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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
On August 10 2026 06:18 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'll bet you Tim Morten was prolly a world champion level Utopia player  Oh, I don't know, being a good Utopia player required you to be able to plan ahead and formulate a sensible strategy. Not sure Tim has ever actually done that. | ||
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ChillFlame
331 Posts
BTW, where is my Mega-lo-Mania remake? Truly one-of-a-kind RTS. It had unique resource management and a complex tech tree that depends on resources available on particular islands. Basically everything in this game is unique. Never seen anything like it. I think something like this could be popular in the age of auto-battlers. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7410 Posts
On August 10 2026 02:23 CicadaSC wrote: Bad is subjective. Plenty of people loved and still love stormgate to this day. No. No they don't. Better a horrible end than endless horror | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17873 Posts
On August 10 2026 07:50 ChillFlame wrote: There are probably more people enjoying Mega-lo-Mania than SG, just saying. It's an Amiga game from 1991. BTW, where is my Mega-lo-Mania remake? Truly one-of-a-kind RTS. It had unique resource management and a complex tech tree that depends on resources available on particular islands. Basically everything in this game is unique. Never seen anything like it. I think something like this could be popular in the age of auto-battlers. i pulled a C64 out of my grandma's attic. that was one of the 500+ pirated games in the box. That game would not run on the C64 though. To stay on topic and tie this to StormGiant or FrostGate or whatever its called ... most of the disks/games did work including Zork 1 through 3. | ||
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SoleSteeler
Canada5472 Posts
It's amazing to see Zerospace in comparison though... The art style is good and cohesive (pretty similar to SC2, though). The world building makes sense. The campaign dialogue isn't amazing by any means, but in general feels more "real" and "gritty" than Stormgate. ZS made heroes work. They made creeps work (neutral guys protecting the XP towers). They made co-op more engaging. It runs really smoothly Sound design is fairly meh but at least there aren't random loud volume bugs. Etc. etc. I really hope it gets more and more popular as time goes on. I'd also be happy if Stormgate can revive itself somehow, someday! | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27404 Posts
A fuckload of mistakes were made which killed a lot of goodwill for sure. It’s a cutthroat space, it’s hard to detach players from their favourite one or two titles, so even delivering a 6 or 7/10 competent but not amazing game can still see you completely sink anyway (see - Concord) I think ZeroSpace is looking the better, more interesting game but I can absolutely see it having the same problems of dragging people away from their established favourites, especially given it has a fraction of the marketing and hype that Stormgate had, at least thus far | ||
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
On August 12 2026 12:02 WombaT wrote: Stormgate ain’t a StarCraft killer for sure, but yeah by the end also wasn’t an irredeemably bad game either. I would argue that it was irredeemably bad, as evidenced by the fact that almost everyone, even its biggest fans, have stopped playing it. Of course, a lot of this is due to the server shutdown, but technically people could still do 1v1 games if they wanted to on the PTR branch. And there are, technically, from 1-16 people at any given point in the game playing the free singleplayer campaign missions. So there aren't zero people playing it, but it's close enough that it might as well be. There is the argument that the game is functional and better than a ton of slop games on Steam that are broken or so devoid of features as to be effectively pointless. And I would agree with this. There are worse games than Stormgate. Probably, if you went deep enough down the indie rabbit hole, you could even find a worse RTS game than Stormgate. But it would take a while. I'd be interested to see someone do this as a challenge! The biggest sin of Stormgate in my opinion is the complete and utter lack of vision for what the game was actually supposed to be. It's the sheer blandness, the lack of real decision making in any aspect of the design, which makes it an irredeemably bad game in my eyes. They couldn't even decide between making a Starcraft clone or a Warcraft clone! EDIT: Or let's talk about Storm Gates themselves, the literal title of the game! What are they? In the campaign, they are a vague orange sphere portal thing that the protagonist's father was (for some reason) opening up, despite the fact that they were a literal portal to hell. Why was he doing this? Nobody knows. Some weird scientist guy was in the opening trailer laughing evily, so did he sabotage the Storm Gate somehow? Well, if you read the execrably awful Stormgate eBook novella, possibly the worst piece of fiction I've ever read in my entire life, you learn that said scientist was a) evil and b) probably controlled by a demon somehow? It's completely unclear. The only thing that's clear is that nobody designing the game cared about Storm Gates in any way. And in 1v1 mode, Storm Gates are an orange sphere portal thing that you activate by... damaging a weird shrine thing more than your opponent damaged it. And you want to do that, because if you do it fast enough then a weirdly orange-colored glowing monster pops out, and it's... under your control? For some reason? What the literal fuck? What are these shrines? Who made them? Why are the monsters that pop out the color of 1980s CRT monitors? Nobody knows or cares. A fuckload of mistakes were made which killed a lot of goodwill