This is the best thread on the internets.
It is positively sublime.
Edit: Never mind. It has given me ennui and heartburn.
What the hell is the point of an ignore list if people insist on quoting that person? ;)
I find I run the whole gamut of emotions. It has made me /feel/ again.
SkuaTJR
4765
I don’t play Stardock’s games (purchased all the major ones during the Impulse sales for some reason, but I’ve yet to really sit down and try a 4X game), so I can’t comment on them. However, it’s scary how the good will built over several years can be wiped away in one disastrous moment.
Looking at what’s being posted on various forums, you’d never guess that Stardock was yesterday’s darling.
Good will only buys you so much… the exact number of pre-orders (some up to a year in advance), for instance. Or a rabid fan base. But it’ll certain create a lot of bad feelings if you try to take advantage of it.
The unfortunate result of all this is the layoffs and probably a massive curb in Stardock’s business plans and other products.
I’ve worked for companies with disastrous releases before. You build your customers back up one by one, make good patches, and exhibit the kind of customer service that should be the envy of others.
— Alan
Oh WW2 Online!
To back up your point, it’s actually a pretty decent game now.
Squee
4768
Could just be lots of people (Such as myself) didn’t particularly like Stardock or their games and didn’t post about it, and Elemental has been a reason to come out of the woodwork. Or a lot of people are really disgruntled that “Not-MoM” was truer than they were lead to believe.
Which reminds me what an awful decision was to announce a “Not-MoM, but it’s like MoM! ;)”. And in the end the game barely remembers you MoM. Master of Magic enter in the holy trinity of pc games that shall be not refered in detail in a forum (together with Deus Ex and X-Com) as if you mention it the nostalgy trip will be so strong you will make people to install and play it again once more. For the tenth time.
i have seen the phenomenon in three distinct forums. That’s how strong are the feelings in the net for the game. They should haven’t played with those feelings if they didn’t have really a MoM successor, as it breed hostility against them.
Sarkus
4770
That’s definately true. Even though I think Brad made it clear a number of times not to expect a MoM game, a lot of people still expected it because of the clear influence he seemed to be taking from the game. Even if Elemental was in a lot better shape, there would have been some upset folks complaining about how it’s not enough like MoM as they would have liked or expected.
Okay.
I’ve read about all the things that happened, the provided reasons why they happened and I get the eery feeling from all of it is that Stardock is in some sort of financial trouble.
As there are apparently no external investors to Stardock this seems odd but it’s the only thing that would explain pretty much everything. The release shouldn’t have happened when it did, that’s much is certain but it still happened regardless. So why was it released anyway?
According to Brad it was because of starting to believe in the delusion the code was ready for launch. Now I seen this kind of delusional belief of programmers in the state of their own code first hand, so I won’t say it’s not plausible. Yet the bugs of the v1.0 were of such a severity and obviousness that it still seems unlikely. Desktop crashes in very obvious spots. Massive memory leaks noticeable after a few hundred turns.
Even if they waved those away with the thought of a day zero patch why not wait? We are a month along now and the most glaring and obvious bugs have been fixed. If the release had been next week the backlash from the game being bug riddled would only have been a fraction what it was. Could it have all been because of the reasons Brad himself stated? Sure. But then there are some other things as well.
First is the stinginess with the refunds. Stardock releases a buggy game and there is a whole shitstorm going on around it. You can’t convince me that Stardock isn’t aware what a massive PR disaster this whole thing is yet why add fuel to the fire by refusing (full) refunds at a time like this? Granted, Stardock customer service wasn’t known to be very good to begin with so this could merely be an extension of that.
Second are the layoffs. Again, the reasons offered by Brad and the natural progression for “finished” projects are plausible enough to explain this.
Now either all the above is true as told by Stardock/Brad and it’s just an unfortunate coincidence(fueled by bad decisions) that it all happened like this. The other scenario is that there are some severe financial problems at Stardock right now causing them to release too early so they could get the preorder money. The layoffs and the refunding problems would fit with that scenario as well.
