Friday Status Report

Wow. I mean. WOW!

What a first few days it's been.  We are very glad people like the game. It's one of those things you can never know until it's "out there".

Retail Stuff

Ah retail.  A couple weeks ago there were a lot of people who pre-ordered the digital download-only option who were upset that we were making them wait to get the game until the game was at retail.  So we took a bit of a pounding for that.  But after having taken a beating for that, as fate would have it, that is exactly what happened -- we released the digital download on February 21st as planned but general retail available remained very sketchy for an additional two days (and it's still sketchy in a number of retailers). As a result, we were able to tick off both digital downloaders and people who pre-ordered at retail.  It took some skill and hard work to manage to not have your cake or eat it but we did it.

Then there's the whole Collector's Edition fun. We were told that all pre-orders, regardless of source, in North America, would have their orders fulfilled with the Collector's Edition box. We passed this on. Naturally, only some stores are doing that. Oh, it gets better, some stores are doing it part-way. That is, they provide the technology tree poster but not the box. Oye.  So here's the thing -- anyone who pre-ordered from a retailer in North America and ended up with the regular package who wants the Tech tree poster, email us ([email protected]) and we'll mail you a tech tree poster (as we get them in) for free.  It doesn't really matter whose fault it is, at the end of the day, you bought our game and it's up to us to make sure you're happy.

Game Stuff

Luckily, the game itself has gone very well. When you spend 2 years making a game, you can never be sure how it will be received. Plus, you always worry that there's some huge bug or compatibility issue that will sneak out.  That isn't to say that the game is perfect. Nothing's more annoying (at least to me) than some developer saying how everything is perfect or saying "well it works fine on my machine". When you sell a game, it doesn't matter how well it works on the developer's machine, it matters how well it works on your machine.  So we've been living on the forums, writing down what problems people have and we expect to release our first update today.

Also, since widespread retail availability is going to be more graduated than we had expected, some people may not get their boxed game until mid next week. Apparently it's at Best Buy, Walmart (but selling out quickly at both), and a few other places but it's in various levels of quantity.  I've been assured that they're getting them out there as "fast as possible". 

We're planning to do a v1.0X build next Thursday. We don't know what's going to be in that build yet.  What we want to do is have some nice little game play tweaks and other minor changes so that people who bought it at the store and had to wait to do it have something to look forward to.  So if you already have the game, you can go onto this thread and post your ideas. 

Post Release Updates

Stardock's been making software for digital distribution for some years now.  Those of you with Object Desktop already know that we tend to update our software very often. To us, that's the whole point of digital delivery.  But in the game world, it's actually considered a negative to keep releasing updates because apparently most games only release updates to fix bugs.  Our updates will include bug fixes to be sure. But that's not what they're for.  They're to provide new features to our software based on user feedback to reward people for buying our software.  In essence, free updates ARE our copy protection.  Or more to the point, we don't need copy protection because we provide (or try to) a greater incentive for people to buy the product by giving them free updates.  Moreover, free updates helps keep people playing which helps word of mouth.  Word of mouth is what makes or breaks PC games.  So our view is that providing a stream of free updates is just good business.

Players should not feel they need to download the updates.  Many Object Desktop users will only download updates every few months. Others will update every month.  And some grab every update we make.  It's all up to you.  We plan to keep releasing updates to this game for a long time. So don't feel like you have to get these updates if you don't want.

We'll keep you posted on how things are going. Feel free to comment here or on the forums and we'll try to answer your questions.  One thing though: Please make sure you read the stickies or the Readme in the game if you run into some issue.