Welcome aboard

btw did anyone hear that John Lennon got shot?

I am very glad that the Stardock forums to my knowledge do not censor and information-control to anywhere near that degree.   That the user base is primarily pro-Stardock is of our own free will.   And that means a lot.   You know we can tell the difference when a forum is owned by someone's marketing people and everyone there is pro...whatever...only because they booted all the negative people.  It's not to say that people here don't get modded every now-and-then, but to my knowledge it's only because people are flagrant rule-breakers, forum-crashers, or just plain a-holes.  But even a law-abiding a-hole can remain here sometimes.

I think that this hiring decision may well explain why Elemental was released in a condition which surprised almost everyone except some Stardock employees.

I hugely applaud Brad for his post-release recognition that Stardock had blind spots pre-release and his acknowledgement that mistakes were made.

Yet this hiring choice indicates to me that Brad has not yet figured out where things went wrong with Elemental.

To me, Jon Shafer has demonstrated similar strengths and weaknesses to Brad's. The high profile hiring of Jon at this point suggests that Brad has a blind spot which I've seen in many executives. I think that Brad is probably surrounding himself, inadvertently but nonetheless to great harm, with "yes men." I think he's probably hiring people who agree not only with his vision but with also with his thoughts about how to achieve that vision. This approach, as suggested by the hire of Jon Shafer, goes a long way toward explaining why Elemental was released in what was to many outsiders an obviously unacceptable state.

This common blind spot (the easy "connect" with like-minded people) is in marked contrast to the less common great executives who surround themselves with strong and talented people who admire their vision, respect their final decision, but also have divergent opinions and are prepared to disagree and fight for alternatives when they believe them to be important. That's the path I think Brad needs to pursue to further his visions of truly great games.

Ok, i´ll take this thread to say ...

Hi Jon. Welcome on board. Wish you a good start at SD and i hope you all together could make elmental better and better.

I know, you hadn´t such a warm welcome like Kael. But i think, its all because most of the people here really care about elemental. And in the last years gamers had to take so much disappointments and frustrations. So i hope you understand the concerns and angsts.

(sry for my english)

Welcome Jon, and congrats to the Frog and Stardock for this great catch! Now, will Stardock make a Civilization (not in space) game? Digging much deeper into every age, and much deeper and longer in general? That would be awesome. We need more competition after the Call to Power days, and the Stardock fans would love such a game!!!!

Lemme guess, the next headline is going to be something like "Sid Meyer joins Stardock team to help with Elemental."

Who is Sid?

Steam owns Sid...well, with Civ V they do.

lol

Anyway, did anyone here read Mr Shafer's interview at gamasutra?

I thought it was pretty telling about how frustrated he got while working on V with Firaxis.

"Do with what you've got.."

I say, Mr Shafer didn't want to become another Sid and for that reason he bailed when Stardock presented him a life-line.

Indeed.  Mr Shafer was saved just before he became a corporate drone.

-.-

Thanks for the welcome everyone. Sorry for the late response - I normally view the Stardock forums through the Stardock website, instead of the Elemental one, and apparently that means you can't see any of the subforums. This is totally the first time I've seen this thread.

Jon

Yeah, Stardock forums are really a bunch of disparate things that only sometimes overlap. WinCustomize and JoeUser and Impulse and Stardock and all the game-specific forums all have boards that can't be seen from anywhere else.

I noticed I also don't have my Stardock badge in "Official Stardock Forum mode." Tech suppooooooooort!!!!

Jon

So, erm.....does this mean that roads are going to cost gold now? And that stacks will be gone from Elemental soon?