EPTLike, shut it down and to hell with it.
Them continuing to try to insufflate hope into the game is both hilarious and frustrating ! xD
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread - Page 280
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Gargonus
25 Posts
Like, shut it down and to hell with it. Them continuing to try to insufflate hope into the game is both hilarious and frustrating ! xD | ||
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1142 Posts
On October 21 2025 08:35 Gargonus wrote: I'm starting to feel the same but after all this time I want some closure now haha Like, shut it down and to hell with it. Them continuing to try to insufflate hope into the game is both hilarious and frustrating ! xD It really is. But if they're just going to keep doing this forever, then I need to get off this train. Unless there's some really big news, of course.  | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1912 Posts
On October 21 2025 08:59 Jeremy Reimer wrote: It really is. But if they're just going to keep doing this forever, then I need to get off this train. Unless there's some really big news, of course. I wonder if Tim will do that idea he tossed around on linkedin of starting a new game. I wonder what that will look like with all these lessons learned. | ||
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ChillFlame
263 Posts
The funny part, he's certainly not the worst. For example, some of them just deleted my steam topic for "misinformation" despite it being 100% accurate and supported by facts and links. It's quite emotional, yes, but neither facts or emotions can be misinformation. https://archive.ph/1EoHl They haven't bothered to describe the reason of the ban, so they just copy pasted the whole post in the text box as example of misinformation. The text box has max character limitation, so it just cropped my post in the middle :D The post was quite popular, and after they deleted it, other folks on Steam started to repost it. Mods tried to ban or lock all the other posts, but gave up after some time. So now there are ar least 2 copy pastas of my post, but my post is still deleted. I think the real reason of the ban/post deletion is my post was the first one in SG community hub on Steam, with tons of comments and support, and was indexed by Google. Even now, if you type "Stormgate is scam", "Stormgate scandal" , or something similar, you'll see the post in the search results, despite my post being deleted. I don't know any other explanation of why they deleted my topic, but let the copypastas be. | ||
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Bacillus
Finland2048 Posts
On October 21 2025 11:17 CicadaSC wrote: I wonder if Tim will do that idea he tossed around on linkedin of starting a new game. I wonder what that will look like with all these lessons learned. If we genuinely look at it without any sort of sneer and assume he's reflecting honestly on everything happening, I'm still not particularly convinced he's cut for that kind of position. What he has been doing so far is mostly taking over an existing IP with stable resources and well established base and keeping it steady. Meanwhile right now he's in a position where he needs to come up with an exciting concept and refine it to a point where people can get excited about it one way or the other - probably with very limited resources. It's a very different skillset. Also, whatever is left of Frost Giant currently isn't built for that kind of thing either. If he somehow finds funding and manages to put together something, all the good for him. However, based on what I've seen him do so far, I don't think anything indicates him being a great fit for that kind of game development. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17504 Posts
On October 21 2025 14:47 Bacillus wrote: If we genuinely look at it without any sort of sneer and assume he's reflecting honestly on everything happening, I'm still not particularly convinced he's cut for that kind of position. What he has been doing so far is mostly taking over an existing IP with stable resources and well established base and keeping it steady. Meanwhile right now he's in a position where he needs to come up with an exciting concept and refine it to a point where people can get excited about it one way or the other - probably with very limited resources. It's a very different skillset. Also, whatever is left of Frost Giant currently isn't built for that kind of thing either. If he somehow finds funding and manages to put together something, all the good for him. However, based on what I've seen him do so far, I don't think anything indicates him being a great fit for that kind of game development. you make many great points in your post. However, Tim doesn't need anything to make a new game. He can start making a game right now. He can bring in the most talented coder on the Frost Giant team and possibly one other person and that's all he needs. They can slam together a game in 8 months and get Retroware to publish it. Even 3 people might be too many. Also, you don't need an exciting new concept. One guy, Javier Martinez AKA King Javo, cranked out a Super Tecmo Bowl clone on Steam using "GameMaker Studio". He has since iterated on that clone and turned this series into its own genre of American Tackle Football game. Creators .... create 24/7/365. They do not seek approvals by corporate boards. They don't spend all their time "raising money". In a different creative world ... Camille Claudel continued creating even after her family had her jailed. I'd say Tim Morten doesn't truly love creating video games the way he says he does. Morten likes swimming pools and 1.5 acre back yards in the most comfortable climate on earth. Prolly, Tim Morten's #1 concern is providing for his family. This is a noble goal. However, that