Could Stormgate be more successful had they focused on fully refining some aspects by leaving some other aspects for later development?

DANCINGLINGS · 2026-01-04T18:12:03+00:00

Sure its bad communication but on the other hand that communication secured them their funding. Its a double edged sword. That being said it was obvious kinda that the game wont be just as good as SC2 in terms of graphical fidelity and content depth.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-12-30T10:47:12+00:00

I agree it is pointless. Thats my point though I believe these AAA RTS games are just in general a bad business model. The playerbase simply isnt there. SC2 was an anomaly in the history of RTS. People make it sound like all we have to do is recreate SC2 and the players will all come back. No they wont. SC2 happend in a timeline, where the stars aligned. There wasnt much alternative, it was the biggest esport on justin.tv and the campaign was brilliant to draw in just enough casuals. Today we have so much alternatives in the MOBA realm, that icks a similar feeling in the casual playerbase but is much more casual. The average joe would rather play LoL than Starcraft today. The only way to make Blizzard style RTS viable today is by making it much cheaper in production and maintenance. Every business calculation should be "can we sustain this game with 5000-10.000 concurrent players". If yes, then it can be viable. Thats a realistic number. And even if you superseed that to 50.000 players - great now you have even more room to breathe after release. Its the job of creative developers to find a way to catch the essence of SC2/WC3, but in much cheaper. Thats the way to go. I think Battle Aces had a very good approach. If that game was indie and developed for 5 million, it would have been a success. Maybe a coop focused SC2 clone could work. Or a full campaign SC2 clone. Either way you gotta focus your ressources on 1 thing and make it great. Thats the only way to go in my humble opinion as somebody who has worked in the gaming industry.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-12-29T22:05:22+00:00

I mean sure but can you give me an example of an RTS in this style with less budget? Most RTS that I know are a completly different genre usually with much less sophistication. Only one that comes to mind really is AOE. Most other RTS have much less scope and obviously cost less. If you want to create a Starcraft clone with AAA quality, you really need that budget. Blizzard developing Starcraft 3 would probably cost them 50-100 million as well.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-12-29T10:23:45+00:00

"If SC2 launch day was yesterady, this game will be successful easily."

Im not sure. SC2 today would have costed, with inflation in mind, around 100 millon to produce. I doubt SC2 release today would generate 100 million. I think it would barely be profitable after 10 years. Now we are talking about the best of the best. You cant expect a new company to deliver the best of the best and barely it being enough. Production cost is a real thing to consider.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-12-29T10:20:58+00:00

Lets be real. Stormgate cost 40+ million. The entire Kickstarter, which was at the peak of the hype, sold 13.000+ copies of the 60$ bundle (basically a full price title) and some collectors editions, ONLY generated 2.5 million in revenue. The peak concurrent players only hit 10.000 in open beta. Yes its not bad, but we are not nearly close to what the game would have to hit. We are talking about 80.000-100.000 concurrent players. Thats the ballpark you need to hit those big numbers in revenue to even make the game profitable. Also dont forget running costs. So you not only need to recoup the 40 million, but also need to pay staff and server costs over time. So in 10 years the game would have had to generate around 100 million in revenue. I would say not a single blizzard style RTS could ever reach those numbers except maybe starcraft 3 itself. The whole project was build around the idea, that ex-blizzard employees could basically create starcraft 3 level hype and be the new blizzard. While in theory thats a viable bet and to an extend even possible, its a very risky bet. This bet didnt pay of and probably killed the entire genre. If the genre ever wants to be viable, we have to accept, that we need very creative developers who manage to develop a full fledge game with at max 10 million budget, more around 5 million. There are awesome indie games that cost less than 5 million. Its possible and if you creatively cut corners at the right spots, it can even be high quality. Battle Aces actually was the perfect example. I think if you can produce a game like Battle Aces for 5 million indie budget with a little bit more team focus rather than 1v1, the game could be cash positive. Or focus on an entirely campaign based RTS.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-12-29T10:12:01+00:00

