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Hi David,

hey, I don't think we've seen "just tails" in this thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Look at my post a while back, I explicitly mentioned the buyout by Silverstar and that that's a good thing for SFI. No one here has an interested to badmouth anyone - it's just that many people are deeply concerned about the future of the Space Empires series, because they love the work of you two. I think, based on SFI's history, these concerns have to be expected. After all, *if* something goes wrong in the end, is a small developer like Malfador really in a position to finance or occupy itself with lengthy lawsuits?

I'd really appreciate if SFI were a little more open about what caused their problems. The explanation that an outside developer milked 800.000$ from them comes as a total surprise to me, and at the moment I don't really see how this could have happened. I just don't see any developer involved who even was in a position to demand that much money from SFI. (SFI didn't have so many successful outside developers besides Stardock, and Stardock didn't do such a thing, they are the ones who didn't get paid). To be honest, to me the explanation that SFI's cash-monkey in-house development used up all this money to produce games that didn't nearly generate enough revenue, sounds much more likely. Also I wonder, if SFI's financial breakdown can be explained so easily by this so far rather mysterious third party, then why weren't the developers who waited (and are still waiting) for their royalties told about it? I'm not saying that it's impossible, but please understand, from my perspective the details as of now don't fit together very well.

Anyway, the decision to go with SFI has been made, and so we can't do anything else but keeping our fingers crossed that things will turn out the way you hope. And that's exactly what I'll do. Fortunately, there's no one making ridiculous announcements like "SFI are eeeevil, I won't buy anything from them", so even if people are skeptical about SFI's trustworthiness, this won't hurt sales.

I certainly will buy SEV, no matter who distributes it. What I heard about the game so far sounds great. I just hope that you and Aaron really get the money you deserve for your outstanding, dedicated work.

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It seems to me that if Malfador want to change of distributor, well, that's his business. As a grognard, I'll still check Shrapnell, Matrix and Stardock on a regular basis anyway.

However, I do question the wisdom of going from direct sales to channel sales for a niche product. As I recall the mass of sales for Gal Civ were done via resellers (their 100000 copies sold) but the money came almost exclusively from direct sales. I hope to be wrong, but I fear Malfador is heading for a world of pain.

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I've heard many excuses from Strategy First why they couldn't pay us at Stardock the hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties, but never have I heard anything about some rogue third party developer screwing them of $800k or whatever.

I do NOT think Strategy First is a dishonest company. I actually like the people who work there. But Strategy First has a LOT of people that they owe money to. Millions of dollars are owed to various people and companies.

With Galactic Civilizations, Stardock developed the game on its own. It did most of the box design. It did most of the marketing. It handled virtually all the support. It made the demo. It distributed the demo onto sites. It created and maintained the website for the game. It handled the distribution of game updates (including paying for all the bandwidth).

In short, Strategy First's contribution to the success of Galactic Civilizations was minimal IMO. They essentially took our game, put it in a box, and turned it over to Encore to distribute into the stores. And then only have paid a fraction of the royalties that they owe. Which we find pretty maddening considering how much of their job we did for them.

I think they have made a good faith attempt to try to pay us what they can. But at Stardock, we don't mess with royalty money owed to others. When we have collected money that is to be paid as a royalty to a third party, it is seperated from our general fund precisely so that we don't get tempted to spend money that should be reserved for third parties. That's what Strategy First should have done in my opinion. But they didn't.

And Stardock isn't the only ones who were hurt by Strategy First's financial short-falls. And there's no reason to think that the same thing won't happen again.

I just hope the author of Space Empires V isn't choosing publishers for the wrong reasons. If he thinks that Galactic Civilizations was successful thanks to Strategy First, he's wrong IMO.

Galactic Civilizations succeeded because:

(a) It's a good game.
(b) It happened to come out right when Master of Orion 3 came out which was not well received by fans.
(c) It had very good word of mouth
(d) It got very good reviews (which, btw, Stardock was the one who sent the game out to most of the reviewers who reviewed the game)
(e) Its developer provided a year+ of FREE updates to the game to keep it fresh and new.
(f) The distributor, Encore, was able to get it into lots of stores adn thus capitalize and A,B,C,D and E.

That isn't to say that Strategy First won't pay the Space Empires V developer. I have no idea. But if he's counting on them to make Space Empires V a "big hit" then past performance should be considered.

-
Brad Wardell
Designer of Galactic Civilizations
http://www.galciv.com

Incidentally, for Galactic Civilizations II we're publishing it ourselves and have had no trouble getting contracts for most of the major retail stores negotiated.

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No need to spill the beans.
I have personally sold at least 3 copies of SEIV for you...word of mouth works best!

That, and good reviews from people who care. Like underdogs.org...

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newest rumor/truth, Sega just bought out Creative Assembly, (There goes the Total War games down the tubes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif )

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I agree with you completely Psyringe!

I am glad to see Brad stopping in. One of the things I enjoy about you Brad is your entrenched in the community more then I have ever seen any game company owner or CEO has in the past. I have been around this industry from the very beginnings. Talking about the early and late 70's.

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Hell, this looks like it's going to be a bad choice, I'd say if you can change back, go ahead, but in the end it's your game.

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I am intrigued by the discussion of marketing in this thread. How did I “discover” this game? Back when I had a boring chemical sales job, a weekly search on CNET’s Downloads netted SE 3. Downloaded demo, loved it, sent demo to all family & friends who enjoy that type of game, eventually bought full game. What marketing was that? Most of the games at that time on CNET were garbage, so a few lines of description in that sea of trash was nothing that any marketer to be proud of.

In the “business” I was an “inside sales” contact. Already bought product, and likely to buy again, as are most of us who are fans of SE. I received an email from MM when one of the SEIV demos came out, downloaded gold demo from CNET (again sent to all family & friends who enjoy this type of game). Liked it even better than SE III, bought it and made sure all said family and friends bought a copy of their own to stop sponging off of my copy and to support Mr. Hall. With all due respect, how are those 10 sales a plus for anyone’s marketing department? Inside sales are easy to close.

Now where does marketing come in? After enjoying many hours learning not to right click in SEIV, I read the book that came with the game. The other book-not the manual-the sales one. It was near Christmas and relatives were inquiring what I wanted. Dungeon Odyssey caught my attention. So off to the Shrapnel web page. That’s marketing. Getting someone to buy your product that would not have otherwise. Kudos to whoever designed that book. You got the sale.

I wonder how much cross-over Strategy First is expecting to get from the SE audience, or if their marketing is even considering it.

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Based on Brad's comments, many of his feelings on why his game did well should be consistent with SE:V when it's released, so perhaps SE:V will do well regardless of who publishes it.

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Yeah, but what if it does well and Malfador still doesn't get any money fron SF? That's what I'm worried about.