does not mean he loves creating software and games. People who love creating software usually do it on very small teams. To continue my previous analogy... Morten reminds me a lot more of a 50+ year old Auguste Rodin rather than an 18 year old Camille Claudel. She loved her creative art form. Tim Morten should be at his keyboard, right now, making his next game. As I type this there are 500+ teams of under 4 people jamming and riffing together games with almost zero budget. Those people love creating software. When I was 14 to 23 you had to peel me away from the keyboard. Creating software was my primary form of self expression. Way back in 1995, when Morten was working on Zork for Activision he was prolly like me. Now, I'm old and lazy like Tim. Tim is better at raising money than I am. I can keep my team going for only about 6 months while producing nothing. Tim was able to do it for 3+ years. As impressive as that is: Rob Pardo is even better than Tim. He kept his team going for 9+ years on smoke and mirrors. I wish I could pull that off! | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7195 Posts
So despite Jimmy telling us everyday that everyone and their mother can make games, only the smallest part are net positive Sourced from Gamlytic https://gamalytic.com/steam-analytics?first_release_date_min=2025-01-01&first_release_date_max=2025-10-21 | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17504 Posts
On October 22 2025 20:52 Harris1st wrote: Read an interesting tidbit on Steam today. Apparetly there were about 13k games released this year and 8,5k of them didn't even get enough revenue to pay Steam release costs of 100$ So despite Jimmy telling us everyday that everyone and their mother can make games, only the smallest part are net positive Sourced from Gamlytic https://gamalytic.com/steam-analytics?first_release_date_min=2025-01-01&first_release_date_max=2025-10-21 The tools to make games are better than ever. what 3 people could make in 1985 is dwarfed by what can be made today. C# coding in Unity is far far easier than Assembler Editor directly coding a 6502 CPU. You had to be a highly skilled Electrical Engineer//Coder to make a game back then. With stuff like "GameMaker Studio" today making games is super easy. Here is small sample of all the great RTS stuff on the horizon. A contributing factor to such a large # of new stuff available for the small RTS customer base is the quality of the development tools. Do not buy into the marketing BS that making a video games is as hard as landing a man on the moon. That might well have been true in the 1970s and 1980s ... it is not true today. | ||
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Miragee
8661 Posts
On October 22 2025 20:52 Harris1st wrote: Read an interesting tidbit on Steam today. Apparetly there were about 13k games released this year and 8,5k of them didn't even get enough revenue to pay Steam release costs of 100$ So despite Jimmy telling us everyday that everyone and their mother can make games, only the smallest part are net positive Sourced from Gamlytic https://gamalytic.com/steam-analytics?first_release_date_min=2025-01-01&first_release_date_max=2025-10-21 I mean, the vast majority of games released on steam are slop so it's not surprising that they don't make any money. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17504 Posts
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3680670/9Bit_Armies_Going_Rogue/ Here is the player base for 9-Bit Armies. https://steamcharts.com/app/1439750 | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26779 Posts
On October 22 2025 20:52 Harris1st wrote: Read an interesting tidbit on Steam today. Apparetly there were about 13k games released this year and 8,5k of them didn't even get enough revenue to pay Steam release costs of 100$ So despite Jimmy telling us everyday that everyone and their mother can make games, only the smallest part are net positive Sourced from Gamlytic https://gamalytic.com/steam-analytics?first_release_date_min=2025-01-01&first_release_date_max=2025-10-21 Indeed. It’s easier to record, produce and release music than ever before, but the same is true for everybody else. Plenty of good stuff just gets buried under lazy slop in certain pipelines. A lot of the big artists are still those with record labels and a publicity machine behind them, and it can be quite difficult to make a living in the current ecosystem. It can be a challenge to punch through that, even if your shit is good it might still sink without trace. Hence why record labels persist, even if you don’t necessarily need them for certain things anymore, they aid in punching through and financing things like tours. In the music space the challenge ain’t making it if you’ve the talent, or having tools to distribute it, it’s directing people to your stuff, or getting them to pay for it.It’s even worse now, because genres, especially in the EDM space are getting flooded with AI slop as well. I see more than one parallel to the games industry in that sense. 13,000 games in a year? Dumped on a store, with little quality control whatsoever. And that’s just in one year? Of the 8.5K that didn’t even make their hundred dollars back, I’m going to wager not all of that is lazy shovelware, but there may be good games there too that are struggling entirely due to there being so much shovelware. Jimmy has a tendency to focus on what’s possible, and while not wrong as such on that specific point, rather neglects the norm, or general counter-examples. I think a lot of it is pointless apples and oranges stuff. What were FG actually trying to do? A Blizz style spiritual successor with all the bells and whistles. That’s what interested me, and many others. Something to play for 5-10 years. Just because they royally fucked it up doesn’t mean an indie team featuring two people, their dog, sweat and a dream could make that game. I think it’s a great age for fun, enjoyable RTS games, many from small teams, but I’d rather have my one killer app than 10 decent ones. Sometimes you need the budget and extra personnel, I don’t know if you need that for a product of similar quality to SC2 or WC3, but until someone actually does it I remain skeptical. I mean certain types of games just need more people and therefore budget, an extreme example but no shoestring team is making a GTA, Red Dead, Breath of the Wild etc style game of equivalent quality. Not for lack of talent, but just lacking the man hours to build large, engaging worlds and all the various systems | ||
