What Gives? Supreme Commander 2 Support Absurd Compared to Demigod

By Polynomial on April 10, 2010 1:33:44 PM from

I don't understand something. And to be perfectly honest it has begun to annoy me the more I think about it.

Supreme Commander 2 is on its 5th significant patch a month after release with more dedicated support clearly communicated by GPG. Last year the cries were UI is too expensive to implement. Well, GPG keeps doing it. On a budget HALF THE SIZE of Demigod. Supreme Commander 1 and Demigod had a budget of $10 million. Supreme Commander 2 had a budget of $5 million. I know this because I was able to speak with the devs at Uber Entertainment at PAX East.

This bothers me because while I like Supreme Commander 2 a lot, I loved Demigod. Supreme Commander 2's multiplayer connections are flawless. How long did it take GPG to get the Demon Assassin and Occulus out? 6-7 months? How many maps did Demigod have? 8. Supreme Commander 2 has over 20. Supreme Commander 2 has way more art assets than Demigod did. So none of this makes sense. Considering GPG lost 1/2 its employees in 2008 Demigod seems like an internal GPG disaster and put out prematurely to make back lost money. I think because Scathis left motivation to continue support for this game disolved entirely.

While I love Stardock for what it does, I'm sensing a little bit of Demigod BS here. And this is the first time I don't know who to blame.

+37 Karma | 33 Replies

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 11

BTW, SupCom 2's budget was much higher than Demigod's. Demigod was no where near $10m to make.

exactly my thoughts. chris taylor has previous said that supcom 1 cost $11M to make, and considering DG used supcom's engine, i dont see how it would cost as much to make.

Demigod could've, quite frankly, eclipsed Supreme Commander if it had the support and content

oh come on, DG was fun and all but it was nowhere near the caliber of FA

Quoting -RAISTLIN-,

reply 26

oh come on, DG was fun and all but it was nowhere near the caliber of FA

Gotta agree. FA is the greatest game on earth, in my mind.

Quoting Polynomial,

reply 20

SupCom 2 just got a another major update

This is just dumb.

Yep,that's GPG. And i bet they will do the same with their upcoming game Kings and Castles ( and another bet: when it will be released, they will stop supporting SupCom 2 )

today marks their 13th patch in about 8 weeks.

Quoting Colonel_Jessep,

reply 13

Hi Poly!

GPG owes us a Demigod 2 >.<I honestly would prefer if Uber Entertainment would make Demigod 2. (Because they actually designed most of the game except for Froboy's ideas like the flags AFAIK, great idea right there btw Frogboy!)

I don't care who makes it, I just want it made and made RIGHT! No corporate bs just done way it should have been done in the beginning!

Polynomial

I don't understand something. And to be perfectly honest it has begun to annoy me the more I think about it.

Supreme Commander 2 is on its 5th significant patch a month after release with more dedicated support clearly communicated by GPG. Last year the cries were UI is too expensive to implement. Well, GPG keeps doing it. On a budget HALF THE SIZE of Demigod. Supreme Commander 1 and Demigod had a budget of $10 million. Supreme Commander 2 had a budget of $5 million. I know this because I was able to speak with the devs at Uber Entertainment at PAX East.

This bothers me because while I like Supreme Commander 2 a lot, I loved Demigod. Supreme Commander 2's multiplayer connections are flawless. How long did it take GPG to get the Demon Assassin and Occulus out? 6-7 months? How many maps did Demigod have? 8. Supreme Commander 2 has over 20. Supreme Commander 2 has way more art assets than Demigod did. So none of this makes sense. Considering GPG lost 1/2 its employees in 2008 Demigod seems like an internal GPG disaster and put out prematurely to make back lost money. I think because Scathis left motivation to continue support for this game disolved entirely.

While I love Stardock for what it does, I'm sensing a little bit of Demigod BS here. And this is the first time I don't know who to blame.

That's not how the business works, at least not in this case.

If it weren't for Stardock and Chris Taylor's personal investment in the game, we wouldn't even have Demigod right now, due to the crisis GPG had to go through. Money is and was simply short for Demigod.

Supreme Commander 2 had a "normal" production, but a fast tracked one. If Square Enix hadn't picked it up, we wouldn't have Supreme Commander 2 now either. Square Enix bought the Supreme Commander IP from THQ and invested in Supreme Commander 2. Square Enix was well aware, that things had to go different for Supreme Commander 2, in order to at least break even with the budget. Without the 360 version and the short development cycle, it simply wouldn't have happened.

Anyway, in this case, the publisher typically pays the developer in milestones. The Milestones and budget for each milestones were probably defined in the contract. Plus a post-release support budget was probably defined too. If that expires, Square Enix may decide to invest money in more patches, if they budget allows it.

Comparing Demigod and Supreme Commander 2 like you did simply does not work.

Colonel_Jessep

The ranked ladder is completely borked, some players started with the usual Elo rating of 1600 while others started at 0! (They would have to play for weeks to get to 1600 without a ladder reset but that has already been announced.) There are several cheaters who play with infinite resources or research points, one of them was #1 for some time...

The ranked ladder isn't and never was "completely borked". The 0 rating issue only affected some players and apparently was a problem caused by Steam, not by SupCom2 or its use of the SteamWorks API. Even though there were (and still are) cheaters, they are banned accordingly.

Even though there were (and still are) cheaters, they are banned accordingly.

Well... that's not entirely true re:banning. I can accept that the ladder will have some inaccuracies due to cheating here and there, smurftasticness, etc... its not as bad as it once was, imo. The most glaring issue was the ability to rise to the top by simply beating AI characters at one but. But thankfully, SD did make a change to end that. I think the only thing really causing inaccuracies at this point are users with dup accounts, but its really not that big a mess.

Except supcom 2 is still struggling comercially the game's price has already sunk to 23 bucks on steam only after a few months of being released. You guys shouldn't be complaining supcom 2 was another flame out by GPG. The management at GPG just sucks balls and they ruined a franchise that had so much potential.

Supcom 2 is one of the greatest gaming fails of this generation, complaining that such a failure of a game is getting patched when it shipped completely unfinished and they had the nerve to disable modding for release that existed in the demo.. you guys don't have a clue. Supcom 2's patches are mostly entirely superficial.

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What Gives? Supreme Commander 2 Support Absurd Compared to Demigod