On Devs and Moo3

from Stardock Forums
It must be quite hard to be a developer. Everybody is waiting for a game, anticipation..
If the game turns out good they get raised to the skies, if there is a SLIGHTEST fault in the game they get toasted..
Working their asses of to get the game finished, and when its released they get totally overwhelmed by all those people who are disappointed that its not Moo2 v 1.5, or that its missing this or that.. Its not easy to make a game to suit everyone.

Its tough on the devs, putting their heart and soul in a product, and when its done they are told its crap, worthless and never should have been made :notsure:
329 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Yea. I've been flamed for our software for various reasons for a good decade now.

There's one guy in UK who claims that he gets up every morning and at precisely 9AM prays that I die of cancer. Seriously.

Our most popular product, WindowBlinds, has an installed base of something like 5 to 6 million people now and obviously a lot more than that have tried it at various times. So you can imagine the flames we get when WindowBlinds or some other part of Object Desktop causes them problems.

For most of the GalCiv team, this is all new. I've been trying to prepare them for potential negative reviews. I've even written my own flame review of GalCiv for them so that they're ready for it.

No title is perfect of course. I was not terribly pleased with The Corporate Machine but on the other hand, it had 1 programmer (me) and one graphics designer and we did it in just a few months of work so it was a relatively modest effort.

But I can say that GalCiv is the best game I can do. I'm very proud of the GalCiv team. It's turned out the best we're capable of making it. It wasn't rushed, we didn't skimp on things. We did our best. There are still things I would like to tweak here and there but they're just that, tweaks. Features didn't get cut, in fact, features got added along the way based on feedback. That's all we can do is try our best and hope for the best.

As someone who's been in the industry for a long time now, I feel pretty confident in how that game will *generally* be received. How it reviews is a different matter. When you're an indie developer, it's much more a matter of "luck" of the draw. I have my private hopes on what the reviews will be, but there is no such thing as a sure thing. One reviewer's classic is another reviewer's also-ran.

But ultimately, it will be you guys who decide. Strategy gamers everywhere. We at Stardock made a game that we ourselves wanted to play and combined that with the belief that we were not alone in wanting to play THIS particular game.

In 24 or so days, we'll all find out.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I wish you all the best of luck, I am sure this game will be my cup of tea anyway, but someone will always find something to complain about, no matter what.
When I am finished with my c++ education I will get into (hopefully) strategy game programming. And I fear the day a product I have been working on will be released, I dont even think I will dare to turn on my computer for a couple of days..

Beeing and Indie as you are must be quite hard, beeing at the constant mercy of the markets whims.. :(
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
frogboy

I know what you mean, You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all of the time.

I'm inventing a new tech for galciv "thick skin armor" It let's the galciv team ignore all the flamers :) You can never tell what the consumer will like, i've worked on a movie that i thought was one of the worst films ever made and it does 100 mil, worked on what i think is the best film i have ever worked on, it costs 65 and brings in 15 :(
just remind the team that there are a whole lot of people who right now like/love this game.

rich
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
You will succeed........this game will grow on people..........but I think its how we are treated as gamers that keeps us here the most.....we WANT you to succeed because in our hearts we know your vision is the right thing to put our efforts behind.......
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I remember all of my cynic comments about the one month delay because the shipment of MOO3 got delayed that last 30 days. Now I am very happy for what I think that delay will do for GalCiv. The 30 days should be just enough to get masses of MOO diehards to admit that QS goofed, and start looking for a replacement to MOO3. It should be just long enough for the bad taste in strategy gamer's mouths to ease, and just long enough for the dissappointed MOO3 buyers to get over the dissappointment just enought to be ready to try something else. I am glad I was wrong last time, and I hope I am right this time.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
The GalCiv guys listen to ideas and put ideas in. They should do a rollcall of people here so that beta testers can stand up and point to a suggestion of theirs that's in.