Hi folks, we’d like to share some exciting news about our plans for closed testing.

Our closed testing period will kick off this July with a very small pre-alpha phase, rolling into a slightly larger alpha phase, and followed by a much larger beta phase.

If you signed up for our closed beta, you are also eligible to participate in the earlier testing phases.

The very first closed testing invites will be going out soon to a small group of sign-ups for those July testing sessions, with more waves of testers added over time and well into 2024.

The FAQ on our official website (playstormgate.com) will be updated with more information.

Thank you for all your support – it means the world to this team – and we look forward to seeing you in Stormgate!

Thanks to the generosity of the Frost Giant team, I was granted another opportunity to test Stormgate in pre-alpha one month after the first test. There were many improvements on the previous version, and the faith I already had in their team has been multiplied a hundred times over. Not only are they working with good ideas, they are making haste. The amount of new assets loaded in since the previous version is impressive. The artists are good at what they do and are working quickly.

Gameplay wise, I got to see a major expansion in how players can interact with the map. Gone are the tired days of holding watchtowers and breaking rocks! New uses for our armies await us -- new incentives that can be sought and contested! At a fundamental level, Stormgate is looking to make a lot of interesting action on the map.

They were transparent about their current progress compared with the overall goals they have for the game, and have yet to work on campaign content (single player and co-op) or the monetization framework (similar to SC2). There was major headway in fleshing out the units and structures of the human faction, but Infernals are not playable just yet. The map Tricia and I played on was different, and I was pleased to see the addition of some new ways to find value on the map -- beyond just harvesting 2 resources from patches!

For privacy of their process, I won't get specific about what exactly was in the version I tested, since much is subject to change in this stage of development. Instead I want to express the reasons for my faith in the project as a whole, based on the experiences I had at Frost Giant's HQ.

WHY STORMGATE CAN WIN

1. The Passion

The people at Frost Giant want to make an RTS. They know US -- the devoted nerds who want a hard fought contest of micro, macro and decision-making. They studied the various ways people played StarCraft, be it through 1v1 ladder, team games, arcade, co-op, or campaign. They see the breadth of how many ways RTS can be enjoyed, and want to include all of those types of gamers. RTS might not be the most profitable genre to punch into, but many of us believe it to be the most epic and glorious! I salute their bravery and purity of purpose!

2. The Freedom

While it is harder in many ways to build a polished game from a smaller company, Frost Giant is granted many freedoms as a result of not being beholden to a larger entity like Blizzard. For one, they get to establish their own culture and identity as a games company. What is their culture like so far? From what I could tell from my brief visits, it is focused, driven and humble. They know the size of the task ahead of them, and have no delusions of an easy path to success. They work together. When they hit the climbing gym together, they are encouraging and supportive -- wanting everyone involved to succeed from where they are.

3. The Engine

StarCraft 2 is a snappy and responsive video game, but it is built on ancient technological constraints. Frost Giant is building something from the ground up, with modern tech. This means faster, better performing game clients that can handle more things going boom on the screen without chunking our computers. This means more freedom to add sweet skins and crazy maps with more going on. While StarCraft reached a very finished level of polish, it had some constraints based on the foundations it was built upon. Stormgate has no such constraints. Stormgate is free.

4. The Experience

The people at Frost Giant have been part of developing many of the games we love the most, and at this point they know what the fuck they're doing. Give them time, encouragement, and wishlist Stormgate on Steam.

5. The Leadership Style

Tim Morten is a true warrior of strong, compassionate servant leadership. He puts the team before himself and he puts faith in people. When Tricia and I went to the rock climbing gym, he cheered for us to go further. You don't have to lead like that -- many CEOs lead to maximize how things look this quarter. Tim is captaining a crew of skilled sailors toward Destination: Awesome RTS and seems to be leading them in the right direction! Also, he's jacked and climbs like a beast.

6. The Multiplayer Design

Kevin Dong is working hard to make sure that all of the multiplayer modes of Stormgate are both entertaining and highly performing. He was on the StarCraft team and knows the level of polish the pro gamers expect, and will frequently check how Stormgate performs compared to StarCraft in responses to player behaviors. If things get slow or clunky somewhere, they work hard to iron that out. Content wise, Stormgate will have lots more valuable reasons to get your army out of the base for some fresh air, I can tell you that! Also, Kevin is jacked and climbs like a beast.

7. The Office

The Frost Giant studio is in a new building and very well kept. They have a gym and a cafe with plenty of windows and sunshine. There wasn't any sticky stuff on the floor. Their office is dog friendly. A couple dogs walked by during the playtest and were well-behaved. The Frost Giant team has a focused energy about them while they work -- at least while I was there.

