Song of the Month: Monowhales, Hear Me Out

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Toronto power pop band Monowhales recently announced they’re splitting up. This is quite a shocking revelation, as they seemed to have just hit their stride as a band, and the announcement came mid-tour, with remaining shows needing to be cancelled as a result. While the announcement is full of positive language about wanting to go out on a high note and pursue other projects, the sudden nature of it does lead me to believe there was some behind the scenes drama.

While I wouldn’t call myself a massive Monowhales fan, I’ve generally enjoyed their work, and it’s been gratifying watching them continually grow as a band, so this is disappointing news. I thought I’d honour their legacy by sharing another of their songs — this is now perhaps their final big radio hit.

Fun fact: I once stumbled across Sally, the singer, on a dating app. Her profile said she wanted some song recommendations, so I told her to check out Efflo, who were still a thing at the time. She never responded, not that I expected her to. No harm in trying, eh?

Growing Frustration with Stormgate

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After an releasing an intensely mediocre Steam Next Fest demo, Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios has continued to court controversy. The developers have caused confusion over what “fully funded to launch” means, they’ve flirted with the idea of using generative AI to run its story NPCs, and they’ve launched an equity crowdfunding campaign.

A promotional image for upcoming RTS Stormgate.I think equity crowdfunding is a bit of a dodgy road to go down in the first place, but what really raised my eyebrows is that in the documentation around said campaign they claim StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was their previous release.

A screenshot of a Frost Giant Studios equity crowdfunding document, in which they falsely claim to have been the team to launch StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty.This is problematic because — and I can’t stress this enough — Frost Giant Studios and Blizzard Entertainment are not the same company.

Yes, some people at Frost Giant are ex-Blizzard, but the extent to which they have anointed themselves Blizzard 2 is getting really questionable, and they certainly can’t claim to have been the same team that launched WoL.

I’ve seen some seemingly well-researched reddit posts claiming that almost no one at Frost Giant actually had a major leadership role in the development of SC2. Certainly as a long time SC2 fanatic I can confirm that the only names I recognize at Frost Giant are Micky Neilson, who is just doing lore and not even a full-timer at FG, and Kevin Dong, who only joined the SC2 co-op team well after its launch (and in hindsight co-op’s quality dropped significantly under his leadership).

When I think of the main brains behind SC2, I think David Kim, Dustin Browder, Chris Metzen, Brian Kindregan, and Valerie Watrous, none of whom are employees at Frost Giant to my knowledge. Metzen is supposedly doing some consulting for them, but we have no idea how big his role actually is.

A promotional image for upcoming RTS Stormgate.I’m generally in favour of not ascribing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, and I think calling game devs shady is an over-used trope, but I find it really hard to frame Frost Giant’s claim of ownership over Wings of Liberty as anything but deliberately disingenuous.

At this point I’ve lost pretty much all hope for Stormgate. There’s just way too many red flags around the game, not the least of which being that its current version just isn’t fun.

It’s frustrating because the RTS genre really needs a new champion right now, and Stormgate seemed to be the best candidate. Age of Empires IV has stumbled a lot post-launch. Godsworn is fun, but too small to be the Next Big Thing. ZeroSpace and Immortal: Gates of Pyre both have great ideas, but I don’t think either has a very good chance to deliver on their lofty ambitions. ZeroSpace so far looks far too complex to appeal to casual gamers, Gates of Pyre has been all but silent for a worryingly long time, and both are from small teams with little to no mainstream name recognition.

I want to be clear I’m not saying this to hate on Gates of Pyre or ZeroSpace. I love the ideas both games have presented, and I would be incredibly happy to see both survive and thrive. I’m just worried they won’t be able to.

Still, I have more faith in them than I do in Stormgate at this point.