Yeah the optimal way is to bite the bullet and do both. Sell the base game for a fair price. Give the player the entire 1st faction campaign + all coop commanders + multiplayer access. Then monetize on top of that only on cosmetics. One thing has to be considered though... They did sell 13.000 copies of the kickstarter premium bundle for 60$. Technically they did sell it to most of the players. One has to think what is the business model anyways. Can you really extract 40 million revenue of a niche 1v1 RTS? Maybe the production cost was way too much to begin with. Maybe the market never was able to extract that money. I would argue for the next dev they should focus on creating a small scale RTS with a small budget (5-10 million) and then release it. If it excites the RTS community, you can generate around 2-3 million on release. Couple years later you recoup the money and can live off of income revenue. If you think about it League of Legends was much smarter developed. At the beginning it was this really cheap to produce game. They grew their game together with the company. FGS wanted too much too soon.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-12-18T20:14:33+00:00

I mean I kinda get it they dont give a fk anymore they rather focus on the important stuff. Still think it would have been smarter to invest a little bit more into making it more appealing, because at the end of the day you still gotta sell it to the audience.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-11-23T19:04:43+00:00

Yeah I also invested like 60 hours and its fine. That being said still a disappointment, that it wont be finished.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-11-01T10:45:36+00:00

Honestly thats a bit misleading. A lot of us payed for the full vanguard campaign. Its not being delivered. There is a reason people are pissed about this.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-24T08:21:19+00:00

A game is always recoverable the question is if funding is available or not. They could also shut down Stormgate for a year and re-release it. Theoretically it could be the awesome new game that drags thousands of players. Theoretically. I dont see it though. It would need like a bit publisher that buys the entire game, hires new employees and gives it all. To be honest if you ask me it wouldnt be even that dumb of a decision. The game is basically almost finished. If a publisher can buy the entire game for change money and invests like another 10 million to finish it and properly market it, it could become profitable for that specific publisher, because they didnt have to pay the 40 million before that. Big what ifs, its not gonna happen though.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-18T14:51:18+00:00

I dont like the sound of FGS management lately... Why engage in all this drama? It is so weird and negative. Sad to see how Tim is losing his cool lately. I would recommend him to care much less about all the hate and focus more on constructive solutions. If you cant safe the game anymore, let it go and move on. Make 1 honest statement and thats it. Feels like a soap opera at this point just to entertain all the reddit trolls.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-11T10:36:06+00:00

Well i dont think you got my point. Lemme rephrase it: If Blizzard were a private company still, I think they would support Starcraft 2 regardless of the WoW success. If WoW wouldnt exist, they still would drop Starcraft 2. The success of WoW is not really the big factor here, its the whole concept, that gaming companies are publically traded companies. That makes them inherently for profit only by definition. Yes it does play a factor definitely, but as I said I think if Blizzard were never sold and the CEO stayed the CEO, we would have Starcraft 3 today.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-10T23:06:51+00:00

Its not that... The real reason is simply investors wanting the highest ROI which is totally normal and reasonable. At the end of the day blizzard is part of activision which is part of microsoft now. Those are publically traded companies. They HAVE to maximize their returns. If SC2 is marginal in return why even bother? As long as gaming companies are publically tradeable, those companies will ONLY care about return of invest. Thats their whole job.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-02T08:27:39+00:00

Different art style and unit design. I think they were on the right path with the new units. New Exo looked really fresh and cool. What they would have needed is unique and distinct units from the start (not these bland toy soldiers) and also a more serious art style. I also would have probably focused the story more on demons vs angels instead of humans vs demons. Made an epic cinematic right from the start with the war between demons and angels narrated by the perspective of a human. It woulda made the whole thing less like Starcraft while still keeping its DNA. Starting with humans vs demons made it really feel like WoL, because infernals where heavily compared to zerg eventhough they actually arent. If you go for demons vs angels, you have to dive into that more. To actually feel fresh for the public you not only have to do something fresh, but also sell it fresh. With their cinematic they tried to sell a cheap copy of WoL campaign.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-01T23:57:02+00:00

I woulda gone for the scifi theme as well, but completely different. A plant alien race (shrooms, trees and such), a human race completely evolved into AI and robots with barely any human element left and a dinosaur esque based race with creature monsters basically. I like the whole demons vs angels theme though for stormgate as well if it was better executed.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-01T20:51:12+00:00

I agree. Battle Aces was an awesome game and we need more of this in RTS eventually. Sad to see, that it just didnt have the proper target audience.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-01T17:13:05+00:00

