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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

Let me first say that I think The Sims 2 is really good as a game product. Great graphcis, great production values, great attention to detail. But I don't seem to get it.  First off, it strikes me as unforgiveable that the game doesn't feature a "go back 1 day" type feature so that if a key sim dies (like the guy I've spent 2 days building up) because of a ghost or some other silly thing that I can go back and try to correct it.  Sure, it's not realistic, give me the option still. ...

Here is data that every PC game company can make use of - what hardware are people using.

I'll be on MSNBC's Lester Holt Live at around 4:45pm today (EST) if anyone is interested.  I'll be talking about The Political Machine and what it was like developing an artificial intelligence engine to manage the Bush and Kerry campaigns to simulated victory.