Got the Kindle White yesterday. I like it. Much better reading than either the Kindle 4th generation or the Kindle touch. However, it is noticeably heavier. I haven’t decided yet whether that’s a worthwhile trade off.
(this is going to be long…but here we near the climax of the story of the making of Fallen Enchantress).
In the beginning…
So as some of you know, my day job is President/CEO of Stardock. I founded the company when I was in college to help pay for school – until I could get a “real” job. Not surprisingly, I was unable to find a real job and so, I’ve been “stuck” here for the last 20 years. I’ve even put my resume on that fancy paper. You know, the textured kind? No luck. So here I am.
When we first got into the Windows market, the games part of our business was largely a hobby. Something we did for fun. Even today, it’s the enterprise and consumer software I rely on to pay Stardock’s bills. This has allowed us to try some interesting things such as create a very liberal return policy (at the time) that centered around the Gamers Bill of Rights (i.e. if we make something you find buggy that you bought from us, you can return it for a full refund). Nowadays, most of what’s in the GBOR is taken for granted (reasonable return policies, no CD copy protection, etc.).
As an industry, we’ve come a long way. I think the general improvement to the quality of PC games combined with the much much better customer service gamers get is one of the reasons the PC game industry is growing so well again (and yes, I read Internet forums too, don’t let the angry, gullible, or entitled fool you, a PC gamer in 2012 is vastly better off than a PC gamer in 2002 in terms of buying a game, downloading it and having it work and not being hassled with obnoxious copy protection schemes).
In short, it’s a great time to be in the PC game industry.
Beyond War of Magic
We took a bruising for the state of War of Magic was released in. And we deserved it. Ultimately, my job is to make sure the stuff we make is really good and in that case, I failed. On the other hand, a lot of good came from it. Today, we make much much better games.
Why Fallen Enchantress is being “given away” to War of Magic early adopters
Giving away Fallen Enchantress to early adopters of War of Magic is a no-brainer. First, it lets them know that our deeds match our words. It’s easy to say customer friendly things. It’s another thing to spend millions of dollars to back those words up.
Putting the principle of the matter aside, it’s still good business. The people who bought WOM early on and were disappointed can see that we didn’t forget about them. Repeat customer are the life blood of businesses. Making our WOM customers know that we stand by our words just makes good business sense.
Our “crunch” time
Our crunch times these days doesn’t mean working weekends or crazy hours. After War of Magic, we made it company policy that crunch times like that would be forbidden. If it looks like we’re going to “come in hot” then just move the date. Don’t debate it, just move the date. We did that with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion and we did it with Fallen Enchantress. Even now, I can’t promise you a specific release date. I’ll wait for Thursday’s build, talk to the QA team, get together with Derek and others and pick a date.
Such a luxury in release flexibility would have been impossible for us just two years ago. Thank goodness for digital distribution.
Flight of the Indies
In the “old” days, there were lots of guys like me. We weren’t called “CEOs” back then. We were called game developers. Eventually, most of these companies either got bought up, disappeared or became work-for-hire studios. It’s a brutal business to be in. I’m not sure how many >50 employee, independent, self-funded game development studios are left (feel free in the comments section to list as many as you can think of). The result is that we tend to mostly see games that are either huge ($10+ million budgets) or tiny (<$1 million budget). We’re hoping that if Fallen Enchantress is successful that it will help validate that there is a market for so-called “niche” games of significant budget. It’s one of the reasons we’ve spent so much time making sure we get FE right.
Beyond Fallen Enchantress
Fallen Enchantress paves the way for a lot of exciting and interesting expansions or sequels. I do hope it does well enough to justify a third game in the Elemental universe (not counting expansions). It’s a rich world that, thanks to you guys, we’ve been able to develop and mature over the last couple of years into something really special.
The people who helped make Fallen Enchantress
For a modern PC game, Fallen Enchantress has a remarkably small team. My personal role on the game has been lead developer and AI programmer. It’s the first time since the OS/2 days that I’ve been the “lead” developer on anything. We’ll write up a “post mortem” like we did with Galactic Civilizations II. But broadly speaking, a few developers, a few artists, Derek, Jon, Toby and a few others are the team that made this game.
Here is a sampling of pictures of the team in action:
Derek “Kael” with Bailey. Derek is the lead designer and Project Manager (Producer)
Jon Shafer with his parrot. Jon Shafer designed and implemented the Fallen Enchantress campaign while working on another, unannounced game
Kay (with Jon’s parrot) did all the game icons (like spell icons) and many of the higher quality monster textures
Love all that cool art painting in FE, Leo. Is. The. Man.
Scott (Boogiebac) is our mad scientist, he does…a little bit of everything.
