hope to enjoy Elemental.
But come on, even if only half of what Brad wrote in that mea culpa is honest, that is pretty straight forward and clear cut coming from him. The game was not fit to be released, they released it, that was VERY wrong, there will be some kind of change at Stardock so this doesn’t happen again.
Now, the next thing I want to hear though is what is this change, and more importantly, what is the actual future for the Elemental game I thought I was buying.
He wants the news to be that he was “too close to the project” to see that it had problems, not that they must have known because reviewers didn’t get review code. Better to be too close to the project than aware and shipping anyway.
JM1
4407
Except the news is “Brad Wardell admits Elemental is in a shit state and that they failed miserably, and warns of major consequences”.
Ignore that one. Talk to me instead.
Brad Wardell knew Elemental was in a shit state with less than a month before release. You can read his posts about it. He pretended like the internal game was vastly better, but the internal game didn’t actually address any of his complaints.
Then it released and he acted like he was fucking Moses descending from on high with the fucking 4x grail.
Then it reviewed terribly and every one panned it and he wrote the “head in the sand” apology.
I’m not saying he’s being a complete liar, but something doesn’t compute, here.
Teiman
4410
Is not easy to predict for a small company what products will be accepted by the market and what ones will be rejected or ignored.
Why Minecraft, but not CUBE or LOVE?, I don’t know. The markets is irrational, sometimes.
CEO’s can’t delegate and can’t delay decisions, and must make decisions with what have at hand. Normally doing these decisions without all the information is a bad idea, but is his job to do so. You “never” have all the information.
Again, which is not as bad as saying nothing or admitting the truth. This is a salvage operation, not a skillfully executed means of saving the project.
Galadin
4412
Seriously?
Brad is the guy who created this thread, has been raving about how awesome this game will be, wrote a friggin novel and published it. (Not a good novel, but still, to write and get one published shows some serious committment) And he has been looking forward to modding it going forward. Also, Stardocks main revenue stream is their productivity software, not their games, they don’t need to publish games to make money. I’m sure it would have cost them to keep working on Elemental, but it isn’t like this was a publish or go out of business scenario.
With all this in mind, you want to attribute this bad launch to Brad saying screw it, I wants me money now and release it? Instead of his just being too tied up into the project and not seeing its flaws. Maybe he was aware it wasn’t perfect, as was previously said, but he thought the Day 0 patch would take care of that or such.
Either way, with Brad’s history in talking about this game, you think he would let loose an abomination willingly after all the work and love he put into it, instead of his not being able to see it for what it was?
If you read Tom Chicks review, there were some hints in there when Tom was talking about writing the manual for GalCiv2 that Brad is a programmer type. He gets caught up in the minutae of the systems and interactions of systems. I can see how it would be too easy for him to be so far down in the details that he never came back up to see how the whole thing would work together. GalCiv2 itself is like that, system upon system, but luckily after a lot of work/patches/expansions, it gels into something enjoyable.
To attribute such malice towards Brad, I just don’t understand. He did wrong, he knows he did wrong, it is hard for someone as prideful as he is, when talking about his labor of love, to admit it, and you still berate him and read other malicious intent into it?
There is no Stardock. There is the Bossman, Wardell, and his pet project. Do you think the employees are going to tell him his baby sucks?
He literally wrote a friggin’ fanfic novel to go with his game. Does that sound like evil plotting? Or, is it a sign that he’s gone Cockoo for Coco Puffs over his project?
The guy fucked up- big time. He admits it. But thinking there’s a huge degree of scheming going on is crazy. A HUGE amount of self-denial? Sure.
In fact, I think this is a scientific law: when the admitted fuck up is accompanied by a bad novel, it ain’t an evil plot.
JM1
4414
You’re right, he’s on ignore now.
OK. I half agree with your line of reasoning. It’s only half because IIRC (and I’ve had a bottle of wine so my R might not be so C) Brad posted that list of things along with something similar here before they made changes to nearly all of those features - for example spells got the Random House treatment along with a lot of input from people in this thread. It clearly wasn’t enough and IMO showed that Brad + co didn’t really understand what the complaint was in the first place, but Brad did come back and say he was happy with what the spells had turned into (both in terms of effects and in terms of names and descriptions).
You have to remember that before any of us bar Tom had a chance to play the game, there was a heated discussion in this thread where some of us suggested that the game was going to be a mess at launch. I was pointing to MMOs as a comparison wrt some of the language Brad and Stardock were using, and some people were wanting to give Stardock the benefit of the doubt should they release an unfinished or unpolished game because they were relatively small. I argued against that pretty vehemently, and to my surprise Brad did the same. He came out and stated that Stardock deserved abuse if they put out shoddy product.
Then they released and Brad went into denial mode. A week or so later and Brad is facing up to the truth. This doesn’t prove anything as such - but I am willing to believe that Brad did think the game was a little rough in places but still in good shape. I don’t think his OTT reaction to criticism would’ve come had he secretly agreed with us at the time of release. Nothing good came out of THAT particular incident for Stardock, that’s for sure.
Finally - do we know that review copies weren’t sent out? We know Tom got one, is that purely because of the friendship angle? Genuine question, I don’t know…
Mordrak
4415
Love is too abstract. It’s also multiplayer only and has a monthly subscription doesn’t it? All three of those are pretty big barriers to overcome.
Cube just looks ugly to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, it may be cool, but the first thing I think of when I see it is, “Just another first person shooter.” As simple as Minecrafts graphics are, they are still colorful and inviting, as well as having the basic construction, crafting, and survival mechanic in addition to its world simulation.
JM1
4416
Cube’s been around for ages. I played QW with the guy who started it all off, and that was several years ago. At the time it was impressive but he didn’t really get an audience for it, and FPSes have taken a different direction now. Plenty to admire from a technical standpoint, but it’s not anything like Minecraft.
LOVE is difficult to get into, the graphical style turned a lot of people off and so does the money.
And yet, his specific complaint about the spells: "* The spells are all the same and boring. " still stands and is read in reviews right now. I just don’t buy that the spells changed significantly in that time and came out equally shitty and uninteresting.
Right, another perfect example of Brad’s wildly varying posture vis-a-vis Elemental. Because when they got well-reasoned discussion, not abuse, they started dropping the banhammer and telling people not to buy their future releases.
How can you face up to a truth you already know? If people STILL want to give Brad Wardell the benefit of the doubt, that’s their business, but I think the last month has shown people exactly how far that sort of behavior gets you.
The only copies that went out for review went out when the game released. This generally only happens when a company knows their game is shit and doesn’t want the reviews to drag it down sales-wise.
I got my review copy at the same time as everyone else, which was a few days before that Sunday that Elemental went live for everyone. Previous to that, anyone in the press who wanted a look at the game was given access to the beta (I could have tried the beta at any time, but opted to just hold out for the release). I’m not really interested in trying to persuade anyone of anything about Elemental, but it’s absurd to claim the game was intentionally kept out of view because Stardock didn’t actually believe it was good.
The only blackout period was the couple of weeks between beta 4 (?) and the release version, and I suspect that’s simply because they didn’t have a playable build easily available.
-Tom
Well that brings some clarity to that issue, at least.
JM1
4420
They did change - both in terms of what they did and the names they had. It just wasn’t enough.