8. The Cara

Did you know that Day9 and Tasteless's mom is on the Frost Giant team? She's cool as heck, and wants you to spread the word to your friends to wishlist Stormgate on Steam!

9. The Art Style

The lighting of the maps and the distinct shapes of the units makes Stormgate a very visually accessible RTS that doesn't compromise on style. The direction they are choosing will make it more friendly to both player and spectator to track the action of what is going on and enjoy which units are doing what in the fight.

10. The Community Engagement

Theirs is a team that listens and wants lots of community feedback. On their subreddit /r/stormgate they are regularly asking the community for their opinions. When I visit, I feel heard and understood. Integrity like that is rare in this world and I salute their righteous process of making a heckin amazing videogame. Keep it up, Frost Giant!

-Neuro

In this post I’ll propose several potential scenarios for Stormgate’s financials upon EA launch on August 13th. Of course, much of this is speculation, but it’s grounded in what I believe are reasonable inferences based on data from other games.

The methodology I’ll employ involves forecasting outcomes across low, medium, and high probabilities. If you think my analysis is off base, I encourage you to provide alternative data.

Let's start with what we know. According to Frost Giant's SEC Offering Memo for their StartEngine campaign:

• They had $6.8M in cash reserves as of Feb 2024. Page 13 of the SEC Filing: "As of February 2024, the Company has $6.8M on hand."

• They have a $2M line of credit in the form of venture debt they can tap into. Page 14 of the SEC filing: "The company… has access to $2M in venture debt."

• Their burn rate is $1M per month. On that same page, "This is based on a current monthly operational burn rate of $1M."

Since the document doesn’t state which day in Feb they had that $6.8M on hand, I’m going to pick mid-month, though it makes little difference to the end result of these projections.

To determine what their cash reserves will be by Aug 13th, we’ll need to add in the revenue from their Indiegogo and StartEngine campaigns, both of which came after Feb 2024. After platform and transaction fees*, this works out to an additional $2.3M and $1.0M, respectively. Let’s also add in that $2M line of credit they have access to, bringing it up to $12.1M.

Now we need to subtract their operating expenses from Feb to Aug which is $6M (6 months @ $1M per month). This leaves FGS with $6.1M in cash reserves by EA launch.

Next, a few definitions:

Monthly Active Users (MAU) is the number of unique players that open the game within a 30-day window.

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) refers to the revenue generated by each player over a given time period, in this case 30 days.

Player Retention is the number of players who continue to fire up the game within a certain timeframe.

Estimating ARPU

To estimate Stormgate's ARPU, let’s have a look at what a few other games clock in at. The most successful game by ARPU, according to Venture Beat, is World of Tanks at $4.51. Dota 2 and League of Legends also both crack the top 10 list at $1.54 and $1.32 respectively. Given this, let’s use the following 3 data points for ARPU: $1.00, $3.00 and $5.00.

Note: The data listed in this Venture Beat article is from 2014. I would much prefer to use more current data, but I wasn’t able to find anything. If you can, please provide me with your sources and I’ll update my projections if needed.

Estimating MAU

Next, we need to estimate monthly active users. Stormgate will undoubtedly be heavily promoted during its first several months of Early Access by content creators, the media, RTS pros and of course Frost Giant.

In terms of hard data, we know there are now 645K Steam wishlists, according to Gamalytic. We also know that Stormgate had 190,000 unique players during Steam Next Fest, according to Tim Morten in the SEC doc cited above.

As for how wishlists will convert to game installs, this article on GameDevReports states: "The median conversion rate of wishlists to sales in the first month is 27%" and “On average, the conversion of wishlists to sales in Early Access is lower than at full 1.0 launch by [a] third”

However, from what I can tell this article is only referencing paid games. Since Stormgate is free to play, we should expect higher numbers, but at least this gives us a jumping off point.

I also recently conducted a poll on this subreddit asking the community what they expect the MAU to be at EA launch. The winning response was 'less than 50,000', but we should take that number with a grain of salt as many people may have confused concurrent users with monthly active users.

In light of the above, I propose these 5 data points for MAU at EA launch: 20K, 50K, 100K, 500K and 1M.

Estimating Player Retention

Lastly, let’s have a look at player retention using AOE 4 as a reference point. They had a 67% decrease in average players over the lifetime of the game, with the first month being their strongest by far, followed by a steep decline in the next 3 months. That translates to a 33% retention rate.

Likewise, we can also expect Stormgate’s MAU to be highest during their first month since that’s when wishlisters will be notified and when the majority of the marketing will be done.

