Effectively no competitors.

-HM

A trailer and not much else is not enough to part with my money,yet.

Fortunately they've stated they'll let us know when preorders will be cut off, so there's still time for them to get some solid info out to me as to what I'll be missing out on if I don't preorder. I'm open to change.

-HM

The irony was that they sold off Impulse because ti was making too much money and thus diverting resources away from the game development wing. Which was part of why Elemental was pretty bad. Ironically if he had kept Impulse, he likely would ahve gone the way of Valve. Basically dumping all your resources into the thing making money, Steam, and stop making games (HL3 hellooo????)

As for switching to steam. The harsh reality is that resources are limited. and if steam can give you free middleware for stuff then you'd be dumb not to take advantage of it from a purely financial perspective. You can be all "no steam!" but that kind of resolve quickly goes by the way side once you have to devote a ton of engineers to make a matchmaking infrastructure, or achievement infrastructure, or the other stuff Steam offers for free. Middleware is big business. Scaleform, Havok, Gambryo, etc all make money allowing you to buy stuff without having to invent time/resources into it. Unreal Engine licensing is one MILLION dollars. So you gotta think about how you spend money/resources to get your game out when ti's all a zero sum game. If you can get some of that for free, well you can imagine how tempting that is.

That's only if you're looking at the store. And the reality is that the 'gateway drug' is Steamworks. Steamworks gets games on to Steam. Users want games. Users install steam. Users buy games on Steam.

Anyone can make a store. But you ahve to convicne people to shop there. Steamworks is the 'round about' way of making content without actually having to pay the risks of creating it. Effectively making all devs "Valve subsidiaries". Sure savvy shoppers can hit GMG sales, Amazon sales and humble bundles to save dough. But the reality is that most gamers on steam are not nearly that sophisticated. Many of my friends are hard core gamers, but we're older and don't have the time/energy to keep up with all the game/discount news that changes daily if not hourly! We just buy things when we see they're on sale.

The Steam store is successful because Steamworks is successful. And no one is competing on that front. ONly Origin had a shot at it, and EA dropped the ball on making their own integrated API for Origin. Valve isn't worried because no one is actually 'competing' with them. When some other company comes up with a free middleware suite to compete with Steamworks, then you'll see Valve get off their laurels.

I usually don't pre-order games in such an early stage, but this time, for StarDock I decided to do so. Firstly because I trust them that much knowing how great the Galactic Civilizations games were (and still are) back in time, secondly, this 100 bucks, well... never know, might come handy somewhere, sometime. However, yet it is not that life-changing amount for Me, at least not right now. So I rather spend it now and don't think about it later.

This has gotten me through a lot of gaming decisions in life.

A successful GalCiv III launch will shut up the folks who still spout off over War of Magic- I can't see a scenario where Brad would allow a sub-par GalCiv III to be released, and now he can look at the game with a lot more critical eye than he could War of Magic.

There is a bottom line to all this - do you trust Brad or not?

Me? every time. Were there issues in the past, for sure, a couple, so whats new, its life in the Gaming World.

The Massive difference is Brad will pull Heaven and Earth to fix any Major Failures until they perform as designed, and we the Gamers don't get screwed paying more cash for the fix. The Industry has been littered for Decades by Money Driven Committees, who when they hit a Dog, spend a few bucks on the Elastoplast to avoid a law suit, and rapidly move on - leaving us, the gamers,  holding the dead dog.

Brad has NEVER done that - and never will. It may well be that some issues occur, but of all those in the Gaming Industry, I trust him way way more than the Corporate Share Holder driven apologies for Games Companies that are around. When I discovered the release email for GalCiv III, I immediately booked sight unseen.  If issues crop up, he fix 'em, and you cant ask better than that in a Gaming World were too many Grubby Corporate Types are only driven by maximising Profit.

No it won't.  

If publicly detailing what went wrong, acknowledging their mistakes, repeatedly openly admitting and apologizing and then topping it all off with two free games (one well received, one very well received) didn't shut them up, GC3 isn't the magic cure.  

Some people just want a reason to bitch. 

There's a trailer? Wow, gotta go see that one.

Edit: and a nice trailer it was too.

Wait did you become a founder without even watching the trailer?

Agreed. In a sane world, people would look back at Elemental as the single greatest video game deal for gamers in history. That it is still considered a black eye to Stardock is just amazing to me. 

Someone who pre ordered Elemental ended up getting Elemental, which after a couple months of patches was pretty good plus Fallen Enchantress which is a very good game and Legendary Heroes which is the current best fantasy 4X game out there. 

The real irony is that when all is said and done, Stardock did succeed with their goal. Right now, pre-AOW3 anyway, they are the defacto leader in 4X fantasy right now. Nothing else comes close.

I used to trust this company, but financial troubles prevented me from buying Elemental in pre-order, and it turned out to having been a good thing. All things considered. All post-releases (FE and Heroes) were just patchup works that gave me lot of fun, but the damage to my trust in this company had been fragilized.

