On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with Tim Morten's experience and pedigree.
If a business can't develop their product on the money they have that is on the business and their poor planning. Not the customer.
When you do a kickstarter and it succeeds but the money you get is not enough for your product that is on the company, not the consumer.
As for the remapping keys, I call bullshit. If your code is set up from day 1 to allow for remapping, which it should be because this isn't 1980, then you don't need to have your UI finalized before you can do remapping. The only reason adding in remapping should be a problem is because you didn't account for it from the start.
On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with Tim Morten's experience and pedigree.
The problem is that he is a co-founder with 17% equity. You are supposed to take a significant paycut in the early stages.
By itself, 250K is not what makes the difference between Stormgate being a success or not. But it does indicate that money was being spent somewhat loosely - and I imagine Tim had a difficulty going from a large company with plenty of funds to a startup. Some of the hirings seems weird - like why have an esports product manager? Vast majority of salaries should have gone to devs/artists.
On August 15 2024 19:10 moomin22 wrote: They can code a "next gen engine" but remapping hotkeys in unreal 5 is a lil tricky? Here's an easy tutorial on how to do player remappable hotkeys:
Single indie devs at weekend game jams can do it. It's just getting sad at this point.
I don't mean to defend FG here, it's silly remaps are not supported yet, but it's also silly to assume you know their architecture and how they handle mapping input to in game actions. I imagine the actual mapping of key events to in game action may not happen via Unreal at all, but in their own code (Snowplay, was it?).
On August 15 2024 19:10 moomin22 wrote: They can code a "next gen engine" but remapping hotkeys in unreal 5 is a lil tricky? Here's an easy tutorial on how to do player remappable hotkeys:
Single indie devs at weekend game jams can do it. It's just getting sad at this point.
I don't mean to defend FG here, it's silly remaps are not supported yet, but it's also silly to assume you know their architecture and how they handle mapping input to in game actions. I imagine the actual mapping of key events to in game action may not happen via Unreal at all, but in their own code (Snowplay, was it?).
that doesn't change the basic concept that changing keymapping is easy if you account for it from the start. And if its not easy in their engine that is a major design issue with their engine, which is on them.
You design the architecture of software to fit the features you need. If their additions to the UE engine mean they can't do hotkey remapping easily then the failure just shifts to the architecture design stage. There is no world where struggling to remap hotkeys is anything but an embarrassment.
On August 15 2024 19:10 moomin22 wrote: They can code a "next gen engine" but remapping hotkeys in unreal 5 is a lil tricky? Here's an easy tutorial on how to do player remappable hotkeys:
Single indie devs at weekend game jams can do it. It's just getting sad at this point.
I don't mean to defend FG here, it's silly remaps are not supported yet, but it's also silly to assume you know their architecture and how they handle mapping input to in game actions. I imagine the actual mapping of key events to in game action may not happen via Unreal at all, but in their own code (Snowplay, was it?).
that doesn't change the basic concept that changing keymapping is easy if you account for it from the start.
And if its not easy in their engine that is a major design issue with their engine, which is on them.
Fully agreed, as said, I didn't mean to defend FG, they should have accounted for that in their engine from the very beginning. I just get a little triggered (as a dev myself) when people make assumptions like that about your code :D
On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with
If Tim Morten's experience and pedigree was worth 250k, we would have a better product.
On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with
If Tim Morten's experience and pedigree was worth 250k, we would have a better product.
Don't waste your breath. You're arguing with the guy who thinks Bobby Kotick is the best thing since sliced bread. He hero worships money-grubbing CEOs.
E: and just to be clear, I think Tim Morten could probably easily land a job that pays far more than 250k. I just don't think he's worth that money to a company that can't even afford to wait for customizable hot keys to be developed before releasing the game to EA.
On August 15 2024 18:48 Hider wrote: The problem is that he is a co-founder with 17% equity.
Do we know how much money he himself has put into this endeavour? (I don't understand finance, I presume 17% of equity doesn't mean 17% of those Xmil$) if it turns out "a lot" and he's just paying himself back some of his own money, I take back part of my previous post. And how much we can expect him to get out of it for both scenarios of total-failure and overwhelming-success? (a lower bound in the latter case, I suppose) https://playstormgate.com/news/frost-giant-business-faq is at least an interesting read. Has some lol phrases in it too, like "If Stormgate is unexpectedly not profitable at the outset,"
On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year. Some of the macro level decisions you bring up seem off.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with Tim Morten's experience and pedigree.
The problem is that he is a co-founder with 17% equity. You are supposed to take a significant paycut in the early stages.