for sure. I think we can both agree on that. It’s a cutthroat space, it’s hard to detach players from their favourite one or two titles, so even delivering a 6 or 7/10 competent but not amazing game can still see you completely sink anyway (see - Concord) I think ZeroSpace is looking the better, more interesting game but I can absolutely see it having the same problems of dragging people away from their established favourites, especially given it has a fraction of the marketing and hype that Stormgate had, at least thus far Absolutely correct. ZeroSpace has an uphill battle ahead of it. But it's already far more successful than Stormgate ever was: better in every respect as a game, sold as a fixed-price "boxed copy" in respectable numbers instead of free-to-play hopium that Stormgate did, higher sustained player numbers, better game performance, better quality in every game mode, the list goes on and on. Day[9] recently played ZeroSpace and he gave the Early Access version a 6/10, which was kind of what Stormgate was aiming for with their Early Access release. He gave Stormgate's EA release a 1/10. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17873 Posts
On August 13 2026 03:28 Jeremy Reimer wrote: The biggest sin of Stormgate in my opinion is the complete and utter lack of vision for what the game was actually supposed to be. It's the sheer blandness, the lack of real decision making in any aspect of the design, which makes it an irredeemably bad game in my eyes. They couldn't even decide between making a Starcraft clone or a Warcraft clone! for a few years the narrative was that Activision was stupid not to approve Tim's great new RTS idea. Tim was going to prove the big evil corporation wrong. Welp, so much for that. It is hilarious watching so many employees whine about ATVI and then flounder when they leave the nest. Bungie left Activision and it was supposed to turn Destiny 2 into a great success. ATVI as a publisher specializing in expertly monetizing games. Once Bungie left ATVI and was given unbridled freedom to do anything they wanted ... this is what happened... @16:52 is pretty funny. Bungie invented the nested Battle Pass! | ||
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
On August 13 2026 11:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote: It is hilarious watching so many employees whine about ATVI and then flounder when they leave the nest. Bungie left Activision and it was supposed to turn Destiny 2 into a great success. ATVI as a publisher specializing in expertly monetizing games. Once Bungie left ATVI and was given unbridled freedom to do anything they wanted ... this is what happened... Oh, man, don't get me started down the rabbit hole that is Bungie. The company is the master of the ten-second gameplay loop. Its moment-to-moment gunplay is among the best in the industry. But the higher up the loop tier you go, the more lost Bungie seems to get, to the point where they abandoned Destiny 2 in order to focus on a PVP-only extraction shooter that struggles to get 4,000 concurrent players five months after launch. Whoops. Somehow, though, the founders managed to walk away with tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars, after selling promises of a Live Services Dream Future to Sony. | ||
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SoleSteeler
Canada5472 Posts
But add in terribly mismanaged finances, pointless, avoidable scandal after scandal, and their assumption that the community would love them and fund them forever and... well, this is what we get. I think there were probably a lot of talented devs on their team but after the past few years, I really blame Tim Morten the most for the state the game ended up in, lol. They definitely didn't have much of a vision beyond "we want to capitalize on SC2 dying and the fact that most RTS gamers are 30+ with money who will always support us, meanwhile let's make it appeal to the younger generation to make it big". SC2 went through a rough patch after "no more Blizz support" but it's still stable. Kids don't even know what an RTS is and have probably a 1,000 times more options for games than we did when we were young. It's crazy to think they could get "50% of our WoL playerbase". No one is playing it now because the game is dead - there's no support, no updates, no one to play with. Nothing to play for. It doesn't mean that there weren't a small group of people that enjoyed the game at the time. Personally I played more in 2024/early 2025 and my own hope was squashed repeatedly as the patches they were releasing were "good" but very clearly not good enough, and it became clearer and clearer they wouldn't turn things around. This game will easily go down as one of the biggest disappoints for me - even until the end a lot of their news/YouTube videos were still getting 10s of thousands of views (I think, too lazy to check) - meaning there were still lots of people following the game. Removing creeps and adding stormgates isn't going to change everyone's opinion of the game. I still got my money's worth and (honest to god) really enjoyed my ~200 hours of gameplay and watching tournaments. Oh well. I really hope ZS takes off! | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17873 Posts
On August 13 2026 12:10 Jeremy Reimer wrote: Somehow, though, the founders managed to walk away with tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars, after selling promises of a Live Services Dream Future to Sony. i don't think it is some mystery. Guys like Rob Pardo and James Jones (bungie founder) were the lead singers and songwriters of rock bands that brought in many billions. Of course, competing record labels will throw tonnes of money at them years later hoping to reclaim old glory. Even little Tim pulled off the same trick. Hell, look at all the money they threw into in 2004 Eddie Valen ... a psychotic drug addict who peaked in 1982. Once a guitar hero starts playing the piano.. you know it is over. LOL. Looking back, if it were 2004 again, i'd also load up a truck full of money and dump in these guys' back yards. You can be completely and totally fucked up in 10,000 ways. If you can bring in the money... no one cares. This how the founders of old game studios make so much cash claiming they'll bring back past glory. | ||
