Elemental: War of Magic v1.09 was released last week.  It’s been a challenging month or so since the release of the game.  At this stage, the technical issues that affected the game at release have been largely resolved.

Now we move towards the next phase which is where we begin to address the game play based on feedback and our own experience.

Now as some people have probably noticed, most games released today are sequels to existing games. It’s difficult these days to launch a new franchise and Elemental has certainly been no exception.  We don’t wait to wait for some future Elemental II to make sure the game lives up to its potential. And realistically, I don’t think we have that luxury.

Elemental: War of Magic is, ultimately a strategy game that lives in a fantasy/RPG style world.  There is so much potential there to be tapped and having suffered the knocks of the initial launch, we want to make sure we do things right going forward.

During the later parts of the beta, I took over as the interim Producer (Project Manager) of Elemental: War of Magic.  Typically, my role is that of Executive Producer and AI developer.  But the sheer immensity of Elemental: War of Magic led us to conclude last Spring that I needed to get more directly involved.  With v1.09 now out, it’s time for me to return to my traditional role on our games and pass the torch on to someone else.

After careful internal consideration, it was decided that we needed to bring in someone with a great deal of project management experience.  This way, Elemental and our future games would have a dedicated, experienced, full-time Producer and I would be able to get back to running Stardock as a whole.

Tomorrow, we’ll be announcing the new Producer for Elemental and, in all likelihood, Stardock’s subsequent games that we develop.  This is a person that is already well known and well respected in the PC gaming community and we’re very excited to be able to hire someone with his talent, experience, and qualifications to succeed me as the Producer on Elemental.

This will allow me to focus my time on design and AI on the game without neglecting the rest of Stardock. In turn, a full time experienced Producer on Elemental will ensure that subsequent updates and expansions get the kind of attention they need and deserve.

We are going to have Elemental: War of Magic v1.1 be the transition between he and I.  After that, we’ll begin work on the first expansion pack for Elemental which will be given to all people who currently own Elemental: War of Magic.  I won’t go into any details on that expansion since our new Producer will be heavily involved in the specifics of the design.

Our goal for Elemental to become a worthy successor to classic games like Master of Magic has not changed and we will be continuing to endeavor to make that a reality. Stay tuned!