By itself, 250K is not what makes the difference between Stormgate being a success or not. But it does indicate that money was being spent somewhat loosely - and I imagine Tim had a difficulty going from a large company with plenty of funds to a startup. Some of the hirings seems weird - like why have an esports product manager? Vast majority of salaries should have gone to devs/artists.
True, the 17% is kinda BS.
I think we're watching the Peter Principle play out in real time with Rob Pardo , and a plethora of other top ATVI execs who started up their own shop. The WildStar people come to mind. Hell, Bungie drove their product straight into the ground and needed a new sugar daddy after a couple of years.
It'll be interesting to see if Tim Morten is added to that list.
On August 15 2024 16:34 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i've read many complaints about Tim Morten making $250K per year. In 2010 a dozen University of Waterloo software engineering grads got over $100K with stupid perks. 2 guys made over $170K. There were 2nd and 3rd year students making $60/hour DURING CO-OP. In 2024, good software engineering grads are getting over $150K/year.
Right now, in the DC area, throughout NY and California most decent software engineers are billing $250/Hour. Ask micronesia what the US Navy is currently paying a good, experienced software engineer. Betcha its $250/hour or more.
One of my customers is an employment law firm. I won't say what they're paying me.. but i will say.. they bill at $1,200/hour. So you can guess what I'm getting paid.
This is not 1995 and Frost Giant is in one of the most expensive areas of the USA. To be totally fair, Tim Morten decided to place his company in a very expensive place. He could've easily moved to someplace far less expensive.
The real trick for most software engineers is to get paid $250+/hour while living in a super cheap place like... ohh.. i dunno.. upstate New York.
All things considered: $250,000/year ain't much for a guy with
If Tim Morten's experience and pedigree was worth 250k, we would have a better product.
Don't waste your breath. You're arguing with the guy who thinks Bobby Kotick is the best thing since sliced bread. He hero worships money-grubbing CEOs.
E: and just to be clear, I think Tim Morten could probably easily land a job that pays far more than 250k. I just don't think he's worth that money to a company that can't even afford to wait for customizable hot keys to be developed before releasing the game to EA.
Kotick and David Kelly started in 1991 with a company that had zero video game employees and 8 employees over all calling itself MediaGenic. They went on to create many thousands of video game jobs across many decades. Kotick is the intended front man. He is a crash dummy. David Kelly was always his boss and always had a larger stake in their video game endeavours. Thomas Sowell: "The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society, except their constant criticisms, can feel both intellectually and morally superior"
Kotick and Kelly pulled off many great things. They kept the Zork and Pitfall franchises going when no one else would. Imagine buying the Zork and Pitfall IPs along with many others for just $500K? Activision was dead and buried man. It was road kill.
Succeeding in the video game industry is brutally difficult. We're seeing this play out with Stormgate and Frost Giant.
Whether Morten and Campbell succeed or fail ... I think we must acknowledge they are attempting a very difficult task.
On August 15 2024 19:10 moomin22 wrote: They can code a "next gen engine" but remapping hotkeys in unreal 5 is a lil tricky? Here's an easy tutorial on how to do player remappable hotkeys:
Single indie devs at weekend game jams can do it. It's just getting sad at this point.
I don't mean to defend FG here, it's silly remaps are not supported yet, but it's also silly to assume you know their architecture and how they handle mapping input to in game actions. I imagine the actual mapping of key events to in game action may not happen via Unreal at all, but in their own code (Snowplay, was it?).
that doesn't change the basic concept that changing keymapping is easy if you account for it from the start.
And if its not easy in their engine that is a major design issue with their engine, which is on them.
Fully agreed, as said, I didn't mean to defend FG, they should have accounted for that in their engine from the very beginning. I just get a little triggered (as a dev myself) when people make assumptions like that about your code :D
This is fair, but end of the day people have the product and experience it through how it works for them.
I must say on an unrelated point delving a bit more into the Reddit etc now we’re in EA. My previous impression was it was a ‘too many cooks’ kind of collaborative approach with the community, and a kind of ‘design by committee’ approach.
Now it feels like some really consistent bits of feedback are kinda just thrown by the wayside for whatever reason. Unsure why :as
On August 15 2024 19:10 moomin22 wrote: They can code a "next gen engine" but remapping hotkeys in unreal 5 is a lil tricky? Here's an easy tutorial on how to do player remappable hotkeys:
Single indie devs at weekend game jams can do it. It's just getting sad at this point.