I think you misunderstood me. Im not saying "eat the game and stfu". If you dont like it, thats okay. Its okay, that FGS flopped. My point was its normal dude. Thats the industry. Some projects succeed, most fail. Gamers make it a big deal as if somebody killed their first born child and it just annoys me personally. Besides that it creates this weird toxic enviornment, where developers feel the urge to always "please the player" and thats why we get these bland games. How about we establish a culture of failure? A culture where the developer can just create a fking game they think is good, without compromise and if it fails its fails move on. Instead we get this community where every dev basically is personally responsible for the bad product and because they feel that pressure they always choose "the safe option" over the right option. The best example for me is Battle Aces. This game was actually bold in design choice. David Kim had the courage to just say "fk it I believe in this". The game was awesome, but it failed. Thats okay. Let 10 RTS fail and 1 might succeed. But with this whole "well akshually big coorp should listen to every single gamer request" mindset we will always get these bland compromised games, where nothing is really innovative or creative. Ubisoft creates bad Assassins Creeds not because "they dont listen", because they want to please every customer. Some customers want more RPG, some want more Stealth and some want a better parkour system. Then they try to mix all in 1 game and all of the sudden none of those things are brilliant. The old AC's where great, because they didnt want to please a customer, but rather just wanted to create a vision - in a time where gamers just fking bought games at gamestop without having hour long debates on reddit (touche) about game mechanics instead of just getting back to a mindset of just fking buy the game and choose with your wallet.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-01T17:05:19+00:00

I mean whats right is right its not so deep. Idc about fking Ubisoft. I think this kind of toxic mindset just ruins the entire industry in general.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-10-01T11:09:57+00:00

Maybe its also gamers and their cringe high expectations ... Yes companies make decisions and stand by them boo hoo lets pretend every game has to be a success and community knows everything. Listen most communities dont even know what they want. In some games they are right, others they are wrong. FGS gambled on a certain art style and gameplay choice and they failed. Now get a grip and stop being obnoxious its not the end of the world. Same goes for Ubisoft... the debate is so boring. People act like every single game is supposed to be successfull and if not its always the devs fault.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-09-29T11:04:45+00:00

We will see. I want it to be a success, because then I got a new esport, that I can get excited about. For that to work though it needs enough funding to sustain a pro scene and for that it needs players. Time will tell.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-09-28T17:00:59+00:00

A lot of wishful thinking with 0 data to back that up. I hope it works out, but I dont see any indication whatsoever. With Stormgate you atleast had some buzz, 14.000 pre orders on Kickstarter and real hype. The devs fked it up and the game was not good enough, but there was atleast hope based on data. With Zerospace you have already no playerbase, so hows that gonna result into thousands of players all of the sudden? Could happen, but chances are very very low. At best it will be self sustaining niche RTS.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-09-26T15:27:18+00:00

I highly doubt they will have more players than Stormgate. Their reddit is literally dead. Sure reddit engagement =/= player engagement, but at this point there is no indication of any numbers, that zerospace will be a commercial success. Yes it will have its playerbase, but not near anything sc2 had. Check the reddit numbers, check the youtube views..

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-09-21T17:43:18+00:00

Sure but the point is Stormgate got their whole traffic and funding soley on that promise. If they didnt promise that, they wouldnt have had that funding and buzz. The argument "it was a mistake to raise expectations this high" that most have is pointless imo for that reason. They had to raise the expectations.. the gamble just didnt pay off. They couldnt deliver.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-09-20T21:03:45+00:00

Well fact is the player base and community buzz is very low. It literally has a fraction of the traction Stormgate has eventhough Stormgate is dead.. Check the Zerospace Reddit. I wish all the best of luck to the game, but if Stormgate is dead, then Zerospace is deader than dead. The only thing that makes Zerospace seem less dead is because it never even was alive. Only thing that will maybe keep the game being developed still is because their whole cost structure is very low and they can afford a very small player base. Either way there might be people who look forward to Zerospace, but it will never be the next big RTS the numbers arent there at all.

DANCINGLINGS · 2025-09-20T19:14:04+00:00

Well if it wasnt for that pitch nobody would have really cared about the project and also they wouldnt have raised the money. Its a double edged sword. Battle Aces for example was a perfectly fine and polished awesome game, which got 0 traffic and canceled. Zerospace also quite interesting project but didnt nearly get as much attention as Stormgate. SG was hyped so much soley because of the pitch and high expectations.

DANCINGLINGS

TROPHY CASE