This is by no means a complete list of things that are on our mind for Elemental for 2011. For those of you just joining our community I should first start out with an explanation of what Stardock is about and what makes our games a bit...different that is the norm in 2011. It might be more accurate to say that Stardock is how game companies in the PC industry used to pretty much operate prior to the flood of IPOs in the late 90s that changed our industry so dramatically.
At GDC 2011 I will be doing a talk about game designs that fail and will be using Elemental's development and subsequent launch as my case study example as this may help up and coming game developers learn some of the pitfalls of when you transition from having a small game team to a much larger one.
Anyway, Elemental: War of Magic was released in August 2011. Contrary to what some would have you believe, it was a finished game when it shipped. It just sucked and was horrendously buggy. We didn't think it sucked or was buggy but given we had been working 90 hours plus for months on end, I think, with the benefit of hindsight, that our judgment was a bit impaired across the board. But what is past is past.
However (and this is important), Stardock is both the developer AND the publisher. Next time you load up a game, pay attention to that first intro screen that lists TWO names: The guys who make the game and the guys who publish. Since we're both on Elemental, we could go back and revisit all the things in the game that went wrong and do something meaningful about them.
So here's a partial list of things that we think are big deals that we want to address this year in the Elemental universe in order to make it the classic PC fantasy strategy game of its time.
1. Core Engine Stuff. This means smarter memory management so that we can have larger maps, faster late game performance, etc.
2. Core Strategic AI stuff. This means an AI that plays the game strategically in an intelligent way.
3. Core Tactical AI stuff. This means that when you have a battle tactically, the AI units play as if they were being controlled by another human.
4. Core Diplomacy AI stuff. More interesting and intelligent diplomatic options available to players.
5. More overt AI differentiation. That is, each faction plays different to the point that players can see a difference. They're not predictable but rather they have different ways of achieving their objectives.
6. More faction differentiation. That is, each player is blatantly different across the board. Techs, improvements, weapons, racial attributes, etc.
7. More interesting tactical battles. Specifically, tactical battles that blend the best of strategy and RPG together. A complete rewrite of what we have today.
8. More interesting and important city differentation. That means, more explicit ways to specialize cities, more interesting ways to make different cities unique and strategic on their own.
9. Vastly more interesting world. We have this great world with great lore behind it but you don't see it in the game. This is going to change this year as the lore of Elemental comes into play both in terms of actual game mechanics and game play but in the general feel of the world.
10. Much more modding support than what we have today.
Start Monday, 3 new people join Stardock and are being added to the Elemental team. And two of them are pretty well known and the other is an amazing game developer that we've bee fortunate enough to find.
Stardock is looking to hire more people for the Elemental team (in particular, Kael and I are trying to recruit a seasoned lead game developer). Please contact myself of Derek if you know anyone who would fit that description. Stardock has some other game projects that start up this year as well and the publishing group is working on some new things as well. So it's going to be a pretty exciting year for Stardock gamers.
The list I have above is not even remotely a complete one but it summarizes some of the big things on our mind. I approved the necessary budget in December to fund Elemental for both 2011 and 2012 (most of Stardock's revenue comes from other parts of the company -- we don't live or die on our game sales but we care deeply about our games).
