You of course do realize that the company *is* people right? Caring about the company is more than just caring about Brad or some such. There's a lot more people working at Stardock than have been laid off. Unless you think all that's left to Stardock is Brad and a bunch of robots doing his bidding. =P

That and I haven't seen anybody that has been like "Ah, who cares about those people who got laid off."

"my own catastrophic poor judgment in not objectively evaluating the core game play components."

I think all of us appreciate this candor. Coming to this understanding earlier, rather than later, will I hope in the long run enable you to turn Elemental around. I think it's unfortunate that this realization didn't happen before the launch -- I think there were at least some folks evaluating the beta who were of the opinion that the core game wasn't really "right", and I personally still don't feel the game is enjoyable to play -- a long way from it, actually (though I in no-way regret supporting Stardock by puchasing the game). I'm bummed that one outcome of this was lay-offs. That's really, really tough for all involved. Best wishes, and heres to hoping for Elementals eventual success as a game, and the success of small PC game developers everywhere.

I have some speculation regarding the finances of a business whose message board I frequent and I would like to share them with you all.  For eight whole pages.

As someone who has been laid off before (who hasn't, nowadays?) I feel badly for those at Stardock who are left without gainful employment.

I also believe that, like Elemental itself, Brad is also suffering from featuritis.  The game tries to do many things, to be too many things, and it fails to do almost all of them to the level people purchasing a $50 title are happy with.  Loyal Stardock fans generally feel the game is lacking that special Stardock "feeling" or "oomph" they've gotten from other titles.  Stardock Zealots ("My life for Froggy!") in some cases have backed down from "STFU it is awesome" to "it'll be awesome soon, you'll see!"

Brad ... and I mean this as both a consumer of entertainment in the US who is saddened by the slacking production values in many forms of media and someone who has studied (and continues to study in a post-graduate sense) to get their education specializing in Management ... I think it best if you step back, take a moment, and really prioritize what you want both Elemental to be in the end, and what you, yourself, want to be (and be known for).

You are trying to wear too many hats, my friend, and many of them are not compatible.  The CEO & owner hats aren't always going to fit snugly together - there is quite a bit of literature out there regarding that schism - and is the reason many promising restaurants fail when those at the helm are too deeply involved and blind to business issues.

Throw in "I want to program too" and "I writed a book!" and you are juggling too much and not being a full-time ... well ... anything.

Toss in the "I want the company to be family" and "I am a gamer at heart" and a whole extra set of complex emotions clog the mix.

Some of your hats are art hats ... passion hats ... some are not.   That is perfectly normal, except, your rational identities are the ones that are supposed to be the check against your own passionate identities.

Games are bettered by passionate designers and programmers.  They need to be confined by rational CEOs and producers and management staff.  You can't be both of those things, and the deeper you get into the passion-fueled side of things, the harder it is to step back.

Passion is a good thing.  Passion makes art (No, I'm not trying to start the "is gaming art" thing - honest). Passion makes good people work harder at what they believe in.  Passion also blinds us to reality.  Passion fuels people to take chances.   Passion starts coups and brings forth revolutions ... but ... not all of them succeed ... passion gives us failures too.

~Sin

You can think of it as similar to  the stereotypical situations where a mother is being interviewed on her son going on a shooting spree... "My boy was always nice and would never do that" sort of thing. Blindness from love and being too close to the person in question to form an unbiased opinion.

I am really sad Frogboy, but Elemental does not really "click" for me either.
But I believe in you and the rest of the team, and once all the issues have been cleared up I think Elemental will become the topseller it could be.

As a programmer, I can tell you from first hand experience that UI's can get quite quirky and cumbersome, and not be a problem for the person who wrote it. I had a friend from years back that would love to throw everything on one dialog. It would make sense to him, but everyone else would go "Wtf!? what the heck am I suppose to do here?" It's quite funny at what a programmer will get use to. Now the quality side problems were from the lack of enough QA, as mentioned by Brad himself. So they were not seeing the problems in house.

If you followed Brad's comments shortly after release, he truly felt like this was a quality low problems release. It wasn't until a lot of the negative feedback that he probably started to look at it little more objectively.

Now to the layoffs. In the gaming industry, employees need to be prepared for these sorts of events. There is a lot of turmoil in it, and few jobs are safe. When I was a younger pup, I once thought about going the game dev route, but never had the nerve after witnessing all the layoffs in it. My point is that it's a very fickle business, and there is a price to be paid for working at such a fun business.

Brad took a calculated business risk, failed to execute it properly, and people got laid off. There is no reason to be calling him names or taking sides at this point. It's clear he feels bad about it, which is more than I can say for the layoffs that happened over the years at my place of employment. The people laid off got some severance, and hopefully made plans for such an event. I hope it works out for all parties involved.

I agree. We as consumers don't need to know all the inner workings of Stardock. That's between Brad and his employees. Brad says too much and a lot of it is contradictory. We've come full circle in just weeks. From game being ready for release to now it's a mess. A lot of what he says doesn't add up. Bottom line is he either stays in business or he doesn't. As long as he does people will buy if the product is good. They'll have no choice but to move on if he closes shop.

I can tell you why. Brad went around shooting his mouth off where he shouldn't have. This story has changed 3 times. First it was total comittment to Elemental with no other game development for the next 2 years. Then it was 2 teams -Elemental, future games. Now it's having to lay 1 team off due to poor sales of Elemental. In other words they planned on spending money they were'nt sure of getting.

All the while we're told that Stardock's main source of income isn't their game studio and that gave them the luxury of not having to rush Elemental out for financial reasons. But they did rush Elemental out. The story changed on that too. First it was due to retail shelf availability - August or February. Now it's that they were so close to the product they couldn't see what a disaster it was. Now we're finding some of these problems were reported in beta and ignored. That's not to mention going full circle from good for release to major problems in just a little over a week. Brad's PR people, if he has any, need to tell him to shut up and let them do what he pays them for. Brad wants it both ways. He wants to be one of us, a gamer and also a game developer. It's not working.

I'm sorry Rune_74 but there really isn't. There are some good ideas with some of the seperate game components but as a whole there's not much game there. Not when you compare it to other 4x fantasy tbs games such as AoW:SM or MoM. There's a lot to like with some of the components -custom units, I'd like to see custom spells- but putting it all together doesn't make it a game. We can't talk about potential when the current state of the game is in such bad shape that it precipitated layoffs. You have to see it for what it is. Maybe the game is redeemable but right now that remains to be seen.

Nothing adds up because you can't do basic math.

Ok guys. Nothing more good is going to come of this thread. Let's move on.