We played Rise of Nations this evening here on the LAN. Even with ideal conditions, multiplayer strategy games are almost more effort than they're worth. I think age is a major factor here. When I was in my 20s, I burned thousands of hours mucking around trying to get Total Annihilation or Warcraft 2 or C&C or whatever games going. But now at 32, I seem to have a lot less time or at least patience to throw away 20%+ of the "game day" due to various problems in multiplayer. Whether that be ...

Tomorrow (Tuesday, September 16) we're goign to have a live chat at 8pm Eastern Standard Time in the #galciv channel on irc.stardock.com. Here's the way we currently plan on doing it. There will be two channels: #galciv and #galcivQA In #galciv, no one but ops will be able to speak. I will answer questions posted in #galcivQA. From 8:00pm to 8:15pm I will answer questions from #galcivQA in the #galciv channel. Then at 8:16pm we'll open it up so that everyone can talk in #galciv...

Phew. It's done.  So after 4 months of work we've finished up the expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations. And we're giving it away for free.  I wonder, looking back in a year or two, what the verdict will be on having made this expansion pack for free. I think it's safe to say we could have sold this expansion pack for $15 to $20. But my "ulterior" motive is that with GalCiv we have a real hit on our hands and it is better to sacrifice short term profit for a long term ...

I must admit that it's pretty cool seeing the Galactic Civilizations community coming into its own.  Besides there being various "empires" of users now with their own websites to discuss strategies and exploring the GalCiv universe, there's now a regular comic strip for it. Ah the Drengin and Torians. You can visit MetaJinx , the home page for all the various strips and other goodies.

Well this weekend we've been taking a beating on the net over Stardock Central. And by we, I mean me as I'm the one who hangs out on the gaming forums. Stardock Central is awesome technology but has the same kind of issues that the early "multi-mission" military aircraft had.  Back in the late 60s, the Air force fell in love with the idea of jet aircraft that could perform multiple roles.  Interceptor, air superiority, tactical bombing, strategy bombing, etc. And for 2 decades, the Air forc...

Apparently the new Grand Theft Auto game will require that you work out to stay in shape -- in the game. Now, why would I do something in a game that I won't bother to do in real life? It reminds me of the early days of playing Ultima Online: [Select Mining Pick] [Target Rock] "No ore found" [Select Mining Pick] [Target Rock] "No ore found" [Select Mining Pick] [Target Rock] ["Iron Ore found. 1/1000 units to create ingot. 50 ingots needed for 1 gold coin. 10 gold coins nee...

It figures the first time I get quoted in Newsweek it would be the issue with Steve Jobs on the front.  His big mug glaring at me for all eternity as a constant reminder that even as software companies go, we're small potatoes. But still, it's pretty cool to be in Newsweek because of something we made as opposed to something we did ! But still, definitely pretty cool to get into Newsweek with my name mentioned and quote and all.   

And so it begins... People have long talked about the day when we would just be able to buy a retail-level game and be able to download it right then and there.  And for the past two years, Stardock has allowed its customers to purchase and download Stardock's retail titles via Drengin.net.  But the challenge was how to expand those titles beyond the Stardock titles?  How to convince independent developers and publishers to put their titles for available on-line -- especially ...

When I first got into the alpha of World of Warcraft I quickly concluded that keyboard commands and hotkeys would not cut it when it came to on-line communication. My friend here at Stardock who is also on the alpha introduced me to Ventrillo: http://www.ventrilo.com Ventrillo is a voice chat system. It's like IRC but with voice. I assigned my Ctrl key as the hot key to let me talk. I just have a microphone on my desktop and talk to the other members of my guild. It's a great way of comm...

During the alpha of World of Warcraft one thing everyone noticed: Nearly all the players were nice people. I don't mean just friendly, but really nice. Will this be something that continues into the beta and beyond? I don't have my hopes up too high but I hope so. What are some of the rules of netiquette in the world of warcraft? Don't "kill steal". The first person to attack a creature gets that creature. Don't come in and start attacking it unless they ask for help OR if it looks lik...

Our games team is working on a new game called The Political Machine. It won't be out until May and the website hasn't even been announced. But I'll share it with you guys here . It's actually a strategy game that can be played either single player or multiplayer on the net. We've been doing a great deal of demographic research to find out what issues matter to voters in which states and splice it between Democrats and Republicans. If you click on the game link on its page you can get more d...

Yesterday we had a LAN party at the office and played Counterstrike all day. It had been about 3 years since I last played and my skills were definitely rusty. My "ownage" ability had definitely taken a few steps down. But it was still a blast. Though, it is always interesting to see a bunch of 30 somethings revert, just for an instant, to being a teen whenever someone makes a mistake (myself included). We had friendly fire on and I don't think there was anyone who didn't kill their own team...

Free Holiday Goodies from Stardock   North Pole Showdown . Only you can save Santa! In this arcade ...

I just finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Outstanding role playing game. I played the PC version though the game is available on the consoles as well. Knights is an adventure/role playing game where you control up to 3 characters at a time. From a pure game mechanics point of view, it contains the standard fantasy role playing elements with fighters (soldiers), thieves (scoundrels), and various magic classes (Force powered things). In the game, you begin as a low level fight...

I recently wrote about this topic here . But I wanted to write a more succinct version of it since some people thought I was advocating something akin to Internet Product Activation to thwart piracy. Let me first Bottom line this: CD based copy protection does more harm than good. Let me then add: There is no magic bullet that will stop piracy. Game developers need to quit trying to solve piracy via some sort of mechanism and instead design a policy that discourages piracy. Game develope...