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A little bit about me (for what it's worth)

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A little bit about me (for what it's worth)

from Elemental Forums

I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday about what we like to do.  He likes to design games and make mods and such.

For me, I'm in it for the community. To be honest, I'm in it for you guys.  The only coding part I enjoy is the AI. I don't like designing games really. I write design documents and such for our games but I don't enjoy it. It's a chore.  I'm mainly interested in participating on the forums and talking to other gamers.

Elemental's initial release was, as we all know, something of a disaster. It wasn't intentional. We thought it was ready. People really have no idea how crazy it is to release a brand new game in 2010 onto the PC -- especially if you're making your own engine. So much of my original design for Elemental had to be modified to deal with engine limitations and the like. It almost makes me miss DOS. (who remembers monkeying around with QEMM386?).  

But we're with you guys for years to come.  We're not a publicly traded company.  I'm the only stockholder. I'm glad we've been able to start bringing back people we laid off. The Elemental team is actually larger right now than it was during peak development.  But why? It's because of you guys. Elemental: War of Magic will never make big bucks. That original PC Gamer UK article killed us commercially - before a single review hit. But it doesn't matter. 

Even as I type this, the whole team is working on all kinds of interesting things. Cloud saving for multiplayer games. New modding features for cloud uploads. I spent the day monkeying around with the AI (I found out an interesting thing for other developers reading this - edit and continue in visual studio does not work if you're running it on an external drive). 

What got me into writing software in the first place was the community aspects. I like making stuff with other people. Our most popular consumer product, WindowBlinds, is all about making stuff with the community.  Over the next several years, I'm excited to see how various versions of Elemental grow and change. I'd like to see the game broken up into DLLs so that people can mod not just with Python but with C++ too (Civ V's SDK can do this btw).  

For those of you not into game development, you'd be surprised how close knit our industry is.  That's why we get upset when people rip on Civilization V.  These are our friends. It hurts us when people criticize Civilization V. You might as well be ripping on us directly. The distinction between Civ V or AOW or FFH 2 or Elemental -- to us -- is very blurred.  Many of you would be shocked about how close we all are. I think people often mistake the PC TBS game industry for other "big" industries. It's not like that. It's a handful of people across the board. Behind the scenes, all of us hang out in the virtual sense. Yes, Jon, Kael, Soren, etc. We're all friends in varying degrees in real life.

Anyway, my main point is that our primary motivation on these games is you guys. Not your money (though we need it obviously to keep making stuff) but your comradery. If I had my way, I'd make a game based on a Wiki page from the community. People who know me can tell you that I really have no ego to bruise. I have a lot of OTHER failings (I'm ridiculously obtuse) but there's no idea, big or small, that I'm not interested in. I think of the community as part of our team.

Too much of our industry, IMO, is based on "cranking out the game" and moving on.  But not all of us are this way.  I pushed back a future GalCiv sequel to make sure we do right by you guys. It's not about the money. It's the principle. It's the community. It's you guys.

 

 

 

elemental
55,693 views 77 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 38
What makes game design tedious, for me, isn't the sitting around dreaming up the perfect game. It's the compromises that have to be made because a given concept just won't work due to technical or budgetary reasons. It's hard to "kill your darlings".  People who sit back and look at the flaws of a given game and say "But I suggested X" or think the "developers didn't listen!" usually have no inkling of the other challenges involved in making an idea into a reality.  That's why I don't enjoy game design because I hate having to compromise the original vision. 

...

With Elemental: War of Magic, it was a constant struggle of designing a game at the same time as the engine itself was being developed as well as working around APIs that either didn't work yet or didn't work as designed.

Ok, I got you wrong then on your initial post, this I can understand, compromises are never really satisfying. But just one question there, shouldn't the design be mostly finished before you start developing? I wouldn't start a big web application before I have a good technical concept. Of course there is always something that won't work out and then you have to find a workaround or a different solution. But designing while the engine is developed sounds like a bad idea to me. Anyway, you have more experience in these things and I won't criticize the way Stardock develops games, it is just my point of view how I would approach it.

Quoting Tiberonmagnus, reply 48
I understand that, when I worked on those big and expensive projects at my old job they would give us their building demands of what needs to be done, and then as time goes on they would make cuts to the budget, so in a sense it's similar since we couldn't include all the bells and whistles that was originally planned because we lacked the finances/time/resources/etc. Eventually that meant we had to push the plans out the door (in other words, it's gold) without many of the components that were in the original design.

