Stellar Stone

Stellar Stone, LLC
Limited liability company
Industry Video game industry
Founded 2000 (2000)
Defunct 2006 (2006)
Headquarters Santa Monica, California, United States
Products Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Stellar Stone, LLC was a video game developer founded in 2000 and based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed games offshore in Russia and Ukraine, with a small staff and low budget. The co-owner of Stellar Stone was Sergey Titov of TS Group Entertainment, who licensed his engine out to Stellar Stone in exchange for a substantial portion of the company.

The company developed a total of eight games, most of which are little-known to the gaming community. Their best-known title was Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, a 2003 video game considered to be one of the worst games ever made. Most of these games were published by GameMill Publishing.

What little coverage the company has received has mostly been negative, generally due to the low quality of Big Rigs and sometimes their other titles, all of which (sans Total Mahjongg and Shanghai) were covered by Russian reviewing site Absolute Games.[1]

History

Stellar Stone was founded in 2000, in Santa Monica, California.[2] The company was headquartered in the city, with management offices in Los Angeles and London.[2] The company's development teams were stationed offshore in Russia[2] and Ukraine.[3] This allowed Stellar Stone to produce games at the cheap price of at least $US 15,000, compared to costs three to five times higher in price with other European or United States-based developers.[2]

All of Stellar Stone's games were built on the Eternity engine. The engine was developed by Sergey Titov of TS Group Entertainment, who licensed it to Stellar Stone in exchange for a "large chunk of the company."[3] According to an interview with Titov on yourewinner.com (a Big Rigs fansite), the company "want[ed] to do things cheap and [was] not willing to pay even 200-300K" to create an engine of their own. Despite being the co-owner of Stellar Stone, Titov claims he "didn't have much design and development input or any power to stop [the company's games] from being released."[3]

Stellar Stone ceased business in 2006. Referring to the company's members, Titov said "I have no idea where all these people went. Not that I care about it either."[3] Their Internet domain, www.stellarstone.com, is no longer active, and is now commercially cybersquatted. Titov later went on to produce The War Z under OP Productions, another critically panned video game that was removed from Valve Corporation's Steam two days after the release date,[3][4] and publish Nacho Games' panned Steam Early Access game Burstfire under Free Reign Entertainment.

Games

Stellar Stone developed eight games: three racing games (Taxi Racer, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, and Midnight Race Club: Supercharged!), a puzzle game (Total Mahjongg and Shanghai), a hunting game (Remington Big Buck Trophy Hunt), a pinball game (Total Pinball 25), and two real-time strategy games based on the American Civil War (Gettysburg: Civil War Battles and Ultimate Civil War Battles: Robert E. Lee vs. Ulysses S. Grant). These games were all published by the US-based company GameMill Publishing, with the exception of Taxi Racer, which was published by BestBuys Interactive. Titov said "It takes a true genius to sale [sic] [the games] !!! That's why I think the Gamemill guys are true geniuses!" All of the games developed by the company used the proprietary game engine Eternity.[3]

The company's best-known release was the infamous Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, which received overwhelmingly negative review scores for being "blatantly unfinished in nearly every way".[5] The game was a pre-alpha release[3] and, despite Stellar Stone's release of a patch, is still considered to be of very poor quality.[6]

Title Release date Rating Genre
Taxi Racer October 22, 2001 Everyone Racing
Remington Big Buck Trophy Hunt September 26, 2002 Teen Hunting
Gettysburg: Civil War Battles August 31, 2003 Teen RTS
Total Pinball 25 September 22, 2003 Everyone Pinball
Ultimate Civil War Battles: Robert E. Lee vs. Ulysses S. Grant October 24, 2003 Teen RTS
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing November 20, 2003 Everyone Racing
Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! January 14, 2004 Everyone Racing
Total Mahjongg and Shanghai
Total Mahjong / Total Shanghai (alternate title)		 February 21, 2005 Everyone Puzzle

Reception

Stellar Stone has been widely criticized for their release of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing,[7] which received unanimously negative reviews from critics,[7] being named "the worst game ever made",[8] "only good as a joke",[9] and "completely broken and blatantly unfinished in nearly every way."[10] It was mainly panned due to its lack of proper collision detection, entirely non-existent AI (as the computer opponent does not move, or otherwise participate in the "race" at all), extremely abnormal physics, and its victory screen—an image of a tri-handled trophy accompanied by the typoed caption "YOU'RE WINNER !".[11] Brad Hicks of SwankWorld felt that releasing the game was an "embarrassment" to them, as well as "the people who produced it." He also quoted their website as saying their goal was to "provide our clients with best of gaming technologies and cut their development expenses, allowing them to concentrate on product rather than on technology hustles of development," countering with how Big Rigs' unfinished state seemed to render that statement null and void. "I don't know what kind of money there were going to lose if they gave the game more development time so they could crank out something of even middling quality," he continued. "People say PC gaming is dead, and games like this are starting to prove that."[12] The game has been consistently listed among the worst video games of all-time by GameSpot,[13] Metacritic,[14] and GameRankings.[15][16]

Despite poor reception, sales for the company have been moderate;[3][13] Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing sold approximately 20,000 copies,[13] while Gettysburg: Civil War Battles and Ultimate Civil War Battles: Robert E. Lee vs. Ulysses S. Grant, combined, sold over 100,000 copies in the United States.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Big Rigs from Absolute Games". Retrieved January 21, 2004.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Stellar Stone LLC :: Company". Stellar Stone. Archived from the original on 2004. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Q and A with Sergey Titov". you'rewinner.com. September 21, 2008. Retrieved May 4, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Player complaints drive zombie game off Steam". BBC News. Retrieved December 26, 2012.
  5. ↑ GameSpot.com review of Big Rigs, January 15, 2004
  6. ↑ Big Rigs Patch release at GameSpot
  7. 1 2 "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing". Metacritic. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  8. ↑ Satterfield, Shane (March 23, 2004). "Games You Should Never Buy". X-Play. Archived from the original on April 6, 2005. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  9. ↑ Wadleigh, Matt (March 22, 2004). "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Review - PC". Thunderbolt Games. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  10. ↑ Navarro, Alex (January 14, 2004). "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing for PC Review". GameSpot. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  11. ↑ Navarro, Alex (January 14, 2004) Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing for PC Review, GameSpot. Retrieved on May 25, 2008.
  12. ↑ Hicks, Brad. "Big Rigs Over the Road Racing (PC) Review". SwankWorld. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  13. 1 2 3 "Flat-Out Worst Game". GameSpot's Best and Worst of 2004. GameSpot.
  14. ↑ "Search Results from Metacritic.com". The Worst Games of Metacritic. Metacritic. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  15. ↑ "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing". GameRankings. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  16. ↑
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