RandV80 said:
Andrew_C said:
If its the Stardock I'm thinking of (the company that makes windows utilities), it's just him, 2 or 3 other full timers and a bunch of contract/part-time employees (or was the last I paid attention), so it's possible that they had to drop everything to redo the marketing. That being said, there's obviously a lot more to this story than we have heard.
Never heard of that Stardock but this one is a game developer, on a smaller scale but a top notch one at that. They specialize in sci-fi strategy games, such as Galactic Civilizations 2 (AI in this puts all others to shame) and Sins of a Solar Empire. They also had their own digital platform for a while, which I believe they sold to Impulse which got sold to Gamestop? Or something like that.
Elemental was supposed to be their fantasy setting strategy game, but they admit to over extending on too many projects and botching the release.
They're both the same Stardock - Brad started out making GalCiv I, then branched out into Windows utilities alongside game development (and started thinking about digital distribution).
Regarding Elemental - yeah, the initial release was kind of bland, in addition to being filled with game-breaking bugs. Part of the problem can be pinned on retailers requiring you to book a release date almost a year in advance - but the result was nonetheless a big failure to plan ahead.
On the upside, their Fallen Enchantress standalone expansion (which I got for free as a WoM purchaser) is coming along very nicely, with lots of neat spells and abilities (they picked up the lead designer for Fall from Heaven 2, the Civilization IV mod, to take charge of the game direction this time round).