Which is true? I don’t know. I hope it’s the first because like some other people in this thread I enjoy the kind of offbeat games that come from Stardock and would be sad to see them go for this reason.
Still, I started to create backups for all the Impulse games I want to keep and I suggest anyone so inclined to do the same.
Razgon
4772
Release was either now or in february, so thats why they didnt wait 2 weeks.
Alstein
4773
The pre-order money was already received by Stardock much earlier then August for most people. Delaying until Feburary would not have brought much more money in. If the game was coming out in August or Feb, I would have given the pre-order money at the same time.
I believe this is an anticipation of lower revenues, more then lower revenues already here.
Well, if this is true then I’m stumped. I can’t figure it out in unless I assume some massive lack of competence and personality deficiencies, which I was hoping to avoid.
A sad story.
Called it! ;) This thread is epic.
Sucks that people got laid off. In Michigan. In this economy.
Good post, Alan. In many ways the somewhat extreme reaction to Elemental is the fault of Stardock and BW. They’ve built up this reputation as the “good guys” of PC Gaming. They introduced the Gamer’s Bill of Rights and have publicly called out other companies. Then they laid this turd on the marketplace which flew in the face of everything they stood for. That would be bad enough, but then BW starts posting about how people shouldn’t buy Stardock games and were/are denying refunds and so forth. Finally, you have some folks out there just waiting to pounce because of BW’s rather abrasive personality…
You add these factors up and what you get is a shit storm. It makes the Gamer’s Bill of Rights look like BS marketing fluff and BW like a hypocrite. Gamers felt taken advantage of and most people don’t much like that feeling. Brad’s post certainly inflamed the situation at a time where the exact opposite needed to happen. People who have axes to grind come out of the woodwork - aka Matt - just to try to throw gas on the fire. A constant stream of bad information regarding Stardock, including denied refunds and layoffs, isn’t helping any. This is very much a case of reaping what you sow. A lot of this was brought on by the action and reactions of Stardock themselves. This could be used in a classroom as a textbook case on bad PR and tarnishing a corporate image.
BUT…
That doesn’t mean that the situation is irrecoverable. Just like you said, you rebuild your goodwill one customer at a time. Stardock needs to go into media blackout except with a constant flow of information regarding patches on Elemental. That blackout has to include statements from Brad Wardell - if he wants to post on the 'net, he needs to use an alternate account that no one knows and no one will ever find out about. They need to stop denying refunds to stem the flow of bad information by current customers. And finally they need to patch Elemental into a reasonable state. If they do this, few folks will remember this a year from now.
Funny, I was wait and see on Elemental because of Demigod. People will remember, especially when it’s two failed launches in a row.
Janster
4777
Didn’t consider Demigod flawed, but oddly I find League of Legends more fun despite it’s vastly inferior graphics…and that thing is free mostly.
vyshka
4778
Blog post from person that worked on Elemental:
http://www.viridiangames.com/blog/about-elemental
How does something like this happen?
At last, you have asked a truly salient question (although I’m sure you intended it to be rhetorical.)
“This” happened because it was the lesser evil. Stardock simply does not have the clout to release a retail game during Christmas. Our choices were to launch on August 24th or push the game back to February of next year. Pushing back would have had disastrous consequences for Stardock because of the partnerships we had made and the forfeiture of our retail space.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, releasing an incomplete, buggy game is also going to have disastrous consequences!” And thus you’ve hit the crux. We were in a bind, and chose the lesser evil – to release on time and then work like the dickens to get the game to the state we and the players want (instead of, you know, sleeping like most people who have just shipped a game do). Yes, a lot of people have already had a negative initial reaction to the game. There’s nothing we can do about that. But Stardock has a reputation for continually improving their games over the months and years after its release, and we’re continuing that tradition by improving Elemental as quickly as we can and turning it into the game it deserves to be.
So which is it, a conscious decision to hit a ship window or blind adoration for the product?
dbd1963
4780
I suppose it could have been both – they did not truly know how many problems were left to fix because they had fooled themselves, therefore they thought they would escape the early release more easily than was the case.