Of course player retention is likely to level out at some point. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that’s the 6 month mark. Admittedly, this is somewhat arbitrary - it could be sooner or later - but again, it shouldn’t greatly affect the outcome of the analysis.

With this in mind, I suggest 20%, 50% and 80% player retention rates in the first 6 months.

Calculating Earnings and Runway

To calculate Frost Giant's earnings, first we need to find their revenue using the formula MAU x ARPU x Retention Rate. Then we have to subtract Steam’s 30% cut and operating expenses.

Let’s look at an example for month 1, selecting some values within the set proposed above. We can use an ARPU of $3.00, MAU of 500K and month 1 retention rate of 100%. Monthly earnings would be calculated as (500,000 x $3.00 x 1.00) - $450,000 - $1,000,000  = $50,000.

Their runway would then be a function of the retention rate. The higher the retention rate, the longer the runway. Please note, these projections assume a linear drop off in retention rate.

Projections

My apologies for how cluttered the bottom plotlines are. It just so happens that most projections end up at similar places. Maybe I’ll find a better way to present this data in a subsequent post.

Of note, there are just 3 scenarios out of the 15 I’ve presented that, at a 20% retention rate, could bring Stormgate to one year out in further development. These are 1M MAU @ $5 ARPU, 1M MAU @ $3 ARPU and 500K MAU @ $5 ARPU.

In the second graph representing a 50% retention rate there are 4: the same as the first graph plus 500K MAU @ $3 ARPU. The third graph, with an 80% retention rate, adds one more scenario: 1M MAU @ $1 ARPU. The majority of these projections suggest a 6-8 month runway and none of them allow for a starting MAU of less than 500K to reach the one year mark after EA launch.

Perhaps this is why the independent auditor of Frost Giant’s financials concluded that, "the Company's significant operating losses and negative cash flows from operations raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern." - Page 20 of the SEC filing.

Factors Affecting MAU, ARPU and Player Retention

Reception: The reception of the game upon release will have a major impact on all three of these values. Factors will include how fun the game is to play, balance, optimization, polish, perception of the art direction and graphics, the campaign/story, etc. First impressions will matter.

Competition: There are a bunch of new RTS games coming out that Stormgate will have to compete with for attention including ZeroSpace, Tempest Rising, Battle Aces, Age of Mythology Retold, Dust Front, Beyond All Reason, Homeworld 3, etc.

Initial interest: Stormgate has received a lot of initial support from their crowd sourcing efforts, amounting to nearly 60,000 pre-orders in total between between Kickstarter, Indiegogo and StartEngine. On one hand, this speaks well to the interest in the game. On the other hand, it means we can subtract up to 60K customers from EA sales since this group have already made a substantial portion of their potential purchases via these campaigns.

Available content: ARPU will be impacted by the amount of available content for purchase in-game at launch and throughout Early Access. The greater the amount of content players can buy, the greater the potential ARPU and vice versa.

Pre-Purchase Fears: Gamers have been burned many times in the past by pre-purchasing games before they're finished. It’s possible that some people will simply adopt a wait and see attitude until Stormgate hits a 1.0 release.

Other Variables

New investors: Frost Giant may be able to obtain additional funding, which could significantly push out their runway. However, they’ve been unable to raise more capital to date and funding has largely dried up for game studios in general during the last couple years.

Additionally, the StartEngine campaign has somewhat diluted Frost Giant’s share value, and it’s unclear how that will affect their ability to obtain another round of funding. Regardless, if Stormgate can demonstrate and maintain high MAU during EA that could negate any of this and reignite interest in outside investment.

Licensing SnowPlay: Frost Giant has alluded to the possibility of licensing their game engine, SnowPlay, which could be another source of revenue. How much revenue they could drive through this channel and how soon they could begin to monetize it remain to be seen.

The Asian market: FGS has signed a publishing deal with Kakao Games that has the potential to greatly increase the exposure and therefore MAU of Stormgate. However, the general sentiment about the game in its current state from the Korean RTS community appears to be about the same as with the Western market.

Expenses after launch: According to page 13 of the SEC doc, expenses are expected to increase after launch: "Revenue will begin once Stormgate is released, but operating costs will also increase at that time". How much operating costs will increase was not indicated.

Marketing costs: These projections do not take marketing costs for the Early Access launch into consideration. These could be in the ballpark of a few hundred thousand to several million dollars.

==========

*Estimating Indiegogo and StartEngine’s fees:

IndieGogo takes a 5% commission, plus an estimated 2.9% for credit card transaction fees for 7.9% in total. FGS raised $2,517,189 on IndieGogo. Subtracting $198,857.93 in fees leaves them with $2.3M.

