Holy run-on sentence batman! Brad really needs to stay away from trying to write. And trying to speak. And having any kind of interaction with the public for that matter.

I was really surprised that he ended up writing the book. I had assumed that Random House would assign an author to look over the game ideas and write the book for it.

Really good, though the ranting against the em dash is a bit off base when it criticizes its overuse in a page rather than a paragraph. But that's grammar nittery too an extent probably no one is interested in.
It does serve as a good indication of Brad's hubris, that he would put something like material of that level out unselfconsciously.

Gotta agree here. This fellow is turning out to be his own worst enemy.

Ditto. Maybe Brad just has a problem knowing where his limits are, or biting off more than he can chew. Reminds me a bit of the Peter Principle idea that people tend to rise to their level of incompetence.

I concur - and that is a big agreement - on the claim that - and I can't stress this enough - his writing is balls. Not unreadable. But, almost. It's really hard to read, I said to myself.
/dress

Pretty bad that writing, I must admit. I've been writing fiction (never self-published either) for several years, but I've never sent anything off yet. It's a shame the people at the publishing house couldn't have worked with Brad and gave the writing responsibilities to someone who's unknown, but has talent. It's a really hard business to break into even if your writing's good, because luck has a large hand in it.
With writing and frequenting forums a lot dedicated to it, one of my pet peeves though is dialog punctuation. A lot of people don't know how to punctuate it. Is that bad in the book as well? If anyone knows.

Layoffs Hit Stardock After Elemental's "Disastrous Launch"
"Shacknews has received an anonymous tip claiming that several employees of Stardock, developers of the recently released Elemental: War of Magic were let go today in a round of layoffs.
Those let go included developers, designers, and salespeople working on Elemental. The tipster, supposedly one of those laid off, claims that the layoffs were due to Elemental's "disastrous launch". Though post-launch layoffs are common in this industry, it sounds like these cuts were due to the game's launch and reception.
Stardock CEO Bard Wardell, posting while on his post-launch sabbatical, discusses the "completeness of Stardock's fail on Elementa's launch" and alluded to "massive consequences for Stardock's game studio."
The employees were reportedly notified by Stardock management, as Brad is away from the office. Shacknews has contacted Stardock to ascertain the validity of these statements."
Confirmed by Frogboy btw at Elemental forums.
Elemental is turning into disaster of massive proportions for Stardock it seems.

That hurts. :( I hope they recover and hire those people back (and we get more Stardock games).
PS. 1.07 patch released today and it's a great one. Everyone seems quite pleased, even the haters.
http://forums.elementalgame.com/394934

Will wait for patch 2.49 :p

Isn't that a bit shitty of Brad? I mean he comes out and says that one of the reasons Elemental failed was it was his fault for losing his objectivity, yet now here he is sacking staff over his mistake. Typical CEO if you ask me, rather than taking the blame himself he's had others take the fall for him, people who earn much less than he does. If you ask me Brad should have been the one to walk. I don't ever like to see people losing their jobs especially when the real fault was far higher up the chain than they are.

Agreed, he's the one who should be given marching orders.

those beta tests were useless

I wonder how may sympathy purchases of Elemental there were after his forum posting about the layoffs? And then I wonder how many of those purchases were anticipated? ;)
I think Brad is very savvy when in comes to how much information he releases to the public, and how such information reflects upon Stardock. Good publicity is great if you can get it, but bad publicity is also far better than none at all. Lovers and haters of Elemental constitute a community, and a community keeps the game alive. Indifference at this stage would be worse for Stardock than a contentious launch ever was.

The public opinion is always kind of unpredictable. You're loved today and hated tomorrow.
Its always bad if there are layoffs but its also not uncommon after finishing a project. Others do that too. But because there aren't many good turn based strategy games published this year, let's just hope, Elemental gets back in shape.

What? Brad has a long history of shoving his foot in his mouth nearly every time he speaks to the public, and that trend doesn't seem to be changing. He's pretty much the antithesis of PR savvy.