I don't mean to defend FG here, it's silly remaps are not supported yet, but it's also silly to assume you know their architecture and how they handle mapping input to in game actions. I imagine the actual mapping of key events to in game action may not happen via Unreal at all, but in their own code (Snowplay, was it?).
that doesn't change the basic concept that changing keymapping is easy if you account for it from the start.
And if its not easy in their engine that is a major design issue with their engine, which is on them.
Fully agreed, as said, I didn't mean to defend FG, they should have accounted for that in their engine from the very beginning. I just get a little triggered (as a dev myself) when people make assumptions like that about your code :D
This is fair, but end of the day people have the product and experience it through how it works for them.
I must say on an unrelated point delving a bit more into the Reddit etc now we’re in EA. My previous impression was it was a ‘too many cooks’ kind of collaborative approach with the community, and a kind of ‘design by committee’ approach.
Now it feels like some really consistent bits of feedback are kinda just thrown by the wayside for whatever reason. Unsure why :as
I mean even from a basic design standpoint, their starting point was that they wanted a game that was a blend of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 taking the best of both and getting something in the middle that appealed to everyone.
That was a gamble right from the start since there's no guarantee that combining those two very different games would even make something enjoyable.
The end result actually came out more or less how I expected it to. A game that accomplishes its goal but manages to be more boring and less distinct than either of the titles it came from.
On August 15 2024 19:10 moomin22 wrote: They can code a "next gen engine" but remapping hotkeys in unreal 5 is a lil tricky? Here's an easy tutorial on how to do player remappable hotkeys:
Single indie devs at weekend game jams can do it. It's just getting sad at this point.
I don't mean to defend FG here, it's silly remaps are not supported yet, but it's also silly to assume you know their architecture and how they handle mapping input to in game actions. I imagine the actual mapping of key events to in game action may not happen via Unreal at all, but in their own code (Snowplay, was it?).
that doesn't change the basic concept that changing keymapping is easy if you account for it from the start.
And if its not easy in their engine that is a major design issue with their engine, which is on them.
Fully agreed, as said, I didn't mean to defend FG, they should have accounted for that in their engine from the very beginning. I just get a little triggered (as a dev myself) when people make assumptions like that about your code :D
This is fair, but end of the day people have the product and experience it through how it works for them.
I must say on an unrelated point delving a bit more into the Reddit etc now we’re in EA. My previous impression was it was a ‘too many cooks’ kind of collaborative approach with the community, and a kind of ‘design by committee’ approach.
Now it feels like some really consistent bits of feedback are kinda just thrown by the wayside for whatever reason. Unsure why :as
I mean even from a basic design standpoint, their starting point was that they wanted a game that was a blend of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 taking the best of both and getting something in the middle that appealed to everyone.
That was a gamble right from the start since there's no guarantee that combining those two very different games would even make something enjoyable.
The end result actually came out more or less how I expected it to. A game that accomplishes its goal but manages to be more boring and less distinct than either of the titles it came from.
I honestly expected more micro-abilities? In Wc3 we have quite a lot. Instead when you only opt for a mix in game-speed but don't add more micro-opportunities relative to Sc2, you end up with a more bland game.
There was this misconception that if you slow things done in Starcraft you get a higher micro skillcap because you get more opportunities to micro during a battle.
But the skillcap in Sc2 exists because you need be to relatively fast to do certain things. If you play it in normal speed instead it's considerable less rewarding and more bland . Microing bio units against roach/hydra - honestly there isn't that much to do. It only "works" because the game is fast and you need to do other things around the map.
So you can't expect to slow down the game, make macro easier and still expect the game to work. Had they introduced a lot of new micro innovations - I think it could have worked - but the devs lacked true creativity.
On August 16 2024 11:02 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Just before the game opened up to all F2P people it had 62% evaluating it positively. Now , 55% of the 3700 reviews are positive. Ouch.
The EA days rated it <40% positive so far.
Probably won't reach "mostly negative" ratings (<=39% overall), but i also don't see it climbing out of "mixed" (>=70%) without massive changes and timespans that seem less achievable by the day
On August 16 2024 11:02 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Just before the game opened up to all F2P people it had 62% evaluating it positively. Now , 55% of the 3700 reviews are positive. Ouch.
62% with your most loyal invested fans is kinda unreal, almost impossible to do when you consider the amount of positive reviews from everybody financially invested, content creators etc.
On August 16 2024 11:02 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Just before the game opened up to all F2P people it had 62% evaluating it positively. Now , 55% of the 3700 reviews are positive. Ouch.
62% with your most loyal invested fans is kinda unreal.
It’s a double-edged sword though. You also end up with other investors who were enthused, aren’t going full sunk cost and are commensurately more negative than they would be if they were just trying out a F2P EA game.