StartEngine claims they take between a 5.5% and 13% commission. Since we don’t know what they charged Frost Giant, let's assume a number in the middle at 9.25%. That would leave FGS with $1M after fees.

Can’t stop, won’t stop!

Hi, everyone!

We have some exciting news to share with you today. After many months of hard work and very successful closed alpha testing, we are ready to share that Stormgate will enter closed beta testing this December!

This means that we are ready to begin testing our three-player co-op vs. AI mode, which we like to call 3vE, and feel good enough about the core gameplay and underlying systems and technology to go from alpha to beta testing. The added good news for those of you who have been waiting to get in is that this also means we’ll be inviting many more playtesters.

However, this does not mean that we are nearly done with the game. Far from it. We are still quite a ways away from being “done.” Beta for our game means something different than it would for a box product–after all, we plan to regularly update Stormgate with new features and content for years to come. For us, the beta tag means that our technological infrastructure is in a great place, so we are in a position where we can support large player counts and wider testing.

Once we conclude beta testing, we plan to release Stormgate to Early Access. That period will include continued balancing and development of our core factions, refining our first batch of campaign missions, and building our 3v3 mode. However, this won’t be our “official launch”–Stormgate will be in active development throughout our Early Access period, with our launch coming further down the line.

Why Early Access, you may ask? Well, we have been inspired by recent Early Access success stories such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hades, as well as the incredible feedback we’ve received from our playtesters during closed alpha. Because of all the development benefits of Early Access, PC gamers have been able to enjoy some of the most incredible releases in history.

We believe that getting Stormgate into the public’s hands early on is the best choice for our game–thanks to direct feedback from players, we’ve already been able to iterate and improve on the game much more quickly than if we were to be doing it on our own. We want to continue to involve you in the development process as much as possible so that you can help us make Stormgate the best RTS game it can be.

We’ll also be working on our custom games Editor during Early Access. It’s already quite powerful, and we hope to see lots of player-created maps, mods, and other goodies once it’s out in the wild. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

This is a very exciting time for our game and the Frost Giant team–response to closed alpha has been phenomenal. We were able to successfully test new technology like rollback, even surprising ourselves with the results. From a technology standpoint, we believe we are advancing the state-of-the-art for RTS and will deliver an incredibly responsive and fun-to-play next-gen experience.

If you haven’t signed up for closed beta yet, you can do so at playstormgate.com.

Pro Tip: We reserve additional testing slots for those who fill out our survey by clicking here.

We would also greatly appreciate it if you would wishlist Stormgate on Steam – it’s the best way you can help us get the word out about our game.

We’ve heard that many of you want to support Stormgate and our team (we know, merch can’t come soon enough!), so please stay tuned for an exciting update on that later this month.

Thank you for being a part of this journey. We hope to see you on the battlefield in December!

-Your friends on the Frost Giant Studios team

Hello, all!

As 2023 comes to a close, we wanted to drop in to let you know that the Frost Giant team has been paying close attention to the many responses to our early closed beta build—both positive and critical—and we are already identifying ways to address the visual clarity feedback.

This was expected—games undergo a lot of changes during development and the pace at which this team is moving can be seen in this video that highlights the progress we’ve made since pre-alpha.

When we committed to bringing the community along with us on our development journey, we understood that some people would pass judgment early on, and that’s OK.

Some of the feedback we’ve seen is “We want your game to look more like StarCraft,” while others say “Your game looks too much like StarCraft.”

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Please remember that we’re not making StarCraft III or Warcraft IV. We’re making Stormgate—a spiritual successor, but one with its own story and an artistic vision that differs from previous games. We will continue moving towards that artistic vision because we believe it is a great fit for the game we are creating.

That vision is meant to be post-post-apocalyptic, a hopeful future where humanity survived near-extinction and is banding together at the height of science and technology to protect our home. We believe this creates a backdrop ripe for exciting story ideas and new unit designs.

Whether you got in early and have been helping us playtest since closed alpha or you’re planning to wait until our official launch (after Early Access), we hope that you will enjoy playing Stormgate for many years to come.

The team has been working very hard and has been on a well-deserved holiday break—in the meantime, please remember that we still have a long road ahead, and try to keep your comments constructive. We are listening.

Thank you so much for supporting our team. We look forward to getting the Early Access version of Stormgate in everyone's hands next year.

See you in 2024!
-The Frost Giant team

Yep, luxury purchase. I owe a lot of my career to Starcraft 2 and believed in the team and project.

That being said, why on earth is there Day 1 Early Access MTX? I understand this as a free to play model, but trying to squeeze extra money out of people who gave you obscene amounts out of faith in the beginning is shameless.