Not once has he published a magazine article reducing a company's position, while improving one of his employer's conditions.

So how exactly does a bad review of SotS (which as anyone can see, is hardly unique) improve things for us? SotS is about as unlike GC2 as two games in the same genre can be, and as such, a lost sale for them is by no means a gained sale for us. In fact, anyone looking at purchasing SotS who also liked GC2 would most likely have already gotten it, since it's been out since February.

There is only an 'appearance of impropriety' where someone *wants* to see one. Neither we nor Tom gain or lose anything based on the reviews of SotS, and neither does it have any impact on any future dealings we may or may not have.

I'd also like to remind you that 'on the payroll' implies regular payout to the person, whereas he was only paid a lump sum for a manual (that I think was very well written).

I don't see where the shady business practices or ethics comes in here for Stardock. Once he wrote the manual, the current business relationship was over and done with. If he did a good job on the manual, he has a chance to work for Stardock again. That isn't shady.

While I admit, it may have been handled better, that is a matter on his end and not for Stardock.

Troll (Internet)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Internet terminology, a troll is often someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy or antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion, including the personal attack of calling others trolls. Often, trolls assume multiple aliases, or sock puppets.

This topic is going no where fast. This thread should be locked.

This topic is going no where fast

Agreed.

The point of contention is whether or not Tom Chick should have reviewed SotS following his work for StarDock. Whatever anyone's feelings on that, I don't see how it has anything to do with StarDock. The company involved in the behaviour in question is 1UP. StarDock's relationship with him ended months before the review. This event seems to have acted as a focal point for some sort of simmering animosity between the two fanbases, and that's just stupid.

Speculation as to whether or not StarDock will employ Tom Chick again in the future is just that... speculation. If they do, and people dislike Tom Chick enough to boycott a product he's involved with, then that's their right. More power to them for standing up for something they believe in. I've boycotted games myself.

This current debacle spanning both forums is going nowhere, however, and everyone needs to chill.

Ok from a gamers point of view---I am not influenced by one review from anyone!!! And if anyone is then shame on you for being so narrowminded---I highly doubt that one review would kill any game---If the game is good on its own merit it will sell---I think enough gamers like me have been burned more than once by poor products that have been released---I never even heard of sword of the stars until this post to be honest---maybe the company should be upset with whoever they hired to market the game!!!!!! It's not stardocks fault that everyone will be comparing their game with stardocks---so I say to all u other devolopers out there---quit following others ideas and learn from stardock on making a great game and then maybe your game might sell too

I don't go by one review either but Tom Chick has written not one but numerous bad reviews to excellent games. This is not new, it has been going on for years, I say years. Writing bad reviews or trashing a game is business as normal for Mr Chick. As you see, because this is normal there is no way Stardock is trying to benefit from this. Anyone know if he still writes reviews for gamespot or cgw? I learned that if a review says "Tom Chick", look elsewhere for a more accurate review of the game at hand no matter which one it is.

This said I suggest others to read his review we speak about for a great example of how he reviews games... http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3153546

If you will notice, in his very opening paragraph he starts already by completely bashing and making fun of the developer by stating "barking dog". In addition, the third paragraph is plain incorrect. How I know that? Well I have played the game and played it alot and am playing it. One example, he says no easy way to tell the distance between dots??? Ummm... try putting your mouse over your destination, tells you exactly the distance in turns a fleet travels to get there.

I can go on and on diesecting his review here and point out numerous incorrect things. I just mention one, but if anyone else cares, I can easily mention a ton more. I think we see what I am getting at.

Negative reviews of Sword of the Stars hurts GalCiv and other 4X games.

We are not operating in a market where people are generally going to buy one and not the other.  The "conflict of interest" thing doesn't make any sense to me. This is like saying that CGW can't review Sword of the Stars because GalCiv II is paying CGW for ad space (or PC Gamer or whoever).  I really don't think this is a good PR move for Kerberos as people in the industry know how scrupulous Tom Chick is already.

As long-time users of GalCiv2.com can tell you, I've personally promoted Sword of the Stars numerous times both here in the forums and in our news items. Stardock frequently will post news items on other games. We WANT Sword of the Stars to do well. 

We have no on-going business relationship with Tom.  Tom has been a vocal critic of Stardock manuals so when GalCiv II came up, we basically did a "So you hate our manuals? Fine, how about if you write the next one." And the rest is history. End of story.

I remember trying out the Sword of the Stars demo/public beta (whatever it was) and going to the Kerberos boards to give some suggestions on how it could be improved. I went into the forums and saw threads where all doubters, and damn well anyone who found any flaw with SotS, was brutally flamed.. I started writing a reply pointing out how ridiculous the 'fanboys' were being in unfairly and unnecessarily attacking people, then noticed it was one of the devs!

I'll go ahead and quote Dubious Quality and say that from personal experience I completely belief this passage is plausible truth.

" After the demo for Sword of the Stars was released, critical posts and threads were routinely removed from Kerberos’ message board and people who didn’t like the game were banned. Posting as “mecron”, Cirulis dismisses complaints with accusations of “GalCiv2 fanboy”"

Frankly the guy who brought this conflict of interest argument UP.. has an enormous conflict of interest, given that he's the one who makes money off Sword of the Stars getting good reviews. He calls out the guy who gave his game the worst review score, and you don't think that's a conflict of interest?

In all fairness, how can you mistrust and refuse to do business with a gaming company because you believe =someone who no longer works for them= is dishonest, but you make no mention of boycotting Kerberos? They sound like they deserve it. I started my own personal boycott the second I saw the developers flaming perfectly reasonable people.