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AmericanUmlaut
Germany2594 Posts
Making software is getting easier and easier, not just in the gaming space. I've been writing code professionally for twenty years, and everything is easier now than it used to be. Tools are better, languages are better, libraries are better, and these days we have AI assistants who have all the knowledge of StackOverflow and every manpage baked into their brains and never make a syntax error. It's amazing to me how much more productive I can be now than was possible when I started my career. At the same time, the quality expected by consumers has grown dramatically over the same time period. I love games from the era when solo developers were writing them in assembler, but no one would play Adventure or Pitfall today. People expect better graphics, better animation, more responsive gameplay, a well-written story, networking, and, and, and... Just the manpower it takes to produce the 3D assets for a modern AAA game is an enormous investment. It's true, and awesome, that one passionate dude can make Balatro or The Scouring. Those are awesome games. But they're categorically something different than what FG was trying to make. It's like you're looking at the failure of John Carter and say "it's ridiculous that they could blow $250 million on that; anyone with an iPhone and CapCut can make a movie today." It's not wrong that you can make a movie, even a great movie, with a couple hundred bucks and a dream, but it's absurd not to understand that you're not playing on the same field as someone trying to produce an international blockbuster. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17504 Posts
On October 22 2025 23:14 WombaT wrote: Jimmy has a tendency to focus on what’s possible, and while not wrong as such on that specific point, rather neglects the norm, or general counter-examples. the norm? the norm is most employees in the video game industry working for studios with 40+ employees are just in it for a pay cheque. Tim Morten does not love to make video games. He might have in the 90s. Now, he is a salesman. On October 22 2025 23:51 AmericanUmlaut wrote: It can simultaneously be true that making software is getting drastically easier over time and that making a AAA game is exorbitantly expensive and insanely difficult. and its the best way to raise $40M while producing nothing. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22353 Posts
On October 22 2025 23:51 AmericanUmlaut wrote: Sure, making AAA games is expensive and hard.It can simultaneously be true that making software is getting drastically easier over time and that making a AAA game is exorbitantly expensive and insanely difficult. Making software is getting easier and easier, not just in the gaming space. I've been writing code professionally for twenty years, and everything is easier now than it used to be. Tools are better, languages are better, libraries are better, and these days we have AI assistants who have all the knowledge of StackOverflow and every manpage baked into their brains and never make a syntax error. It's amazing to me how much more productive I can be now than was possible when I started my career. At the same time, the quality expected by consumers has grown dramatically over the same time period. I love games from the era when solo developers were writing them in assembler, but no one would play Adventure or Pitfall today. People expect better graphics, better animation, more responsive gameplay, a well-written story, networking, and, and, and... Just the manpower it takes to produce the 3D assets for a modern AAA game is an enormous investment. It's true, and awesome, that one passionate dude can make Balatro or The Scouring. Those are awesome games. But they're categorically something different than what FG was trying to make. It's like you're looking at the failure of John Carter and say "it's ridiculous that they could blow $250 million on that; anyone with an iPhone and CapCut can make a movie today." It's not wrong that you can make a movie, even a great movie, with a couple hundred bucks and a dream, but it's absurd not to understand that you're not playing on the same field as someone trying to produce an international blockbuster. So why is a start up with 30 million in financing trying to do it? That is the question Tim doesn't seem to answer when he complains about how expensive it is to make a successor to SC2. Blizzard didn't start by making Warcraft. (and that is before we get into that based on the quality of product they delivered, I don't think another 100 million would have produced a smash hit) | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17504 Posts