I know exactly what you mean, had that more than once.

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

That original PC Gamer UK article killed us commercially - before a single review hit.

Karma.  She's a real bitch and someday she's going to make a personal house call.

Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 38
There's a movie, and maybe someone here can remember it, where a screenwriter has a great idea for his own movie and through the course of it his vision is mutated into a horrible movie.

Mark Borchardt and American Movie?

American Movie (1999)
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/american-movie-1999-movie-review/

 

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Mark Borchardt didnt have a great idea for his own movie, just the desire to make a crummy one. :)  I think Frogboy is referring to every movie made in the last 20 years.

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok, I got you wrong then on your initial post, this I can understand, compromises are never really satisfying. But just one question there, shouldn't the design be mostly finished before you start developing? I wouldn't start a big web application before I have a good technical concept. Of course there is always something that won't work out and then you have to find a workaround or a different solution. But designing while the engine is developed sounds like a bad idea to me. Anyway, you have more experience in these things and I won't criticize the way Stardock develops games, it is just my point of view how I would approach it.

Before you write a single line of code the design should be done.  Elemental was no exception.

What was the exception was that the platform we were developing on wasn't as far along as we had hoped. These issues, if you're not in software development, sound very serious but it's fairly common -- except that Kumquat was LESS far along than we realized (mistake #1).

To use a pretty famous example, in The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas bet the farm that the puppet (Yoda) would be believable. If Yoda didn't come across as believable, it could have sunk the whole movie.   In Elemental, there were a number of design elements that just weren't doable.  When the original concept on how tactical battles would be done proved to not be doable (continuous turns) the switch to the turn based system was something that seemed reasonable at the time but really ended up damaging the game.  Similarly, the spells (which were originally very similar to what's in Master of Magic) proved unable to be supported by the engine (and are still not supportable in v1.09 but is something we've increased priority on -- and before someone lambasts about this, bear in mind that different people love MOM for different reasons and for me, the magical spell variations was not the priority because MOM's AI never really used them and AI trumped spell power Mistake #2). Instead, that time went into making a powerful quest system which, works but for reasons that deserve its own post mortem hasn't yet been properly made use of (mistake #3).

Now, one could argue (with the benefit of hindsight) that we should have just sat back and waited for the engine to develop until it could match our design.  The problem was that we really had no idea how long that would take. So, being the engineer that I am, I modified the design to suit what the engine could realistically do and believed it to be "good enough" (mistake #4).

Now, bear in mind, and this is where people will disagree (and there's plenty of people who think GalCiv II wasn't a great game based on what I read so bear that in mind as I write this next part) but if Elemental's engine hadn't had technical issues, it would have gotten pretty reasonable reviews.  We had multiple former major game magazine editors on staff playing the game and giving their feedback.  And having made a lot of games over a long period of time, I am pretty convinced that had the game not had the technical issues we would have been pretty well off in terms of reviews.  Tom Chick and Troy Goodfellow would still have given it negative reviews like they did Civ V for much the same reasons.  

Galactic Civilizations II was a huge commercial success and a critical success and it had techs named "Lasers IV" and has an economic system that barely makes any sense even to me.  But when it was reviewed (weeks after release) it was very solid.

You always make compromises in game design based on what the engine proves realistically able to do.  This is true whether you're making Elemental or Civilization or Left 4 Dead.   Stardock made one of the expansions for Starcraft back in the day and our design had to be altered based on what the engine could do.  It's always the case.

For Elemental, the failing was a combination of the engine being technically problematic in the wild combined with fundamental misjudgments on how the design compromises would affect the overall game play.  

So to work with our analogy, not only did the Yoda puppet not work, but it actually caused many in the audience to have seizures. :)

I'm over simplifying this of course. There is no silver bullet issue here.  There are so many different challenges and decisions that could have been made differently.  Heck, me choosing to spend the summer working 100+ hours each week (according to our security system I averaged 103 hours each week from late May until August 10th) led to all kinds of catastrophic choices being made (mistake #5) that only seem obvious with the benefit of hind sight and rest. :)

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 55

Stardock made one of the expansions for Starcraft back in the day and our design had to be altered based on what the engine could do.  

