Q: Brad Wardell – you have a martyr complex! You always take personal blame for everyone! Get off your cross! [yes, got this too]

A: That is my job. If you’re going to spend years railing about CEOs not taking responsibility when something goes wrong, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me not to take responsibility when things go badly on a launch.

In addition, some of the issues are directly related to my specific decisions.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395485/page/1/

I'm not saying he's immune from responsibility... I'm saying there was a TEAM of developers who created Elemental.  It's not like Brad is controlling every single action and decision from these developers.  I'm sure if an independent 3rd party team of researchers were to investigate what went wrong with Elemental I find it  "EXTREMELY" unlikely for them to place all the blame on one person.

I've seen BoogieBac take responsibility.

It's besides the point though. A man does have to take responsibility for those working under him. If the end product isn't up to scratch it is ultimately he's fault for not noticing, not directing those under him to fix the problem and of course releasing the product before it's fixed. At least Brad has the courage to recognise this and accept that responsibility rather then taking it out on his staff who really have no 'final' word in how things turn out.

It's possibly also worth noting Brad did not display the best temperament towards anyone who told him the state of the game was terrible around the release week. I don't know what the working relationship between Brad and his employees is really like but I'm pretty sure the concern at your boss being pissed off at you for telling him his baby is a buggy unreleasable pile of frustration is pretty universal.

Its just how things are done, man.  Is his ship.  It has some holes in it and water is flooding in, so let him do his job.  We don't need all the sailors crying over who was on watch when the hole appeared.  Not that I'm his psychologist or anything, but Brad seems more "Determined" than "Lonely" currently.

Boogie has shown himself to be a standup guy (I'm assuming a guy, and if wrong my apologies!), who's earned my respect with his posts here, especially since release.

Hmm, I didn't mean to pick on Boogie (I hadn't seen that post, nor is it really the essence of what I was trying to say).  Forward-thinking is the directions I'd like to see things headed towards.  They've been bashed, bloodied, battered, and beaten.  While Brad stands at the top of the mountain accepting full responsibility, I expect that his team is furiously coding all the nice things we want to see in elemental.  Seriously, they're probably wearing out keyboards as we speak.

This is probably unpopular, and maybe it's just me, but I feel it's time to move past this "blame" stage, because it does not matter. The situation is as it is, and there are two options here: 1) Stay here and keep on lamenting and dwelling, or 2) move on and contribute constructively.

We don't know what happened.  That's the TRUTH.

What we do know is that the direction of the game changed.  Soveriegns and children show that.  We know that some systems that originally worked to some extent prior to the changes no longer functioned as intended,  such as the weak magic system.  We know there are bugs.

Someone made the decision to ship.

Someone didn't see the full extent of the weaknesses caused by the changes,  or didn't feel they were major,  which is *not* uncommon when you're close to a project.  It's *very* easy to lose objectivity,  just because something's better than it was doesn't mean it's right.  Someone felt the bugs could be squashed between RTM and Day 0,  and it wasn't possible.

So Brad's taking responsibility,  in the end,  he could've held it up.  Did someone tell him "Maybe we should wait 4 weeks"?  We'll never know,  we don't need to.  For whatever reason,  what was expected to happen didn't.  Brad's being a responsible CEO and acknowledging he could've changed things.

The TRUTH is that this makes a stronger company.  When the CEO says, "Hey,  it's partly my fault too,  I could've done...",  well,  that's a company I want to work for.  Much better than a CEO who says "It wasn't my fault!".

This is what happens when you redesign midstream and hold to schedule.  One little change has reprocussions all the way down the line.  Stardock learned a critical lesson,  this experience will make them a better company.

And the aftermath definitely makes sure I'll give them my money again.  I can support a company who says "It's our fault,  we're sorry", and busts butt to release fixes.  Not since Black Isle and Fallout 2 has a company shown such dedication.

Trivia time:

Master of Magic was released in a similiar state,  and is now a classic.

Fallout 2 was released in a similiar state,  and is now a classic.

Plancescape Torment was released in a similiar state,  yup,  also a classic.

Master of Orion to this day has a gamekilling bug (32k ship stacks,  murder without the black hole generator),  yup,  classic.

Diablo was released broken,  Starcraft and Red Alert 2 had critical imbalances,  TES: Daggerfall was released broken,  Magic the Gathering Online has had numerous instances of complete failure,  Diablo 2 was released hellishly broken,  so was Warcraft 3.

The TRUTH is,  it's not how it released that's remembered,  it's what you do on that critical day when you realize how bad things are,  and what you do the weeks after that are remembered.  Because the TRUTH is,  most of the classics released with problems just as bad.

Edit,  let's get this over with pre-emptively,  sorry for making a long post twice as long all,  quit reading here if you want,  the following is a list of how those games actually released.

MoM-  Crash bugs,  imbalances,  performance problems.

Fallout 2- Crash bugs,  incompletable quests,  broken car,  disappearing inventory.

Planescape-  Gamekilling memory leak that made it unplayable for more than a few minutes at a time.

Moo-  Imbalances,  32k ship bug.

Diablo- Imbalances,  crash bugs.

Starcraft/Red Alert 2-  Imbalances,  Unbeatable strategies(Zerg rush,  tank rush) due to imbalances.

Daggerfall-  Bugs,  crash bugs,  bugs with random dungeon generators,  game-stopping quest bugs.

MTGO-  Twice new versions killed the service for months,  frequent server crash bugs,  inability to handle volume.

Diablo 2- Copy protection prevented many CD drives from reading or installing properly causing fatal crashes,  servers weren't stable for months.

Warcraft 3- Bugs with DirectX and Nvidia cards causing crashes continuously,  when Nvidia was the only card to own.

Leaders are responsible for the decisions of those under them, as well as their own.  I respect Brad for taking responsibility.  He didn't single-handedly cause all the problems, but he is doing his job and looking after his employees.  If you worked on the game NTJedi, would you be stepping forward to be torn apart by the rabid wolves on the forums?  No, it's not your job.

On another note it is very difficult for a developer to give "warnings" when the person with creative control is a high level manager.  You mention that an "internal anonymous voting system should be designed".  Guess what?  If such a thing doesn't exist, it is management's responsibly to set it up.

THE THRUTH IS Brad made Elemental alone in his spare time with nothing more then a C64 and a 1997 SQL for Dummies book!  He can't lay off any of the Elemental team because they are the voices in his head (he has tried!!).  Brad HAS TO take the blame because as he said out of context one time on another board, and I quoth: "Step on a crack and BREAK YOUR MOMMA's BACK!"

[Editor's Note:  Can EVERYONE please stop 'poking the fire' one way or the other, and let the good people at Stardock work this out?  I promise you, it will be OK.]

Unnecessary drama.