On February 22 2024 22:26 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Frost Giant is raising investment money via a new company called "StartEngine". A small word of caution about this organization. They claim the founder of StartENgine, Howard Marks, co-founded Activision. Uhhh, that is a lie. I am an avid video game historian. I know all about the start of Activision and I've known about it for 20+ years. Howard Marks and Citibank's high yield Debt Program have nothing to do with the start and founding of Activision.
I align politlcally with Kevin O'leary in a great many ways. Unfortunately, Kevin O'Leary is lying. When called on this lie I have no doubt O'Leary will claim he didn't know. Anyhow, Activision was founded by Pitfall! maker David Crane, RoboTank designer Alan Miller, Chess on the Atari 2600 designer Bob Whitehead, and money man Larry Kaplan. Howard Marks was managing high yield DEBT for a bank. Larry Kaplan got the 1 million to start Activision from Sutter Hill Ventures. They quickly paid it back and were 100% independent of any outside money orgs or venture capital people. Pitfall! was an absolute, off-the-charts smash hit. Activision didn't need any outside money.
If they are now going to re-write history ... I'm calling BS.
I've been following Kevin O'Leary for over 20 years. He will very, very occasionally bullshit. Unfortunately, this is one of those times.
On February 23 2024 22:50 Harris1st wrote: Still not sure what everyones problem with the visual is btw. It's an art style. I like SG much more than ZS visuals. It's purely subjective (as long as you can see whats going on that is) isn't it?
It is subjective but IMO the graphics also reflect other things, like the general lack of focus for the game.
Some people might be off-put by the cartoonish graphic design and comedic elements (chickens with helmets?) which would indicate that the game is targeted at a younger audience, but at the same time you have some pretty serious blood on the ground, demons etc. which definitely don't fit with this style.
There are more examples of this lack of direction and haphazard ideas. Terrans having robots and advanced tech yet still you have a unit that's using bardiches, why? I guess it can be attributed to poor design within the lore department that could help drive the project. With good lore/background you can much easier come up with interesting unit ideas, characters for the campaign etc.
In general I like the science-fantasy genre if it's done right (and for that you need good lore and world-building). This isn't.
On February 23 2024 23:31 gTank wrote: Not easy to watch it, also looks worse than Warcraft 3 to me. Was a pain to play it in 4k even. Also, not fun enough mechanics imo, though there are no Tier 3 units yet.
Some say there arent many units left adding. Vanguard complete and infernal maybe a t3 unit.
Info from famous SG streamers.
That would be quite disappointing. Feel like now is the time to be experimenting with crazy units for any of the races.
While Reddit can be an echochamber, I think the majority of the feedback I have seen has been negative. And it's to be expected, because of my understanding of what people enjoy in games, I would have been surprised to see the opposite reaction.
The best-case scenario Stormgate was that with a further 12-18 months development including graphical + sound finetuning + several larger unit redesigns + pathing improvements, that it could have been a superior alternative to Sc2 and perhaps a better co-op experience could attract more casuals.
But with only 6 months till "release", the game won't even be a clear upgrade to Sc2. I don't see how they are gonna make enough revenue giving that they are burning hrough $6M+ per year. To make that much money, the game would need to be a in a vastly better state.
One can hope that the learnings from this would be to not attempt to do a starcraft 2.5 and instead attempt to reinnovate the genre. The RTS genre as we know it cannot attract a larger audience. So don't invest $40M + into this type of game.
However, more likely I have to assume it will prevent any future type of (competitively minded) RTS game to generate any type of funding in the future.
Victory Games was a new studio. Westwood/EALA got nuked by EA after C&C4 did poorly in 2010. Jon Van Canegham founded and owned Victory Games. Tim Morten was his #1 creative.
Victory Games wasn't a start-up. It was an EA-owned studio formed by EA from the remnants of the RTS team of EALA.
I am not sure if adding bad ass Tier 3 or a few more units will change much in the larger picture for me.
I was thinking why when I play WC3 or SC2 I don't really compare the two directly. Both games can coexist and I don't feel like there is a choice to be made, because they are so much different and both have their strong identity and unique feeling.
But when I play SG I can't help but constantly compare it to my experience in WC3 and SC2, because everything seems to be just recycled ideas and the same problems to solve. Sadly SG loses in both comparisons really hard, it's not even close.
On February 23 2024 22:50 Harris1st wrote: Still not sure what everyones problem with the visual is btw. It's an art style. I like SG much more than ZS visuals. It's purely subjective (as long as you can see whats going on that is) isn't it?
SG has this softness filter applied to everything, it looks horrendous to me.
Look at here, where the bobs are significantly blurrier than the building. (which itself isn't extremely sharp)
This probably shows it the best, there's a clear difference in clarity: White health bar > buildings (not the towers) > units > terrain https://youtu.be/b_lyyzooWs8?t=1234
League of legends don't have the high sharpness graphic as well, but champions have far more details and it made it works well even with so much effects going on, because champions are the key units and distinctly different than the other units.
Zerospace at its worst still has pretty good clarity
On February 22 2024 00:50 JimmyJRaynor wrote: News of Frost Giant starting an investment drive on StartEngine spread far and wide. Numerous giant video game news sites and even GamesIndustry.biz reported on it. And yet, we have many big name Stormgate streamers who have not commented a single word on this. The silence is deafening.
I have a hunch ZombieGrub is going to have something to say about it though. I will be watching the next broadcast of "Real Talk Strategy".
Grubby also did a critical video on it. Not a Stormgate streamer but certainly a relevant name.
They had $37m!? I was under the impression they had only the kickstarter money and the game seemed... like, yeah. $2m made sense for what they've delivered, but boy that's a ridiculous number for what is clearly a AA studio.
