Elemental: War of Magic - Brad Wardell Interview

John Callaham at Big Download interviews Brad Wardell.

First, you have stated that after Elemental's rocky launch in August, sales plummeted in September but have since gone up in October, November and December. Can you share any concrete unit sales for Elemental and also are you becoming more encouraged that the game will be able to be profitable in the long run?

 

Elemental's sales have closely followed the overall improvement in the game. At this point, Elemental has made a profit for us. However, in September, we made the decision that we would prefer to lose money on Elemental than betray the trust of our customers and decided to staff up and continue working on it for all of 2011 and into 2012 with a full team.

 

I anticipate that by the end of 2Q2011 Elemental will likely cross the line from being profitable to having lost money. But in the bigger picture, the value of PC gamers knowing that if they buy a game with the Stardock name on it means quality and support far outweighs the necessary loss of profitability on one title.

 

How did the hiring of Jon Shafer come about? Did he come to you or did you approach him?

 

Jon and I have known each other for some time. I was very impressed with not only some of his design decisions in Civilization V but even more so his background in being able to take game X and turn it into game Y using modding. We believe strongly that games themselves will become increasingly platforms unto themselves. We've already seen this in the 1st person shooter market and to a lesser extent with Never Winter Nights and the Blizzard engine (see DOTA). But our strategic objective is to make it so that the game system underneath Elemental can eventually be extensible enough that someone could take it and create entirely new games with it.