Very Star Citizen vibes with this project, folks will either get very angry or insist it’s amazing and they haven’t blown money
Like Star Citizen it also feels like a project management issue rather than a particular lack of talent involved.
Just nonsensical prioritisation for one. What does SG want to be? They’ve promised a lot, but they did whole closed phases with mostly the hardcore of the hardcore, pro gamers and semi-pro content creators.
But yet they still haven’t implemented fully customisable hotkeys, something that casuals may or may not care about, but hardcore players actually do tend to, and did flag.
If you want to build something more casual-friendly, and be that rare RTS that actually makes team games the mode, that’s cool. Honestly I’d love to see someone pull it off.
But how do you iterate to that if all your feedback phases are hardcore 1v1 fans, and not just that but like, really talented RTS players?
It’s just immensely frustrating to watch. I assume there were many on Reddit too, or Discord but at least in here (my sole real point of info) many people, myself included advised strongly against going into EA this rough. You lose momentum you’re going to really struggle to recover
People will go ‘but yeah Baldur’s Gate/No Man’s Sky did it’. Well no, Larian had a bunch of similar excellent games under its belt, making a sequel in a beloved franchise, people were OK to wait. And NMS wasn’t an EA game, it just launched and lacked a lot of promised features. But, it sold on those features so they had revenue to eventually get there.
Stormgate doesn’t have those facets, and being fair I think the 1v1 is pretty good, unpolished but pretty good. Many hardcore RTS fans are enjoying a new game to learn. The major problem of this? Your vaguely successful EA launch mode is the one mode you have no monetisation model for whatsoever.
I’m unsure if they can even rethink the model at this stage, but if they can I think it’s worth a shot. SC2’s success wasn’t from F2P, it was having that big playerbase to begin with. AoE4 did alright, and Game Pass certainly helped, but it launched with plenty of content, albeit it needed some work too.
I don’t think selling campaigns piecemeal works particularly well, people have strange conceptions of value and pricing. Even if selling chunks actually isn’t any more expensive when extrapolated out, people think it is.
And co-op also suffers here. If the campaign isn’t fleshed out, a co-op commander goes from ‘hey here’s this cool character I wanna play’ to ‘this hero seems quite good’.
Despite despising those stinky Zoigs, man I gotta say I love that Abathur guy, great conversationalist. I have him in SC2 Co-op, I have his announcer pack. The time I tried Heroes of the Storm I played with him…
Literally all of that comes from me enjoying the character in the campaign. If that didn’t exist and it was just Abathur the model? Well I might still enjoy playing him, but there’s way less enthusiasm or urge to purchase.
But how do you iterate to that if all your feedback phases are hardcore 1v1 fans, and not just that but like, really talented RTS players?
It’s just immensely frustrating to watch. I assume there were many on Reddit too, or Discord but at least in here (my sole real point of info) many people, myself included advised strongly against going into EA this rough.
Yeah i called both of those out 5 months ago and they only became more clear and certain with time. In March i was told very certainly they had to launch summer because they could only continue to develop the game with MTX revenue so even a few month delay wasn't on the table. Now said revenue has probably been delayed by much more than a few polishing months.
I don’t think selling campaigns piecemeal works particularly well, people have strange conceptions of value and pricing. Even if selling chunks actually isn’t any more expensive when extrapolated out, people think it is.
It is more expensive though. WOL was £40 on day 1 and had 29 missions, so that was £1.38 ea. Stormgate charges £10 for 3 missions, so £3.33 ea. That's a 2.41x delta - not unlike the co-op commanders costing 2.5x more.
There is 4-14 years of inflation, but that doesn't make 2.5x make sense. 1.5x (£6 for 3x mission or 1 commander) would be a stretch.
C&C3 and WoL offered really amazing cinematics. In 2010, the generated facial physics of the WoL cinematics had never been done before. In 2007, C&C3 cinematics had Billy Dee Williams and Michael Ironside. The C&C3 storyline campaign was very interesting and over the top hilarious.
The story aspects of WoL and C&C3 are far better than anything in Stormgate.
A low-budget, well respected campaign is 100% possible. Fire Pro Wrestling World did a proper low budget story line campaign for 86% approval; it rivals big budget story line campaigns offered by 2K's WWE 2K2X series. However, Spike-Chunsoft really knows what it is doing. Those guys are some BAMFs.
When I compare what Spike-Chunsoft pulled off with FPWW to what Frost Giant is attempting I must conclude that Frost Giant does not know what they are doing.
EPT