 

Mind = Blown

(For anyone else who had NO idea this existed Linky 1 and Linky 2) How the flip did those two AUTHORIZED expansion/spinoffs slip into the void of the last 10 years? Learn something new everyday, I guess.

 

And Brad, while I appreciate your dedication, you might rig a daemon to send you an email with the title "GET SOME REST!!!" if you log more than 80 hours in a week...  ^_^

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting drakonfire, reply 56

Quoting Frogboy, reply 55
Stardock made one of the expansions for Starcraft back in the day and our design had to be altered based on what the engine could do.  

 

Mind = Blown

(For anyone else who had NO idea this existed Linky 1 and Linky 2) How the flip did those two AUTHORIZED expansion/spinoffs slip into the void of the last 10 years? Learn something new everyday, I guess.

 

And Brad, while I appreciate your dedication, you might rig a daemon to send you an email with the title "GET SOME REST!!!" if you log more than 80 hours in a week... 

LOL. These days I'm working a fairly normal schedule.  Hanging out on the forums isn't really part of my job. Rather, my job exists so I can hang out on forums. It's why I make games in the first place. :)

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 55
So to work with our analogy, not only did the Yoda puppet not work, but it actually caused many in the audience to have seizures.

LOL!

Some movies were able to cause the same affect without the puppet --> Gigli.

Reply #59 from Elemental Forums Top

Brad,

 

I've got to say.  I love SD  because of how you guys handle your customer interaction.   Being a software developer, I actually love seeing the software evolve and mature (not that I wouldn't have preferred a resounding successful launch for Elemental), so I for one am in it for the long haul, and I appreciate your openess and truly wish the best for SD & Elemental.

Reply #60 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Murteas, reply 59
Brad,
 

I've got to say.  I love SD  because of how you guys handle your customer interaction.   Being a software developer, I actually love seeing the software evolve and mature (not that I wouldn't have preferred a resounding successful launch for Elemental), so I for one am in it for the long haul, and I appreciate your openess and truly wish the best for SD & Elemental.

Fully agree on that!

 

@Brad

Thanks again for being so open about everything! Mistakes happen and it seems you tracked the major ones made during Elemental development
down. I think you and your team learned from those and as I wrote in my first post I am convinced that Elemental will evolve into a great game and maybe there is still the chance for a later commercial success in 2011

Reply #61 from Elemental Forums Top

One question though Brad how can you consider this game a commercial disaster when you've already sold 80,000 copies? I bet Matrixgames would love to sell 80,000 copies of something. Plus I'll betcha a plug nickel right now once you get the game up to par that word of mouth will increase sales even more. Of course I already tell people how great it is. ;)) My real only request is that you add some bright colors to the map and characters as it's just too gothic dark right now. It's like it's wintery all the time on the strategic and tactical maps.

Reply #62 from Elemental Forums Top

Great post, Frogboy.

 

Although I am kind of new to your forums, I have been around as one of your customers for a while.  I remember back in the day when I first learned you guys existed.. you had just released the first GalCiv.  I was a super big fan of the Moo series and I was really exited that someone else had stepped up to carry the 4x Space Empire genre forward from there.  You guys did a great job on GalCiv and it's sequels, and its one of the best games of its type out there. 

Now, Elemental may have had a rocky start, but it's honestly one of the BEST TBSG concepts to hit the PCs in a long while.  It has the ability to make the player feel invested in the empires they are trying to build.  The customizable unit cards are brilliant, they just make the story of your empire come alive.  The custom tile placement for the cities does the exact same thing.  You need to incorporate more stuff like this as part of the gameplay because, it works... it gives the player ownership. 

Anyway, I don't know maybe I just happened to have the right setup but I only had the game crash about 3 times, and I have played it damn near 80 times for hours and hours at a go.  It's a GREAT game.

 

So, I just wanted to say, as a fan, I've watched you make games for a long time.  I agree with some of the stuff you do in games and hate other things(some of your humor needs a little work), but I am not going anywhere because some folks say you tanked on Elemental.  I like what you bring to the gaming industry, and I like how you think about the players as being more than a buck for you to scam.  You guys have it going on at Stardock because you care about the players.  So, you can damn well bet I'll always be sticking around to look at what you are up to next.  I am sure other people that like your games feel the same way.