grassroots built studios are far healthier than places like 343 or Halo Games or whatever they are called now. On October 21 2025 13:51 ChillFlame wrote: Sparty guy is really trying to keep it professional, but he's too biased to succeed :D The funny part, he's certainly not the worst. For example, some of them just deleted my steam topic for "misinformation" despite it being 100% accurate and supported by facts and links. It's quite emotional, yes, but neither facts or emotions can be misinformation. https://archive.ph/1EoHl They haven't bothered to describe the reason of the ban, so they just copy pasted the whole post in the text box as example of misinformation. The text box has max character limitation, so it just cropped my post in the middle :D The post was quite popular, and after they deleted it, other folks on Steam started to repost it. Mods tried to ban or lock all the other posts, but gave up after some time. So now there are ar least 2 copy pastas of my post, but my post is still deleted. I think the real reason of the ban/post deletion is my post was the first one in SG community hub on Steam, with tons of comments and support, and was indexed by Google. Even now, if you type "Stormgate is scam", "Stormgate scandal" , or something similar, you'll see the post in the search results, despite my post being deleted. I don't know any other explanation of why they deleted my topic, but let the copypastas be. cool and interesting. thx for posting this. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17743 Posts
A recap of the WC3 campaign. So people can see what you get when you create a well thought out title with love. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17504 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26779 Posts
On October 23 2025 00:13 Gorsameth wrote: Sure, making AAA games is expensive and hard. So why is a start up with 30 million in financing trying to do it? That is the question Tim doesn't seem to answer when he complains about how expensive it is to make a successor to SC2. Blizzard didn't start by making Warcraft. (and that is before we get into that based on the quality of product they delivered, I don't think another 100 million would have produced a smash hit) It maybe wouldn’t have, and I’ve slammed FG as much as anyone. Thing is FG did set out to make a big budget game, and they got a bunch of funding early, funding that completely dried up. I think they should get cut more slack here than they get. In this domain, very specifically. All other criticism aside, they raised 40 million pretty easily in the good times , and I don’t think they intended to build a 40 million game. They went ambitious, thought they’d be able to keep that coming, and general economic conditions squashed that But then you’re left with your game with a 40 million budget, that you thought you’d have an 80 million or w/e budget on, you’ve promised a lot of things but now you don’t have the money to deliver. Now, I don’t have enough time today to go through all the mistakes I think they made, independent of that, and pissing away the money they did have. I think this one is a fair mitigation. A miscalculation Like if I was a director making a blockbuster film, I’ve already got 40 million of budget, I’ll do crazy stuff, big set pieces or whatever. If someone then goes ‘ok well you’re not getting more budget’ I’m stuck with like the first half of my movie being a big spectacular and it being very bare bones on the second half. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26779 Posts
On October 23 2025 00:19 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i think they started by porting over kids education titles. that got their foot in the door manipulating sprites and on screen action. and, it kept the lights on. grassroots built studios are far healthier than places like 343 or Halo Games or whatever they are called now. cool and interesting. thx for posting this. 343 started out with like 12 people I don’t even understand what constitutes ‘grass roots’ in your conception. | ||
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ChillFlame
263 Posts
On October 23 2025 00:49 WombaT wrote: It maybe wouldn’t have, and I’ve slammed FG as much as anyone. Thing is FG did set out to make a big budget game, and they got a bunch of funding early, funding that completely dried up. I think they should get cut more slack here than they get. In this domain, very specifically. All other criticism aside, they raised 40 million pretty easily in the good times , and I don’t think they intended to build a 40 million game. They went ambitious, thought they’d be able to keep that coming, and general economic conditions squashed that But then you’re left with your game with a 40 million budget, that you thought you’d have an 80 million or w/e budget on, you’ve promised a lot of things but now you don’t have the money to deliver. Now, I don’t have enough time today to go through all the mistakes I think they made, independent of that, and pissing away the money they did have. I think this one is a fair mitigation. A miscalculation Like if I was a director making a blockbuster film, I’ve already got 40 million of budget, I’ll do crazy stuff, big set pieces or whatever. If someone then goes ‘ok well you’re not getting more budget’ I’m stuck with like the first half of my movie being a big spectacular and it being very bare bones on the second half. I am a big fan of RPG games. I don't know what I like more: RPG or RTS. My favorite games of the genre are Fallout 2, Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, Tyranny, and Fallout New Vegas. If you played them, you see the pattern. None of them is finished. The reasons are different. Inadequate deadlines by publishers, low budget, and sometimes publishers went broke. Nevertheless, these are brilliant games, and when I think of them, I wonder what they could be if circumstances were more favorable. When I think of SG, I think: "Why not sooner?". Nothing is interesting in what we got, and I don't have any reason to believe we would get something interesting if the devs had more money. IMO, if Tim had $1b, he would do what Chris Roberts did. He would just ask for more. | ||
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