(this paragraph is new, to clarify) My decision to not buy was because I realized they definitely weren't going to fix the game to the point where I'd consider it playable. They were proud of making what seemed to me an impenetrably tedious turn-based cat-herding simulator.

Stardock is incredibly magnaminous, I think too much, to have not locked this thread by now given the circuitous, pointless whining. It's occured to me more than once that the original poster likely has a conflict of interest to which we are not privy.

I mean what the hell, you won't buy another game if this Tom Chick guy is involved.. but you realize, if he does another manual as a contract worker, your purchase will not in any way effect his bottom line? In fact, buying GC2 won't put even a penny in Tom Chick's pocket as it stands right now, nor would buying any other Stardock product.

Nakor, and then Frogboy himself have addressed the original poster's issue completely now.  So the issue is more or less done.  However, I just wanted to respond to this line from the post directly above mine here, since it also goes back to some comments in the chatroom and often comes up whenever a post critical of Stardock pops up here:

Stardock is incredibly magnaminous, I think too much, to have not locked this thread by now given the circuitous, pointless whining. It's occured to me more than once that the original poster likely has a conflict of interest to which we are not privy.

Locking threads like this, unless it degenerates into a flamewar full of name calling and other insults, does nothing but lend ammo to the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who would view it as confirmation that Stardock has something to hide (which we don't).  The original poster also was very civil in expressing his view, which is a nice change from how forum post often tend to be when someone is all charged up about an issue.  That alone earned the poster a lot of moderation good-will.

Believe it or not, we don't look to squash any and all disagreement with Stardock or its games and other products.  If you have an honest gripe, and are able to articulate it in a clear, civil and mature manner, then we'll let it stand.  We'll often even read and respond (as is evidenced here).  We're not out to silence all disagreement, that doesn't do anything but make us look like thin-skinned jerks, which we really aren't 

How about this reply, post mortem style. If anyone is idiotic enough to buy a game based on a review, nay, buy anything "entertainment" related based on reviews, then shame on them. I have movies and games that have gotten awful reviews, yet I love them. On the flip I have the same that have gotten the best reviews you could ever read, and the title sucked, period. Each one of us has to judge for ourselves what we like or not. When I first played this game I would have given it a two out of ten because I had major issues with it (and Cari can attest to my posts early on in here). Now, I can't even rate it because I would have to give GC2 a twenty on a one to ten scale. Making this much fuss over a dead horse is stupid and quite a waste of time and effort. And to all you devs who were so quick to reply, kudos, but don't keep feeding him. Your points seem to fall on deaf ears, so to speak, so why bother. As far as you Axantur, you have every right to purchase a product or not. If you are that swayed by "reviews" I believe that you are very narrow minded to let someone else sway your decision to buy something, or I should say, "enjoy" something, based on what they said about that product. Grow some and be your own person, form an opinion based on what your observations are, not someone else's. Now kill this thread!!!

Yup, I'm pretty much sated. Disappointed that I haven't won any converts to my point of view, but satisfied.

I guess I'm going to have a rough decision to make in the future. I hate those.

If nothing else, I feel better for having ranted for a bit.

Thanks, guys (and girls).

Well, Stardock, can you at least admit the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner?

We're through the looking glass, here, people...

Ok ill be straight here... Im a regular poster on Sots. Now I didnt come here to say how much I did/did not like any game or to bash your game or to put ours up or anything like that. Honestly, I'd rather that this whole thing went away so we could all go back to playing our respective games and be happy non angry people again.
I just want to say that this Axantur person doesnt represent all of us at the boards. Also, this person is no representation of anyone from Kerberos either. Everyone from there has been trying to keep people from doing EXACTLY what Axantur did so that it would not be done to us in turn. We wouldnt like for someone to come onto our forum and post unkind things about the people involved in our game's creation and there was no justification for this person to do it to you.
I also wanted to apologize that he/she came onto your boards and started an argument. It was bad form that this happened, and quite rude.

I will sue Stardock because Master of Orion 3 got bad reviews!!!   

I believe Darkrenown's post was the most informative of the lot, it confirmed what I have believed for years.

Axantur, I think you are failing miserably in your attempt to get GC2 players in an uproar about Stardocks business practices.

You are also complaining about the wrong companies business practices. Stardock is apparantly only hiring the guy to do game manuals. I don't see how doing reviews would affect his ability to do manuals. I can see how doing manuals might affect his objectivity in doing reviews -- so your grip should be with the company that is paying him for doing reviews ( presuming there is anything to your suspicions ).

Brad has consistently stated that he feels that the success of competing games only raises the whole genre and benefits everyone in the industry. And he has plugged competitors games on these forums off and on ( including tha game with the bad review if my memory serves me well ).

A reviewer giving a game a bad review so that he can get a future contract jobs to do game manuals? Possible, but unlikely, don't think a reviewer would want to ruin his reputation for that.

How about the customers? Most of the customers who like 4X strategy games keep their ears to the ground and will give any game that looks good a whirl ( read multiply reviews and try the demo ).

Conspiracy theories -- love em -- believe em especially in politics. But a backroom deal to get a bad review on a GC2 competitor -- just cann't buy it and you are far from proving it and have made a lot of assumptions and unfounded accusations.

Axantur, I think you are failing miserably in your attempt to get GC2 players in an uproar about Stardocks business practices.

There's no doubt in my mind that this is the goal of Axantur and all of his sock puppets. The problem is that you can't use rational argument on trolls, it just doesn't work. The only thing you can do with trolls is to not feed them. Don't reply to their posts and eventually they'll go away.

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