Now, that doesn't mean I won't be willing to trust Stardock again. It's just that I am no longer ready to throw money at them without having seen SOME parts of the gameplay. I'll probably end up pre-ordering (God knows I am itching to be a Special Founder, but money is tight).

Blind faith is a fragile thing. If GalCiv3 turns out to be a success, I'll probably throw money at their next project before the first alpha as well. But right now, I'll just have to wait a little more. Doesn't mean I won't follow the project, nor throw ideas that I believe would help out the game!!

One reason Elemental is still troubling is because, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, people lost their jobs due to it. While in the end the customer made out ok, some Stardock employees paid a high price for some very poor choices during game development.

-HM

I keep reading this over and over again, and my curiosity is getting the better of me.  I think tomorrow is going to officially be "Give Elemental a Second Chance Day" while watching some monster movies.

That is 100% understandable, and I don't blame you at all.  For me, it's a combination of wanting to believe and the fact that I'm weak.

<== Psst....check out the Founder's badge.  Shiny, isn't it.  All the cool kids have 'em...

Like Cikomyr, even though I was a Stardock fanboy, I didn't buy preorder Elemental (for me, it simply didn't appeal, for a multitude or reasons I'm sure others have already expressed). And of course, due to what happened, I was happy I didn't.

But the Steam sale this weekend, plus what I've read about the 3rd iteration, swayed me. I played for a couple of hours last night and it seemed pretty good. Definitely worth $10.

-HM

If you want to give it a 2nd chance- this weekend it's 75% off on Steam.   DLC is 50% off, but I don't think it's vital (maybe pick up Loot pack)

I sure did ...... I trust Stardock 1000%.

Have there been issues in the past, yeh for sure, so whats new in the Computer world.

The big difference with Stardock is I know 1000% that if a Game Dog appears, Brad will move heaven and earth to fix it, and we'll get a "Thank You" for sticking with them. We will not get an Elastoplast fix, followed by a pricey expansion Pack to fix what they should have done in the first place aka the initial team on Civilization V who managed in one flew swoop to destroy a Games House 20 year reputation through Corporate financial meddling (they are starting to get over that - but, wow, the long damage to the reputation of an Industry Icon has been immense)

Don't mistake the actions of Corporate driven Companies, as the actions of Stardock. The latter is privately owned, and Brad takes great care of his Customers. If things go wrong, he'll say so up front, and move the Heavens to fix it at no charge to us - as he has already proven. I don't expect perfection in all circumstances, that's just silly, and its easy to bitch self-righteously, the latter takes zero effort, and has zero effect.

It takes a Lot to be up front about a screw-up, then do something about it at no cost to the Customer, as Brad has amply proven he will do. That's why I ordered sight unseen, and will always do so with Stardocks Games.

Customer Service is a two way street. They keep the Faith with us, and we keep the Faith with them through the hard times - its the way decent games get built. Fireaxis have just relearnt that one the hard way

Of course, the elite one . How bad it could be at worst? I think it is very unlikely they would ruin it so utterly completely that I could regret. I'm one of those who think MOO3 is a good game after all, and GalCiv has always been one of my favourites.

Interesting, seems as if we have mixed opinions of the companies involved in the creation of this game, so this game might turn out really really good or really really bad. I would be interested in how this turns out, because I consider finding out the series was still alive by instinct alone lets off a good vibe to this series and the companies behind it. See you when we get more solid information before we go judging how good/terrible the design process is going.

Really Really good - especially as they already had a problem with a game (a long time ago).

'Ol developer saying ..... once bitten, twice shy, thrice you die .....

You can be sure Brad is well aware of that.

If it does goes wrong, the difference with Stardock is they will fix it at no cost, and give a bonus for staying the course. In the Real World, you cant expect anything better. Its also a damn sight better than any other Company out there - most do a runner after a problem leaving us holding the dead dog.

Brad will NEVER do that as he has already proven.

People have been torched on pre-orders on a lot of games. Not just Elemental (or Demigod, but I really enjoyed Demigod once stuff was sorted out). Stardrive was referenced in the thread and it's a recent one, but it's happened a LOT. So if anybody is gun shy about putting down money this early into GC3's lifespan, that's cool. I hardly ever pre-order anything anymore because of past disappointments, and especially with how DLC is marketed these days. I mean if it's an AAA game, you're ALWAYS better off buying it 6-12 months later when the super deluxe complete edition comes out with all the stuff included for half the price at launch.

Obviously by the founders badge I did this time. Why? Well, I was in the Elemental thing. The net result from it is that Stardock's games division is a lot better organized now than it was before, and hard lessons were learned. Plus GC2 was quite a lot of fun. So this time I expect better results.

But anybody who decides to wait is just following what I'd do for most other games, so it's hard to fault them.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395168/page/1/

They lost their jobs not because Elemental was bad game 'directly'. In that it wasn't a punishment for that. But because Elemental was doing poorly in sales (since the game did pretty much suck at launch) they couldn't afford to support the staff at hand, since they were more or less banking on Elemental's success to pull off future projects.

I mean its a subtle, but distinct difference.

Dude, it's GalCiv3...

I STILL haven't seen the trailer.