Oh, god, thats a little much.  I dont think we are getting 50$ worth of expansions nor are we the f'ing Mayflower colonizing a brave new world.  We are getting probably 30$ worth of expansions and helping shape how they are going to develop.

I see the potential in this game, and it's engine, for epic greatness.  And from Stardocks record, I see that they are an outfit willing and able to make it so.  So yeah, I do think that early sales help to usher in a new age of strategy gaming.  For me, I see Elemental becoming what the Civ series was ++. The Civ series was everything to me.  At long last I see a successor to my most favored game of all time.

We all do.  The question to me is how long it takes, because the current CiV direction seems to be the wrong one for my tastes.

Okay I wouldn't go that far. lol. Jeezy Creezy, man.

Seriously, this is a $20 game as it stands.  If I had paid $20 for it, I could easily overlook the sorry shape that it's in (being generous, it should be in mid-beta).  Having paid $50, I feel used.

If it was even close to being a $50 game, I have several friends to whom I would recommend it.  As it is, I am torn between wanting to warn them not to buy it, and being ashamed to admit that I already did.

You can't actually count promises of future freebies as delivered goods.  "A bird in hand," so to speak...  If they need investors, retail stores are not the right place to be looking.

Frustration is fine and all, but if you haven't gotten $50 worth of fun out of this game yet, you're pretty cheap.

And I make cheap people look like tycoons throwing away their money on booze and cheap <insert partner of choice>.

There was plenty to be mad about with the game; they've done better, and seem to be continuing to do so. I wouldn't call it a 'must have' game...yet, but if you seriously didn't find $50 of fun in this thing to date, you value your time very little. If I get 8 hours out of a game, I've recovered my costs plenty. If I enjoyed 50% of that time, even more so.

2 Hour movie with spouse: $22, Dinner: $20, Sitter: $30

4 Friday nights of 3-4 hour Elemental playing together: $49.95.

And I'll get to keep playing this for months if not years. I'm not excusing anything else, I'm just saying there's easily $50 of value in this game.

I find this thread amusing. I live in Australia, where we can expect to pay $90 for most games, and up to $120 for AA titles. Snapping this up online for $50 was a bargain.

As for if something is worth the time, I just do the "net time gain/loss" experiment. (The price of the game)/(how much money I earn an hour at work) = number of ENJOYABLE hours of playing a game.

Elemental is doin' mighty fine on that calculation.

I remember $29.99 for any intellivision game.  And that was cutting edge grahpics in the early 80's.  That's like $100 in todays money.  I can't believe games are so cheap and people demand so much for the small amount they really pay.

Because that's the market games live in. It's an inappropriate comparison to going out to a movie or buying dinner.  You need to compare the games to other games, same market.

Whatever elemental is worth is obviously a personal decision anyway, I don't find it very illuminating to hear other people divide the price by the hours they spend playing it anyway.  Maybe you'd have gotten more enjoyment spending those hours playing something else.  Who knows.  Who really cares.

My personal stance is to stop buying what I consider unfinished games.  If you buy the 'we need to support the developer by buying stuff that isn't ready' line, good for you.  What else is there to say?  I'm tired and frustrated by the industry, DRM, Steam, unfinished products with the promises of patches, DLC, ...

I'm voting with my wallet, and I'm holding everyone to the same standard.  Sorry Stardock, sorry 2k, sorry paradox, sorry...

Put out a demo so I know that it runs well on my machine, and put out a game which works and doesn't require immediate fixes to address balance or stability or whatever.

Maybe that's unrealistic of me, but at this point I don't really care.  I've got enough excellent games which have gone through their own development processes such that i don't *need* to replace them with frustration and annoyance.  I'll wait, let you lot sort it all out and take advantage of a better product when it's ready.  Be that a month, be that a year.

Wesnoth and Angband and DF and ... all free.  All fun. 

Where's my cheeseburger? I paid $90 and the top piece of the bun isn't on there. I remember when cheeseburgers were $2.00 and they didn't forget the top piece. Next time I will wait until the fast food restaurant can give me a demonstration of a cheeseburger, and I will eat that demonstration, and if I like it, I will buy a non-demonstration cheeseburger. Don't insult me by offering me free fries and a coke. I want a discounted rate for a discounted cheeseburger, or I will regurgitate onto your face in exchange for my refund. No, I don't want you to apologise and kindly place the top piece on my cheeseburger so that I can eat it and enjoy it - That doesn't solve the problem! I wanted to enjoy my cheeseburger from the beginning, but you didn't turn back time for me you bastard! What do you mean you're not perfect? How did you not realise that the top of my cheeseburger wasn't on? I thought you were omniscient! How do you sleep at night when you've completely ruined all my cheeseburger hopes and dreams forever and ever? I am so upset. Do you know how upset I am? I am really very upset. Your failure to realise the importance of cheeseburgers in my life has made it so that I cannot sleep without picturing you writhing in agony from having a hot poker shoved up your rear end whilst you are being crucified and whipped with a tightly woven poison ivy coil!

...Wait, where am I?

This would maybe a good suggestion if it came after 1.1 or 1.3 (bug fixes to 1.1).

At this point in time and development it would be just stupid for marketing reasons alone.

I dont think Stardock is stupid, sometimes a bit overconfident, but not stupid.

I wonder if Elemental might lead to a Civ alternative, as in a stone-to-space-age TBS.  While I am kinda hooked on hex tiles now, Elemental has two really big things going for it that Civ lacks:  first, end turns don't take eons and second, you can customize your units to make what you feel is an optimum amount of firepower, armor and cost.

Entertainment is entertainment. You have the right to do whatever you like, I'm merely pointing out that you place a pretty low value on entertainment and more importantly, your own time.