"Cattle die, kindred die
Every man is mortal.
But the good name will never fade
Of one who has lived honorably."

-- Odin, Words of the High One

Dear All, today I must break two news to you. As it always happens, one is good and one is not :).

As you may have noticed, little activity has been going on the Strombringer side of things lately. We've put on hold several interviews and we've put offline the new graphics from later Episodes, all for the same reason -- the future of the project was still undecided.

To cut a long story short, the original business plan between Snowball and Octagon called for us to develop a prototype and for Octagon to find us a publishing partner. Then, having secured such partnership, we were to continue the development towards release.

When it didn't happen during the originally expected time, we've injected some internal funding, then some more and then some more again, but in the end there was still no global publishing partner willing to take on the project, and so we are putting the game on ice now until such time when our own resources will allow us to develop it without external funding or whenever we will be able to count on a publisher's support from day one.

The exact reasons why the things didn't happen as expected are not for me to analyze -- in this industry, as in any business, econimics and politics go hand in hand. Maybe we or our agents didn't try hard enough and didn't speak to all of the publishers on the market. Maybe the market at large is losing interest in RPGs. Maybe the concept of a PC game based on Elric was not that attractive. Maybe the cost of Stormbringer license is too high, compared to other properties. Probably a bit from all of the above, and I'm sure everyone has his own opinion -- in all honesty I don't think there's a single reason to place the blame on.

Still, some things surely went right for us: the development budget was moderate, the design concept was both original and in tune with the existing Stormbringer worlds, getting approval from Moorcock in no time at all, and -- above everything -- the dedication of the team was absolute, which is something you can't buy for all money in the world. So for us it's not really a question of killing the project perpetually, but rather a question of waiting for a more convenient time to bring this vision to reality. We stay true to the design, we stay true to our vision and we hope that one day it will come to life.

Meanwhile, Octagon will continue to seek a developer or a publisher able to support the project financially, and we really hope that some other company, a developer with a good internal funding or a superb relationship with the global publisher or an internal team of any of the multi-nationals, will pick up the gauntlet, obtain the license and bring Elric's saga to the games genre. But until then, let us open the book and hear the song of the black sword once again...

The other news that I must break today is a good one: our other project, Fatherdale: The Guardians of Asgard, has reached the stage of playable alpha and, after three years of development, we are finally ready to announce it internationally.

In a few words, Fatherdale is a medieval RPG/RTS/Adventure set in the true world of AD 1072. The storyline mixes fantasy and real facts, a consistent ingame world based on extensive research and legends of immortal warrior gods. This is a world where Odin walks in the shade of Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, but this is also a world where every single human life makes a difference.

Here in Russia, the game has been known for more than two years by now, giving birth to a great RPG community. Now that we are ready to bring it out internationally, we look forward to your valuable comments as well -- to help us polish, balance and make it as good as it deserves. A public announcement of the project will follow later on today together with the opening of a dedicated site.

Please also note that this newslist will now be used to report Fatherdale news, so should you wish to unsubscribe, please send an empty email to fatherdale-off@snowball.ru.

My warmest thanks to everyone who supported us with the projects and may the luck be with you,

=sk

Sergei Klimov
Managing Director
Snowball Interactive
www.snowball.ru