Sarah is my executive planner and keeps me on track between the many different projects going on around here
Akil manages the art team. He modeled a lot of the monsters and generally makes sure things are getting done.
Paul (Mormegil) makes the map stamps and is our UI wizard along with a thousand other tasks
Emily helps ensure we get our paychecks!
Marketing meeting, Angie, Derek, Skittles, Sarah, Nakor, Brian (Yarlen), and Chris making plans
Toby is the Associate Producer, he is the one who helps Derek with UI design, balance tweaking, and produced the tutorials
Sarah is our go-to person on game system implementation (i.e. implementing new features to the game engine)
Jesse, by contrast, is the 3D engine guru. At a normal PC game company, there’d be a 3D engine team. At Stardock, Jesse IS that team.
Jonny & Ari handle graphics engine work and animation rigging respectively. Ari’s the one who made those cool Mite animations.
Kim, our controller, is the one who makes sure I don’t spend all the money on candy.
Cari (Elf) is Stardock’s senior game developer (lead developer of Galactic Civilizations II).
Alan is our up and coming engine architect
Kay making icons
Charles is the go-to guy for integrating XML and the game code along with a million other things.
Of course, this is only a partial list, the credits video is shown at the end of the game which includes our valiant QA team, the support team and other team members who ducked out when they say me coming around with the camera. 
…and now back to work.
Great article by someone who got seriously harassed by a so-called Internet troll.
http://www.traynorseye.com/2012/09/meeting-troll.html?m=1
I've had to deal with a lot of crap over the years due to idiots on the net. The most recent due to gullible people buying into things they read on the net without critical thinking. Every comments section is filled these losers who regurgitate crap they read somewhere with no inkling of the reality of the topic. People like that do that not just because they're idiots (and they are) but also because they're pathetic. They think of people in the abstract as if we are just characters in some meta game.
You can't reason with them. I've made that mistake in the past, even recently. The best thing to do is ignore them (or alternatively, ridicule them). But in real life, every one I've met in person was driven not by envy but out of a total lack of sense. They're just sad creatures. But I don't pity them. They choose to be malicious.
i liked how the author dealt with the situation. every time I see some commenter on some site regurgitate some hateful thing about me or my friends I picture some snotty kid like in the article.
Greetings!
Yesterday we released Elemental: Fallen Enchantress BETA 5-C. This build is our first pass at balance and UI enhancement.
Next week we will have a BETA 5-D which will focus almost exclusively on bug fixing and balancing as well as some new AI counter-strategies so those of you who have posted your game play strategies online (foolish humans! <g>). We are reaching the home stretch. We will also have a Beta 5-E. After that, we'll see where things stand.
Many of you have been in the beta for a very...very long time. I can't imagine the challenge it is to evaluate the game from the perspective of a typical PC gamer. But we're going to ask you, once again, to try to do just that:
Please go to: https://www.elementalgame.com/journals and vote on your impressions of the game in your hands.
We are very excited to see what players think.
These past two years have been wonderful. The community we have built together has been amazing and on behalf of the Stardock team, we really have enjoyed listening to your ideas, impressions and suggestions.
Like all Stardock games, 1.0 isn't the end of our journey. Even as I type, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.1 nears completion. Ideas and code snippets for FE expansions and successors float around. And there's some exciting things we hope to announce in the coming months.
We look forward to your opinions:
Just got done playing a quick game of Fallen Enchantress on the Mac.
Played it via Parallels 8 on my MacBook Pro Retina.
Who can ever forget the epic battle shown at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring? Sauron the Maiar was able to wipe out hosts of men and elves in a single swing. So terrible and powerful was he that he single handedly kept the armies of the last alliance at bay.
And yet…
There is a balance. Because what most people don’t realize is that the power of Sauron seemed great only in relation to his foes. Some time in the past, the host of Numenor – mortal men – no elves, so overwhelmed Sauron and his allies – when Sauron was at his peek, that they were able to take him prisoner (this didn’t end well for Numenor in the long run).
And before then…
The half-elf, Luthien’s guardian companion, Huan, single handedly defeated Sauron in combat. Single. Handedly. Huan was, essentially, a dog. How’s that for humiliating?
And before then…
A single elf nearly crippled Morgoth in single combat. Morgoth is to Sauron what Sauron is to Aragorn. Morgoth was a Valar, an entire order beyond what Sauron was. Practically a god.
The point being is that you don’t have to cripple the champions to make the soldiers you train relatively powerful. The challenge is balance. And it is, to be certain, a significant challenge.
In the world of Elemental…
In the picture above, on the left, is Resana. She is the Empress of Krax. A Level 6 Channeler. She is quite mighty but only a wisp of what she will become later. Next to her is a party of Krax Legionaires. In Beta 5-B, they take 8 seasons to train (in Beta 5-A, the current public one, they’d take 17 turns to train). In 1 on 1 combat, Resana would win unless the Legionaires got lucky in combat (critical hits). But if there were two parties of them, she’d lose.
