| Hi everyone. Today we're talking to the folks behind the new strategy game Stormgate, but first... This week's top gaming news: Four years ago, Tim Morten left his job as a production director at Blizzard Entertainment. Frustrated that the iconic studio had abandoned the real-time strategy games that had made it big, he decided to start his own company and develop them himself. In the fall of 2020, Morten co-founded Frost Giant Studios alongside another Blizzard veteran, Tim Campbell. They brought along a squad of other staffers who had worked on strategy games like Warcraft III and StarCraft II. Flush with venture capital, the company began developing a game called Stormgate, generating splashy headlines as it set out to make a spiritual successor to the RTS games that Blizzard fans loved. But this month, when Stormgate entered Steam Early Access — a label for games that are in active development — the praise was not unanimous. Although players seemed to enjoy the game's multiplayer matches, they criticized large chunks of the single-player campaign, such as the animated "cinematic" videos that played before each mission. Doom-and-gloom posts began to pop up on Reddit as fans wondered if Stormgate could ever reach the heights of Blizzard's classics — or if Frost Giant would run out of money before even finishing the game. In a recent interview, Morten told me that this release is just the beginning, and that he thinks there might be a mismatch between what Stormgate initially set out to do and what players may have expected. "I think for an Early Access game to live up to where StarCraft II is today is not a reasonable expectation," Morten said. "But it's still psychologically where people are at, and I totally get it, because we came from Blizzard and we're very much setting out to build a spiritual successor. But, yeah, I think there's some emotion behind that initial reaction." The original version of StarCraft II was in development for more than six years before its release in 2010. From there, the developers spent years updating the game with new expansions and balance tweaks. In contrast, Stormgate is in Early Access — although the label can be misleading. Some games that enter Early Access, such as the recently released Hades 2, tend to feel more polished and complete. But Stormgate is as early as it gets — the first iteration of a product that will change drastically in the coming months. "I think creatively, we feel that we need all of this feedback to get to the point that the game can really shine," Morten said. "That's very much an iterative process. It's not something we can just get right on the first swing." After all, he pointed out, the Early Access version of Baldur's Gate 3 received a 6/10 on GameSpot. The final version scored a perfect 10. Stormgate takes place in an original world that crosses sci-fi with fantasy. Players can select from one of three races, loosely based on the StarCraft archetypes — the humanoid Vanguard (Terran), the swarming Infernal (Zerg) and the high-tech Celestials (Protoss) — and use them to build up bases, train units and conquer the map. The game is free-to-play but allows players to spend money to buy heroes and unlock the campaign, which launched with six missions. The story behind the release of Stormgate raises all sorts of interesting questions. What does "Early Access" really mean today? When a new game comes out, is it really fair to compare it to competitors that have been on the market for years, or should that be irrelevant to the player, who simply wants to spend their time and money on something good? How long should players be expected to wait for a game to become great? Video games are one of the few artistic mediums that can evolve drastically over time, and the gaming landscape is full of redemption stories — games that had rocky launches but turned around. Morten hopes that fans will stick with his game, and he hopes that in the long run, Frost Giant will reward their patience. "We love them dearly, but clearly the RTS audience is a hardcore audience," he said. "They have very high expectations, and we plan to meet those expectations. But for us, Early Access is an early milestone on that journey." Development of Stormgate started in 2020. The team spent the first year coming up with concepts and building the technology behind it. The second year, they worked on a prototype that would demonstrate the game's real-time strategy warfare in action. "A lot of that just gets thrown out because it's validation work," Morten said. "But it's important to go through to get to what we need." From there, the team began working on the game in earnest. Earlier this year, Frost Giant began holding open betas for players to test out the game, and it officially launched on Early Access this month. The criticism came hot and heavy, leading Morten to write a lengthy blog post promising that they were "just getting started." Morten also addressed a lengthy Reddit post that tried to calculate the company's financial projections, calling it "wildly inaccurate." Frost Giant has around 60 employees, he said, and is funded by a mixture of venture capital, crowdfunding, foreign publishing partners and venture debt through their bank. Morten told me they have the runway to stick with Stormgate for some time to come. The early player count has not been huge, peaking at around 5,000 concurrent players, according to SteamDB. But there's plenty of time for a turnaround. "We're in a very good position relative to a typical startup," Morten said. "We do have the ability to continue to iterate on the game, to make it as good as we believe players are expecting it to be." If you're into real-time strategy games, Stormgate is worth checking out. It's an interesting blend of StarCraft II and Warcraft III with a few unique ideas of its own. Some helpful unit-training hotkeys make the typical multitasking of a strategy game feel less burdensome, and the races feel familiar but fresh. I'll probably wait for the full release to really sink my teeth in, but I've enjoyed what I've played so far. | 
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