Listening to beta testers is .... "Elemental"

Stardock did a wonderful job with Galactic Civilizations, and those of you who follow my blog know that I've been very eager for their new game "Elemental: War of Magic" for a long time. That is until it showed during beta that their egos were getting in the way of listening to customers and beta testers. I won't rehash the old parts, but the behavior continued and despite people like me posting game crashing bugs... the game went gold before it should have and the game you buy in the box is completely unstable. Tonight as I write this I think I'm downloading the 6th post-release patch already adding stabilization and making other basic mechanics work.

So if you're not buying a game and expecting to connect to the internet and patch it right off... don't buy this game. In fact, sadly as someone who already sunk their money into it you are probably better off waiting several months before the game is to the state where it should have been at release. Luckily, with Stardock one can still trust that they will do that and not just drop the title so I do feel that Elemental will eventually be a market ready game.

Disappointed with Stardock

If you've been a long time reader of mine then you know I'm a fan of Stardock. I haven't written about Elemental in quite a while. I'm wondering if they're also getting so big that they don't care about customer feedback. What I mean is tossing aside intense lengthy discussions they invite with customers, in favor of using a 1 dozen post low visiblity thread as an excuse to throw out the most recent economic model in favor of something with far less consensus (and I use that phrase to give them the benefit of the doubt). The forums over there are quite civil so I don't know why they'd ignore it.

Are they playing too much Starcraft over there and thinking that the economy of a real-time strategy game will import smoothly into a turn-based strategy game?

I don't know, but right now I'm hoping the game is worth my pre-order.

Media showcases Elemental

Elemental: War of Magic is the PC game I'm following most avidly right now. It seems as they gear up for PAX they're really ramping up the media blitz. No surprise either as Stardock intends to really show off the game for the first time at PAX. My favorite article so far is the one from Kotaku.

Back briefly

Well the ocean was fun... and a lot of work with 3 kids. The kids are stressing me out these days, but we're all cooped up at home together going nuts. Hopefully I can leave the unemployment rolls soon in a good way and life returns to sanity.

Though when I got back I learned that PAX 3 day passes had sold out before I got a chance to buy one!!!! ahhhh!! Anyone got one they're not using?

Post GenCon and pre-Pax gaming news seems to be rather slow. Doesn't seem like much in the way of big announcements came out of Gencon. Did I miss something?

Also, the head (outgoing? they're being absorbed into Square-Enix) of Eidos is an idiot. He hates the whole second-hand games market. Does he prefer people just pirate his games if they don't want to pay full retail price? Look, the reason people sell games is because of these:

1) they didn't like it - it sucked.
2) There wasn't enough game there - they played it out thoroughly in a short amount of time
3) Post release support for the game was lacking

People BUY games, they DON'T RENT GAMES. Ask the "U.S." (no, not Toyota and the companies which make their cars actually in the U.S.) auto companies, they don't like used cars either but there are benefits to it. Why do people trade in cars at auto dealers? the same reason people sell USED games... to buy new ones. When you're a game producer complaining about used games... it is because people are selling your game for one of the above reasons and buying new someone elses game.

The solution is simple MAKE QUALITY GAMES. Pick one of the above three reasons for game sales (problems for some designers) and work on it till people don't sell your games any more. So that instead they sell your competitors' games in order to buy yours.

Maybe notice that you'll never see a Stardock game for resale, but plenty of people ditching bad Eidos games to buy them. Stardock are the ones who introduced The Gamer's Bill of Rights pictured to the right. They're also one of the companies with top selling games who never use any DRM on their games. How can they do it? They're games are great, replayability is high, and you'd never pirate their games because you wouldn't get the wonderful post retail support Stardock offers.

It is why Elemental is the only MUST BUY game of the year.

Final Fantasy Online & Stardock

Well I tried a free trial of Final Fantasy Online. I'd heard a lot about this game and long wanted to try it but never got into it.

I got a character to level 2 and I just don't think I can log in again. The controls for the PC are awful and counter-intuitive. The game was obviously designed for console first with PC being an afterthought. The game is difficult to learn and often very frustrating. Combat is painful and unrewarding. I'm very grateful for the ways in which modern MMOs have progressed.

It makes me think that any Console MMO is just not a good way to go. Too much is sacrificed to produce a quality game that can appeal to enough people. Obviously the biggest MMO out there is PC only, the only advantage to the console is getting that ever decreasing market of people who own a console platform but not a computer. How many people is that in this day and age? How many fewer of them are there every year?

I powered up Galactic Civilizations 2 again recently. That game has staying power. Picked a different race and with the expansions I have for Gal Civ 2 it becomes a very different game and breathes new life into it.

Most of my play time has been spent on a couple games that are still in development. So a lot more going on I can't write about. It may all come to a screeching halt between my son being born hopefully within this week and a job interview I have this week with a household name corporation.