What changed?
What made training units unpleasant was that unless they were total junk, they took a long time to train. The equipment and skills were simply adding far too much training time. Why bother researching all this great tech if you couldn’t build it? So a considerable amount of time was spent relooking at how much equipment and traits should cost.
Another big change has to do with loot. This is something we will be working more on. But in previous betas, it was common (literally) to find high end weapons very quickly – just laying around.
What we are moving towards, instead, is where you find cool loot early on but it’s not nearly as over powering. Your sovereign and champions start out with fairly low grade weapons (8 attack). It’s a bit de-balancing to simply luck out and find a 12 attack +4 speed weapon. That’s a 50% increase in raw damage not to mention a 25% improvement in initiative.
So instead, Resana finds interesting weapons with trade-offs. A Iron War Hammer that does 12 attack (yay) but weighs a lot (slowing her down) and lowers her initiative. It makes her tougher in battle (she is doing more damage after all) but it also means she’d need troops to keep herself from getting swarmed. That’s just one example.
Powerful, rare weapons are out there still. But they have to be earned. You won’t just turn over some lost cargo and find a magic broad sword anymore.
The other change we made has to do with hit points. Previously, units gained 4 hit points per level. So by level 10, that’s an additional 40 HP. It doesn’t take long before the trained units become almost irrelevant to the battle because that level 10 champion would have 60 HIP while that newly trained unit might half less than half of that.
The Goal
We do want players who have invested in their champions to be able to win epic battles, single handedly. However, we also want players who invest in building an empire to be able to achieve victory equally effectively. In the early betas, the champions were considered to weak. The pendulum has swung too far the other way. Beta 5-B will be our first pass at bringing balance to this conflict.
Human beings tend to want to make sense of things. When we hear that someone has died, many people will try to rationalize why such a thing wouldn't or couldn't happen to them. It comforts them. We instinctively want to find a reason for the unreasonable.
When we see violent mobs in the middle east, some people want to blame an "offensive video". But that's not rational. Healthy people, in our society, don't go into a murderous rage over the abstract. Other people will try to blame such behavior on race ("oh, those people!") as if there's a genetic component to it. But it's not just racist, it's absurd. No organism chooses that engages in violence instinctively for no material reason would ever survive generation after generation.
I believe there are three things that make us what we are:
1. Instinct
2. Conditioning
3. And the sliver of you that is really you.
How big that sliver is differs from person to person. I suspect it would be depressing to measure for most people. But for our discussion, I want to talk about item 2. Conditioning.
Conditioning is basically what we're taught. By our friends. By our schools. By our society. By our religion. By our culture. It's the operating system to instinct's hardware.
And you don't have to travel to the middle east to see people with conditioning that leads them to hate easily. One can merely read the comments sections on popular sites or find certain web forums that are full of people who are ready to hate other people.
I've been online a long time. Sometimes, after someone writes something particularly vicious towards me someone will respond that they're just envious of me. But that's not it at all. That's just the natural human desire to try to rationalize the irrational. To make us feel better we ascribe some rational flaw to someone who hates us. But that's not why they hate us. They hate us because their conditioning has led them to believe that it is perfectly natural, even acceptable to hate other people for their ideas.
The people who murdered our ambassador in Libya didn't murder him because they resented him. They didn't know him. They don't hate us because we're "free" or because we support Israel or because of the Iraq war. They hate us for reasons far more complex that are not readily understood by us because their world view is alien to us.
This is what happens on the Internet all the time. Two people will see the same thing and have radically different responses to it. What enrages one person might cause another person to shrug or even agree with it (see the reactions to Obama's "You didn't build that" or Romney's "47%" comments).
If two world views are incompatible, then either they find a way to live together or they don't. If they don't, violence ensues. So next time you see a bunch of haters on TV or on the Internet, don't spend too much energy trying to rationalize "why they hate us". Their reasons are probably alien to your own world view. And, more importantly, you don't have to accept that their world view is as valid as yours any more than one has to agree that one operating system is as good as another.
The thing to remember is this: People who have vastly different world views will never see eye to eye. You often cannot rationalize their point of view to fit into your own world view, they're simply not compatible.
(1994 to 1999) OS/2 era
(2000 to 2011) Windows era
(2012 –) New Era
Mimbly is an NPC who visits (rarely) and offers gifts if you answer his riddles.
One gift are magical dancing boots.
One of my favorite features of Fallen Enchantress is that despite being a strategy game, every…sing…unit…in the game has their own equipment that can be customized in real time. So you get dancing boots, you put them on, and you see it reflected visually on the map.