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
Er... the trailer for Game of Thrones: War for Westeros comes out. And all of a sudden everyone has to crawl out of the woodwork with their own personal conspiracies about how maybe, just maybe... it might possibly be made with the Snowplay Engine. Of course there is no evidence for any of this. The trailer looks strangely similar to the last RTS that Playside released, in 2025. Streamers with early access to the limited gameplay demo report that it "runs well on their computer" which obviously means it's not Snowplay.  But hope reigns eternal! What this hope even is, isn't super clear. But it's there! The final, last hope, of... something? ![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/pwBa7ad.png) | ||
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crablogic
29 Posts
Morten's been silent for a while now, but I did see that he's now a mentor at some Indian game dev organization: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbbDtiuoYub/ ![[image loading]](https://scontent-bos5-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.82787-15/756833040_17934756438347016_4089620723144452042_n.webp?_nc_cat=109&ig_cache_key=Mzk1Mjc2OTQyMTc1MzI4OTYyNw%3D%3D.3-ccb7-5&ccb=7-5&_nc_sid=58cdad&efg=eyJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6IkZFRUQueHBpZHMuMTQ0MC5zZHIucmVndWxhcl9waG90by5DMyJ9&_nc_ohc=c59HWIfrC4oQ7kNvwH9KMf1&_nc_oc=Adr6n-_6HumuZWmJylLjhZSSlVP_ql4rJUfTn9ZcNPVMDg9eNkR3bk0SMljLTrGvcRsU7SIL3SU_98pCxWs0lFaw&_nc_ad=z-m&_nc_cid=0&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_gid=leNCC6sCXjgnOJ1PeD9MIw&_nc_ss=7a22e&oh=00_AQE1SKGiorayfM_voXc3g0rNaNr_5UGvO1UkF7_0Yoe7MQ&oe=6A965DD7) No idea if it's a full-time job, retirement pastime, or what. Of course, this is just one account with a few thousand followers and it could be BS. | ||
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
Seriously, that's what the organization does. It provides a "scholarship" for aspiring young game developers, but to get the money you have to actually move to Saudi Arabia. Presumably only men are allowed. EDIT: Whoops, I googled GDAI, and despite using the same purple theme as the Saudi Arabian one (which was a thing that Tim Morten did), it's actually the Game Development Institute of India, which is a different thing, and I think it's actually aimed at people who are already living in India. Tim gave a talk in India for this group some time before Stormgate released as well. This was the infamous talk where he repeated, in exactly the same order, all the exact same talking points that voidlegacy had posted on Reddit a month earlier. | ||
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PurE)Rabbit-SF
United States758 Posts
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
On August 28 2026 13:09 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote: damn.....how is this thread still going , giggles I really thought it was all over. I had resigned to it all being over. A sad end to the epic Stormgate saga, just trickling out due to complete lack of interest from anyone. But then... | ||
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ChillFlame
331 Posts
Because if it did, Tim would've shouted about it at every corner to get more PR. Maybe even sell it or license it to someone else. Might not be the case if Tim is contractually obligated to stay silent. | ||
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Jeremy Reimer
Canada1223 Posts
On August 29 2026 13:49 ChillFlame wrote: My bet is GoT RTS doesn't use Snowplay. Because if it did, Tim would've shouted about it at every corner to get more PR. Maybe even sell it or license it to someone else. Might not be the case if Tim is contractually obligated to stay silent. The press kit that Playside sent out to the streamers mentioned that the game runs on the Unreal Engine with a "special in-house engine developed for the simulations". ![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/bkYXs3Z.jpeg) That's pretty definitive proof that it's Playside's engine and not Snowplay, but I suppose technically there could have been a license from Frost Giant that simply transferred ownership of all the source code and didn't require any acknowledgement of the source afterwards. Kinda hard to imagine that happening, though. I'm not sure Frost Giant's investors would have signed off on that. Still, I guess we won't know definitively until the game is released, some time in early 2027. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27404 Posts
On August 29 2026 13:49 ChillFlame wrote: My bet is GoT RTS doesn't use Snowplay. Because if it did, Tim would've shouted about it at every corner to get more PR. Maybe even sell it or license it to someone else. Might not be the case if Tim is contractually obligated to stay silent. Yeah there’d be about 45 LinkedIn posts if it did | ||
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PurE)Rabbit-SF
United States758 Posts
Now let's rewind, and look at the game again............. There might be many thing that's actually interesting about the game itself, and it might not even be a trash as people say so at all, but many public opinion and the fact Stormgate had VC money, so it had to chase ARR and all that jazz, and a high maintenance salary for the crew.......... So can we really say that stormgate was a failure and pin it on the design of game itself??? Maybe not so much.......... What if...... just let's exercise what are the assumptions, and what are the premises, and what are the actual fact, this might be fun as hell. | ||
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