 

Reply #63 from Stardock Forums Top

I came to the Stardock community via GC2, as a result of my extreme disappointment with how MOO3 turned out.

Reply #64 from Elemental Forums Top

Thx Frogboy,

to be true, I seem to be the exact opposite to all the other guys here on the Forum.

I own GC 2 but never got really hooked on it (I know shame on me), but the loss of GC 2 was that i was to busy playing SotS.

And I bought E:WoM cause of actual reviews. I love metacritic for that. I don't look at the scores but I read the actual stuff and in case of E it was a good think to do.

I don't care what reviewers think, cause after all they are human and have their own likings and dislinkings. The facts that they state are the things that count. And if you substract all the personal views of reviews, you are shocked that from 1000 words only 150 or so matter.

And in my personal point of view most testers have a much to great emphasis on GFX and eyecandy but not the actual game !

But enaugh of this rambling (and I can go on for hours about that topic) back to topic.

I love the way you and your company do buisness. And cause of that, not one single cent I spent on a product of SD is lost to me.

I see it as a small donation in a concept I believe in. And in Case of Elemental I get a real fun game too.

Yes it has quirks and problems, but I still like to actualy play it. I'am more than a bit curious how you are going to improve the game but I'am absolutely sure I will stay on that way with you.

 

Greets

Welfur

 

Reply #65 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 55

but if Elemental's engine hadn't had technical issues, it would have gotten pretty reasonable reviews.
Absolutely agree.  Came to the same conclusion.

The technical issues were way more offputting than any PC Gamer article or anything.  Gamers fear broken games, not bad games.

Reply #66 from Stardock Forums Top

Frogboy, these posts of yours offer valuable insights into design processes. I have worked in that myself, but in a far more menial fashion. (UI design for a larger banking application). I can relate to the part about the community; I quit working in corporate and switched to working as a computer science teacher. The hours were better, the work was much more rewarding, and the pay sucked, but hey, two out of three isn't all that bad. ;)

That reminds me. I reinstalled Fallout 3. Speaking of technical difficulties, they've had years with one of the bigger successes lately, and it's still got major problems... one of the suggested fixes was to install new sound card drivers, which, while not helping, killed Civ 5. I love this! ... but I have to cry foul at your reminiscing about QEMM386. Or Mem Manager, or tweaking Autoexec.bat and config and still never getting enough memory to run both the drivers and the game.... it is the sort of thing that can ONLY look good in hindsight, because it certainly wasn't then. (Despite the sweet sweet success when some bastard thing suddenly worked.) ;)

 

 

Reply #67 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Khardis, reply 66
I have to cry foul at your reminiscing about QEMM386. Or Mem Manager, or tweaking Autoexec.bat and config and still never getting enough memory to run both the drivers and the game.... it is the sort of thing that can ONLY look good in hindsight, because it certainly wasn't then.

But that was part of the game! =P

Back then I had a  PLAY.BAT  with arguments for the various games, which would copy the "proper" autoexec/config over the current one (including autostart of the game) and then ran some broken app that was guaranteed to crash the system. So it was an automatic reboot.
Took a bit longer but in principle that was the same thing as clicking a desktop icon.  That was totally l33t. =P

Reply #68 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Robert, reply 67



Quoting Khardis,
reply 66
I have to cry foul at your reminiscing about QEMM386. Or Mem Manager, or tweaking Autoexec.bat and config and still never getting enough memory to run both the drivers and the game.... it is the sort of thing that can ONLY look good in hindsight, because it certainly wasn't then.


But that was part of the game! =P

Back then I had a  PLAY.BAT  with arguments for the various games, which would copy the "proper" autoexec/config over the current one (including autostart of the game) and then ran some broken app that was guaranteed to crash the system. So it was an automatic reboot.
Took a bit longer but in principle that was the same thing as clicking a desktop icon.  That was totally l33t. =P

Yeah it wasnt so torturous, just edit the autoexec and config.sys, find the right drivers and then experiment with loading them into high memory in different combinations until you got it to boot (oh damn the mouse doesnt work now?). 

Ok ok so it was a real pain in the arse, but only until you got it to work the first time...I set up a DOS shell to kick off just MOM in those days.

