It's not easy being a gamer who also makes games. I wish I didn't love computer games so much. But I do. 

What's worse, I like a particular type of computer games that seems to be increasingly ignored even though I am certain there are markets for those games.  What that means is that both my desire as a gamer to make a game and my evil capitalistic goal to do something about that desire combine together.

I remember being told by two major publishers back before the first Galactic Civilizations on Windows that the turn based market was dead.  Mid last year when Galactic Civilizations II past the 200,000 mark, I felt pretty vindicated.  Sure, 200,000 is peanuts compared to say a major console game or a mega popular PC game even.  But if a team of a half dozen or so people can make a game that sells 200,000 copies, that's a pretty good thing I'd say.  Even if you want to look at it from a pure businesss point of view -- it's not how much you gross, it's how much you net.

For up and coming game designers out there who are full of ideas, the thing to remember is -- time is fleeting. 

I love space strategy games. That's pretty obvious.  I still play GalCiv II most weekends. For me, I play it in the debugger. If the AI does something I don't like, it gets tuned, fixed, tweaked.  I could do that forever.  But I don't want to just write space based strategy games. There's so many other games.

The team is working on a fantasy strategy game.  The game engine for it is amazing. Beyond anything that's been done before for this type of game. We're talking about a world in which you can zoom in and see individuals walking around in the woods but also be zoomed out to see the entire world in one smooth motion.  It's a live world.  But it's still 2 years ago. So don't get excited yet.  I'll be 37 years old then.

I also want to make an RPG.  A Baldur's Gate style RPG.  What I mean by that is one that is driven by the story. Sure, players can do a lot of other things too and have plenty of side quests but there's a main plotpoint that players are driven towards and they're playing a specific character that they control in a party of several other people who interact.  Ultima IV was one of my favorite games of all time.  Baldur's Gate, Planetscape Torment, these are games that I remember very fondly.  I'd love to make that kind of game.  But will there be time? People will want another GalCiv sequel at some point probably and the fantasy strategy game, assuming it's successful will take up time too.

And let's not forget Society which shares the same main engine as the fantasy strategy game. That's a long term project as well that is largely waiting for us to just get bigger to afford the infrastructure needed for it.  It was heart breaking to back off from that but we want to make sure we can do the game the justice and that means being a significantly bigger company than we are today. Can't make Society with a half dozen or even a dozen people. You need 20 people just in IT to do something like that.  We're getting there and the game itself continues development.

But you see the problem right? At some point, there's just not enough time to make all these games.  I don't want to be a consultant. I want to be in the thick of the game.  I like coding on the games too.  I like working on them day to day.  And even as I work on that, there's Stardock's primary business to be concerned about -- the desktop enhancements part (check out Stardock's home page and games barely get mentioned). And I love that stuff too. Just as much as the games.

So I work out the schedule... Okay, political machine 2008 in 2008, fantasy strategy game in 2009, some other game in 2010, society after that, rpg after that, and so forth.  By then, I'll be in my 40s! Good gravy.

Those of you who are reading this that are in your 20s -- woe to you. Your day is coming. I wrote the original GalCiv for OS/2 back in 1993 -- 14 years ago.  I was 21.  And then, one day in the blink of an eye I was 35 years old. Wife. 3 kids. My oldest son played Counterstrike with me the other day and Company of Heroes on my team. How did that happen? I'm too young to have a son that age!

If I could just slow down time so that there's enough time to make all these games, that would be great. If anyone knows of any time machines, please let me know.