|
4. We were unable to secure as much preview coverage as we wanted.
In the fall of 2007, it was difficult getting the general PC gaming media to give Sins of a Solar Empire the time of day. Only physical trips by the CEO of Stardock to particular game magazines secured any serious game coverage in some cases.
Left: Concept drawing of the Vasari Vulkoras Desolator.
Right: Vulkoras Desolator as it appears in the final version of the game.
5. Stardock failed to get Impulse, its next-generation digital distribution platform, completed in time for release with Sins of a Solar Empire.
Impulse takes all of Stardock's first-party applications and all of the games it sells (both first and third party) and combines them into a single platform.
It was hoped that Impulse would be ready for release by Sins' launch and included in the retail package. Instead, Impulse's release was pushed back to this month.
6. Multiplayer gaming on the PC remains a challenge.
On the PC, there is no standard way for games to interact with other users over the Internet. As a result, users inevitably have to configure routers to port forward.
Stardock and Ironclad hoped to make this experience as seamless as possible. Even with a six month long multiplayer beta, there were still users who had a hard time dealing with personal firewalls and their routers (99% of users have no problem but 1% of thousands of users is still a lot of people).
The good news is version 1.1 will include groundbreaking new network technology that should eliminate this problem altogether.
Conclusions
The biggest lesson we learned is the importance of making sure that the developer and publisher are compatible. If Stardock and Ironclad hadn't gotten along so well, the game itself would likely have been very different with very different results.
From Stardock's perspective, the experience on Sins of a Solar Empire cemented its commitment to ensuring that any games it publishes are developed by studios that view game design as an iterative, collaborative process where the strengths of both teams are combined.
Most of the "what went wrong" with Sins of a Solar Empire are tied to budget and time. Could Sins have gotten higher scores if it had waited another six months and incorporated a single player campaign, stronger AI and more content? Probably. Would it have sold better? A release date of August 2008 would have put it 30 days out from the release of Spore as well as other major titles.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
Let the big publishers fight amongst themselves. Let them compete on graphics, production values, and "me too" incremental features ("oooh cover system!"). And let them spend millions on holiday season advertising, fighting to be heard by a market that's already over-flooded with 80% crap.
Let them fight it out while you, the smaller studio, create a deep game for a market that no big name publisher would care about. And if you do a good job, you may be surprised at how big your audience really is.
As an article on aigamedev.com pointed out, a single player campaign can be more useful as a tutorial than the straight forward tutorial it already has.
On the forums, many people complain of others over powering them, which most of the time its just players using the unit types incorrectly. I too love that the multiplayer is quite balanced, but I would have liked to learn where to use certain units and know of some strategies thought out by Ironclad as to help form my own.
You've never played starcraft have you joe? Many GOOD RTS games have had great campaigns, are you saying Starcraft and Company of heroes had crappy single player? Or what abou rise of nations and rise of legends? Both of these games were far from bad.
Some people apparently have bad memories.