BTW Brad, working anything more than 60-70 hours, when responsible for Intellectual capital creation, no matter how tempting, diminishes your creative/cognitive output enormously.  It *seems* a good idea at the time but leads to some bad situations later on without fail. 

Reply #69 from Elemental Forums Top

REAL gamers could get well over 625K free with QEMM386 to get Wing Commander going. :)

BTW Brad, working anything more than 60-70 hours, when responsible for Intellectual capital creation, no matter how tempting, diminishes your creative/cognitive output enormously.  It *seems* a good idea at the time but leads to some bad situations later on without fail.

If I were forced to nail down a single root cause of the horrible month of August I would put it down to the 103 average work weeks I was putting in between May and mid August.

Like you said, the sheer impairment to judgment is results in is breathtaking -- but only in hindsight. That is what makes it so problematic is that at the time, decisions seemed sound. 

 

Reply #70 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, I didn't know that a CEO worked 103/hours a week. I hope you enjoy your work :). By the way, I bought the game yesterday, play 3-4 hours and didn't see the time passing... when the game crashed. I restart a new game and it didn't crash (cross finger).  And for the "flop", like someone said: 80k copy for around 50 buck = 4 M$ in my book, less expense and other stuff,I wouldn't call it a total flop :P.Great work by the way and I can't wait for the improvment.

Reply #71 from Elemental Forums Top

Good post as usual, Frogboy. I didn't know that the TBS community was so small and connected to one another. I wish I was part of the "cool kids club", lol.

Also, looking forward to seeing you guys do a proper GalCiv sequel, each one of those gets so much better then the last and brings us closer to a MOOII remake (MOOII is probably one of the greatest TBS of all time, IMHO).

Anyways, I'm enjoying watching Elemental grow and I too would love to see how it develops over the next couple years with patches and player content (ie. mods).

Reply #72 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 69
REAL gamers could get well over 625K free with QEMM386 to get Wing Commander going.

625k?  Pshaw!  Come back when you hit 630k, n00b =D

I've been gaming for just about 30 years and there are many games I miss from the past, but I have to say I don't miss having to finagle that annoying 640k ceiling.  Well, on most days.

Reply #73 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, Jon, Kael, Soren, etc. We're all friends in varying degrees in real life.

What about Sid?

Reply #74 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Goldmos, reply 70
And for the "flop", like someone said: 80k copy for around 50 buck = 4 M$ in my book, less expense and other stuff,I wouldn't call it a total flop .Great work by the way and I can't wait for the improvment.

They never earn 50$ for each sold copy, you have to take into account that each retail copy costs a lot of money to produce and send to the stores. And they won't sell it for 50$ to the stores, but way less as the stores usually have about 15-25% margin. So SD never earned 4M$ with 80K copies of Elemental, and counting in about 10 people working for a year is also a lot of money spent on salaries. And those people are still working on bugfixes and improvements. So I think it should be still not in the red numbers but to call it commercially successful you need to earn so much money to have enough for the next title.  Luckily SD has the Desktop software for profit and the games more like a hobby (which still should bring in more money than what they cost to develop)

Reply #75 from Elemental Forums Top

One thing I loved about GalCiv was the developers notes in the instruction manual. I remember the first time I read some Sid Meier's on Civ. It impressed me that the creator would share his thoughts with other gamers this way. I also remember reading Brad Wardell's comments for Galciv. I was blown away that the games were constantly updated--AND at no charge. My loyalty was sealed at that point. When I heard Elemental was coming out I bought it on the release date without hesitation (wife wouldn't let me preorder :| ) It never occurred to me to read, let alone pay any credence to a review, the fact that Stardock was making a new game was all I needed to know. Been playing since that day.

I didn't really participate in the community much for GalCiv, but have found it invaluable for Elemental. Reading all the posts has given me a new appreciation for the company. Yes, it has been a little frustrating but the game keeps getting better & I keep enjoying it more. Things I may not have liked initially are offset by other things so my game play evolves & I keep having fun!

After reading this post, I am a little embarrassed to admit that I only now realized that Frogboy is Wardell.

Wow. Thanks for the candor and the clarification thought it is MORE than evident that you have an amazing passion for your craft that resonates through all your games. You have my unwavering support.

 

Cheers!