Random Frog Thoughts, Summer 2012

Published on August 16, 2012 By Draginol In Stardockians

I used to have more time to blog. Then I had kids. Here’s a random stream of consciousness.

Wish I had something handy to clean my keyboard. I love these old Dell keyboards but it might be time to get a new one.
Seen a lot of articles about lawsuits lately. It’s a shame people don’t read the actual filings and instead focus on the sensational, misleading, headline.
Speaking of lawsuits, if you operate an IP-based company, lawsuits are daily life unfortunately. IP lawsuits (sometimes referred to as “patent trolls”) don’t just hit the big guys.
Forum Gamification. Need to write about that.
Excited about Fallen Enchantress. It really is looking good.
Wish Start8 would hurry up and get done. I have been groveling to get them to get me a private beta build.
The CEO is the one ultimately responsible for the failure of a product.
When a product is successful, the CEO’s role was creating the leadership and environment for that success.
I got a pet turtle when I was 15. While I was up north last week, he got out of his outdoor terrarium. I’d had him for 26 years. Hopefully he’s living it up in the woods behind the house. I hope.
I suspect neither Obama nor Romney are anything like how they are portrayed.
The more public a figure you are, the less control you have over your public perception.
The public perception of people is rarely remotely similar to what the person is like.
Google never forgets.
The software group may actually lose this year to the games group for generating revenue.
That’s mainly because of Sins rebellion combined with enterprise software purchases in a bit of a hiatus during the Windows 8 release.
Company morale is very high. I don’t think anyone’s left the company this year (either voluntarily or involuntarily).
My dog, Bailey, comes to work with me now.
Steam has an amazing self-serve uploading system. IT wants all games placed on it but that would mean requiring Steam for our games which I think would cause a minor riot. That said, all things being equal, I’d prefer to go that route.
So much email back log.

Comments

MikusR

on Aug 16, 2012

Steam has an amazing self-serve uploading system.

Does it allow self serve beta creation and upload? If it does beta builds of Rebellion could be nice (no need for QA)

PS. If I remember correctly, that was something you wanted Impulse to have.

Draginol

on Aug 16, 2012

Yes.

Voqar

on Aug 16, 2012

quoting post

I used to have more time to blog. Then I had kids.

Eh, one of the things that makes Stardock rock is how accessible you are (interacting with players/fans), how much you write (about your games and the industry in general), on top of your honesty and passion.

It's an amazing thing. Unique possibly.

I've given up on hating Steam. They win. I have too many games from it now that I couldn't get anywhere else or that were too cheap to pass on. And maybe I'm getting older and like not dealing with updates manually and don't care so much how my games are installed as long as they run flawlessly. Still don't care about achievements, the social features, or any of that (steamworks sutff) but I do like how easy it is to install and maintain your games. Nothing one can't accomplish with SDC of course, but the fact that so many people already have Steam makes beating SDC into them less arduous.

wbino

on Aug 16, 2012

I suspect neither Obama nor Romney are anything like how they are portrayed.

I suspect Obama is probably more liberal than portrayed, but afraid of the conservative media backlash....

And Romney is actually more aloof and out of touch with the average American.........

Rebell44

on Aug 16, 2012

MikusR

reply 1

Steam has an amazing self-serve uploading system. Does it allow self serve beta creation and upload? If it does beta builds of Rebellion could be nice (no need for QA)

PS. If I remember correctly, that was something you wanted Impulse to have.

Yes, it allows that.

This was discussed some time ago on Paradox forums and almost caused civil war there

seanw3

on Aug 16, 2012

Yes please. All games on Steam.

Alstein

on Aug 16, 2012

No thank you to all games mandating Steam, unless you allow folks to run the game without running Steam (for single player)- do that and most of my objections are dropped.

As for the sensationalism lately, only real thing you can do is what you're doing- put out stuff people like. It's gotta suck not being able to respond to it all.

Jafo

on Aug 16, 2012

Forum Gamification. Need to write about that.

Sounds like a HBO series starring some ex X Files bloke ...

Skarny

on Aug 16, 2012

Hope the turtle is well and happy. Get a new keyboard. And a toilet seat. I was just thinking today that it'd be much easier to get a new toilet seat than clean the old one. How's that for gross and random?

I love Steams inter connectivity, and the in-game interface stuff they seem to have.

But I don't like Steam. It feels pervasive, cancerous to my system. I'm not sure it actually is, but it feels that way.

RedneckDude

on Aug 16, 2012

The software group may actually lose this year to the games group for generating revenue.

I hope DesktopX gets love soon...... I have been talking to friends about the idea of retiring my DX gloves.

Skarny

on Aug 16, 2012

I have a support ticket in with a list of things I'd like to have - maybe you should do the same RND? Make it a formal thing.

Course, if it doesn't work on Windows 8, not much point - hmm I might totter over to Draginol's W8 Blog and ask him to try it out.

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