Slashdot Mirror
Elixir Studios Closes Its Doors
Another development studio has closed up shop, with British company Elixir laying off staff and closing down development. Elixir has published two titles, the political sim Republic and the mad scientist strategy title Evil Genius. The cancellation of an upcoming project forced the company to make a hard decision. From the article: "I'm very proud of what all the staff at Elixir have achieved and the games we produced...We gave it everything we had but ultimately it wasn't quite enough. It seems that today's games industry no longer has room for small independent developers wanting to work on innovative and original ideas. Perhaps there is no longer any need for them."
It was a neat concept and was fun, but I found it becoming fairly monotonus after awhile. I'm sorry they're going out of business, I would have liked to have seen more games from this company. I might have to look for a copy of Republic and give it a try.
Well, it did. Sorry. The concept was good, but the execution fell flat. Building your lair and hiring goons was cool and all, but that seemed to be the end of it. To get anything done you just placed goons on a map of the world and waited while tehy did their evil things. After a while, it became very boring and pointless.
Am I sorry to see Elixar go? Yes and no. They did not really make good games, but who knows, maybe they would have came out with something.
"It seems that today's games industry no longer has room for small independent developers wanting to work on innovative and original ideas. Perhaps there is no longer any need for them." It is quite sad how little chance small independent developers really have in today's game industry, however I don't think many would agree with saying that there's no need for them. Actually, having seen Evil Genius in Wal-Mart, it makes me wonder what the definition of a small independent developer is these days. Now what I'd consider small independent developers would be those responsible for games like Gish, Alien Hominid, or Darwinia. And, from what I heard Evil Genius was a great idea that suffered from some serious issues later on, such as trying to keep track of what your minions were doing around the world. I guess when you start working out a publishing deal even small independent developers can easily get pushed into completing and selling something that isn't necessarily 'done' in their eyes.
You get what you give. They sure did come up with some very unique concepts, however, they weren't very fun to play. As much as I hate (read: hate, hate, hate, hate, hate) the Sims, it is an incredibly original concept. I remember watching the trailer that came on a couple other Maxis products years before the Sims was released, and I thought, "Jeeze, this is gonna be crappy. Gimme more SimCity" Boy was I wrong. (Again, I don't like it, but I understand it's level of innovation).
Point is, there is plenty of room in the world for unique and original games (*koff*Katamari*koff*), however, you also need to make them fun. This is the element that was sorely lacking from the two games I played from Elixir. The presentation was fantastic, but it seems to take more than a 95% failure rate for companies to realize that is the least important factor if gameplay is neglected.
It is a game, after all. If it doesn't feel like you're playing a game, then you're probably not playing it.
Digital Sailor
Dear Elixir,
Please open source your games so that your fans may continue to enjoy them, or modify and adapt them. The benefits will surely outway the remaining royalities/profits from keeping these games as commercial ventures.
I downloaded the demo version when it first came out. I think it was fun for about 2 minutes until I had to micro-manage everything. While it was a very cool concept and definitely had potential the execution unfortunately just wasn't there.
Ultimately I gave up and uninstalled it.
As for the comment regarding the lack of need for smaller indepedant game developers.. well I call bullshit on that. Just because 1 company fails at producing games that people will buy and enjoy does not mean that all companies will fall into the same boat. Those that can come out with games that are actually FUN TO PLAY (gasp!) should do well.
Until they are eaten up by some bigger player who will then make sequel after sequel spewing out the same regurgitated crap with "All new features!"
I don't understand...they have to close down because their title was canceled? By whom? Their publisher? If that is the case, then that means all of their paychecks were coming from the publisher since they didn't have enough saved up from previous games. The term 'Independent Game developer' has been warped in this case. They were more like contractors. When I hear 'Independent', I picture it meaning you are 'Not Dependant' on other sources, like income from a publisher. 'Small' means your team is small enough that you can support them, and thought I read somewhere they had about 40 members.
Dude, we heard you the first 1000 times. You know that trolls always lose the argument, right?
Republic really targets a hardcore gamer group that isn't high in number. In so many ways it reminds me of a simulation version of "State of Emergency" except with alot less action.
Both these games strike me as failing for similar reasons. Yes, they had a premise that they execute awesomely - and in both cases, literally beautifully, too. Evil Genius was, "Hey, let's make you feel like you're in a 60's movie as the villain!" I defy anyone with a reasonable experience (ie, could spot the experience, had a monitor plugged in, got the game to start up... eccet) to state in this objective, Evil Genius was anything other than a total and resounding success.
It was definately the "where do we go from here?" bit that sort of made the actual "Do I pay for this?" experience fail. The problem wasn't the caliber of your idea. I don't think I saw a single advert for it, but every gamer I knew was talking about it. To borrow a snarkism, you had us, but you lost us. If nothing else, that should definately reasonate as a success for a studio other than the Big X (solve for number of major studios like Blizzard, EA...)
Should this be seen as another reason to push for online distrubution (like steam), rather than the traditional publishing model?.
Having played EG, and Republic, whilst not perfect games they were solid, however it was clear these games were never intended for mass market consumption, and were clearly aimed at a niche. Niche though appears to be a dirty word amongst the largely fatcat publishing industry today.
I dont like Valves steam personally (mostly due to its over integration), however it does work, perhaps it would be in the interest of smaller niche developers to look into similar systems while they still are afloat?.
On a different note, I had the pleasure to contact Elixir (with questions with respect to a university research project), and was shocked at how approachable and helpfull they were in responding, going above and beyond the expected level of response - providing me with a wealth of advice and documentation, in contrast ot others who failed to respond. Sad to see them go.
The game isn't trying to be every other RTS on the market; the game would also have been much easier/too easy with hotkeys - far as I know, the developers intended the gesture system to add pressure in crunch situations by giving you the added challenge of drawing the gesture properly when you were most likely in too much of a hurry to do it right.
There's a poll in the Darwinia forums now, and about 88% last I looked preferred the gestures to a possible hotkey system [for this game].
If you can't get the AirStrike to work properly, try drawing it really big - you can go outside the confines of the 'circle' on the Task Manager screen, or draw it completely outside of the circle - if accurate enough, the game will still take it. I still think v4.0 Grenades are the best secondary in the game - AirStrike takes too long after the markers are launched - and I do have trouble drawing a correct Grenade gesture, BTW, but in that case I just draw up a new squad, since grenades are the default 2nd. weapon.
It sucked. It was boring, monotonus, and after the 2nd level, not at all entertaining. It felt like work. Strike that. It was harder than work, with less reward.
I didn't even realive the same studio had made E.G. until this article. And yet as I look back, I can see alot of similarities between the games. Too much information, a Not-At-All intuitive interface, and a lackluster AI in games where the interface is something you spend 95% of your time in and the AI basically has to play the game for you.
Elixer failed not because they had publisher problems, or because they had a canceled game. They failed because they were a large group of creative, intelligent people with practically no outside testing. They internalized everything, thought their ideas were good, and sent them out. No one to say "This is too hard" or "this is too slow". I think I'd rather the company dissolve and the talent migrate to other studios than they release another game I get excited about, only to see the execution fail.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
The trick is not to draw what you're supposed to draw. For the Airstrike a triangle where you start on the bottom left, move to the top and draw it with the right corner very far out will work. For the rockets you only need the first two lines of the gesture.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The trick is not to draw what you're supposed to draw.
Actually, the real trick is to upgrade the Darwinians as much as possible, and get them to do the fighting.
They're a bit like the classical Lemmings, only somewhat brighter and armed with lasers and grenades. Excellent!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?