On February 22 2024 00:50 JimmyJRaynor wrote: News of Frost Giant starting an investment drive on StartEngine spread far and wide. Numerous giant video game news sites and even GamesIndustry.biz reported on it. And yet, we have many big name Stormgate streamers who have not commented a single word on this. The silence is deafening.
I have a hunch ZombieGrub is going to have something to say about it though. I will be watching the next broadcast of "Real Talk Strategy".
They had $35m!? I was under the impression they had only the kickstarter money and the game seemed... like, yeah. $2m made sense for what they've delivered, but boy that's a ridiculous number for what is clearly a AA studio.
I think that if they were AA studio they probably wouldn't be located in SoCal and ask for such horrendous amounts of money.
On February 22 2024 00:50 JimmyJRaynor wrote: News of Frost Giant starting an investment drive on StartEngine spread far and wide. Numerous giant video game news sites and even GamesIndustry.biz reported on it. And yet, we have many big name Stormgate streamers who have not commented a single word on this. The silence is deafening.
I have a hunch ZombieGrub is going to have something to say about it though. I will be watching the next broadcast of "Real Talk Strategy".
Wait, they went from "fully funded to release" to "fully funded until early access release"?
That's a pretty big twist. Early access is the norm nowadays and it makes sense for an independent studio, but that's pretty damning to hear.
What's the point in doing a kickstarter now if the game is available this summer? Their monetisation plan is to have paid campaigns, skins etc, which will surely be starting as soon as early access begins.
Wait, they went from "fully funded to release" to "fully funded until early access release"?
That's a pretty big twist. Early access is the norm nowadays and it makes sense for an independent studio, but that's pretty damning to hear.
What's the point in doing a kickstarter now if the game is available this summer? Their monetisation plan is to have paid campaigns, skins etc, which will surely be starting as soon as early access begins.
The point is now to squeeze out every penny to keep the lights on for an additional month or two.
If you assume a burn rate of around 1 mil/month, it is hard to see that they will deliver all the stuff planned for release (3v3, 3 races, full T3, editor, etc).
Worst case: 1,5 finished races, a few missions into gg this summer Best case: Early Access build is the bomb, attracts enough people to sustain the cost of building campaigns and running the show
At least their late pledge Indigogo campaign does fine, they earned a whole day of operation already (~30k $)
Investing in the company sounds like a really stupid idea since I can't see paid campaigns and skins making enough to keep it going.As i said 6 months ago they're planning on shipping the map editor with the game so people may choose to play free custom made campaigns rather than pay for the official ones.As for the skins, the units need to be easily differentiated in multiplayer games (which is an issue as is with the blur).Maybe they can release custom DLC units for the singleplayer.
There is no way the map editor will be in before tier 3 surely? (Tier 3 is not confirmed for early access, only the third race)
I personally feel they will start cutting free features. 3v3 can just be a custom map they make so that's easy to keep. But map editor is a big job so they will cut it, or it will be half baked like the game is.
The open beta didn't exactly make anyone hyped, like everyone has heard of stormgate yet not many people interested, so it's not that they didn't get the word out, it's just when people see the game people go zzzz me included so i'm biased.
I have a super hard time seeing them complete the game which would take years and a playerbase of 3-10k people is not going to fund this extremely high spending company.
Stormgate has over 500k wishlists on Steam. It has risen a lot in wishlist ranks after Steam Next Fest. It was 2nd most played demo on Steam Next Fest and showed good player retention (meaning people enjoyed playing the game for the most part). If you think "not many people are interested" in it, you are living in a bubble.
On February 25 2024 00:12 _Spartak_ wrote: Stormgate has over 500k wishlists on Steam. It has risen a lot in wishlist ranks after Steam Next Fest. It was 2nd most played demo on Steam Next Fest and showed good player retention (meaning people enjoyed playing the game for the most part). If you think "not many people are interested" in it, you are living in a bubble.
It had 5000 viewers on twitch at best, not exactly hyped, it's free to play and has massive attention that's why it has many wishlists, I still think they will be between 3-10k players after the first weeks
Hype doesn't explain the increase in wishlist numbers after Steam Next Fest was released. It also hit 10k viewers on twitch multiple times, most recently during the finals of the EGCTV tournament.
I think Spartak is correct in that there’s at least a decent degree of interest. Not enough to be an SC2 or a WC3 killer perhaps, but there does appear to be a non-negligible amount.
Also we haven’t really had a discussion on how big it actually needs to be to be the next competitive RTS, or keep the lights on at Frost Giant. My intuition is the numbers on the former are going to be way lower than the latter, but obviously fully depend on the latter being met, at least initially.
There’s also seemingly some interest from people outside of TL or r/Starcraft, or the WC3 community, just looking at wish list numbers. But by virtue of us being over here, that entire demographic of folks who could be RTS newbies, or never really played competitively but that Stormgate has interested in some way, isn’t one we really hear from at all. I’d be interested to!
I think we also have to draw some kind of line between us hardcore RTS fans who’ve kept a pretty consistent eye, and the shift from it being communicated as ‘fully funded’, to it being ‘fully funded to early access’.
That’s made a huge difference for me, from others because it’s conceivably the difference between ‘this is still very much an unpolished diamond that they’ll eventually sort, there’s potential there’ to ‘this may conceivably launch in an unfinished state and never be fully finished’.
If we crudely break down the rough attitudes in this forum based purely on the game, and how that announcement would impact their position, I guess it would be thus.
1. It’s too much like SC2/WC3, I’ll probably just keep playing those - No change 2. It’s not like BW, I’ll keep playing BW - No change 3. Yeah it’s similar to aforementioned past titles, but I’m burned out playing those and excited for something new - Negative change 4. I like to play a lot of different RTS games and here’s a new one to sink my teeth into - Negative change
EPT
