It was going faster…and faster…and faster…

Stardock, a company that by mid 2010 only had a total of around 60 employees ran Impulse, had multiple games in the pipeline, was the leading licensor to OEMs of desktop enhancements (We made the DellDock for Dell and then HP asked us to make a competitor to the DellDock which we delivered in the form of Fences for HP and then licensed MyColors to both of them as well as to many others) along with many other projects in the pipeline.

How did we do it? The answer, we stretched ourselves extremely thin. We had a really well oiled development machine and our key people were no longer dedicated to anything in particular but rather oversaw several projects.

Because our turn-over rate is basically zilch, our people had/have become extremely good. If you’ve ever read the The Tipping Point, then you can picture the level of productivity we get in our areas of expertise.

By Summer of 2010, I was ostensibly the designer and AI coder for Elemental: War of Magic and had just taken over the job of producer when the game’s producer needed to take time off for the birth of their daughter. On top of that, some unforeseen issues arose in marketing so that the last month of the game’s development found me taking over all the marketing work as well.  The result, was a the release of War of Magic which was a wake up call to us.

After that game, we took a look how how we were running the company. The company’s phenomenal output had made the company very profitable but nothing was getting the kind of personalized attention it used to get.  It was a moment to rethink what we wanted to do with ourselves. 

So, we sold Impulse to GameStop, brought the game developers who were on Impulse back to the games unit and had them take over Elemental. We were fortunate to be able to bring on board Derek Paxton to run the games unit (he’s now Vice President of Stardock Entertainment). We brought Jon Shafer in to design/lead one project and hired Chris Bray (formerly of Red Storm Entertainment) to lead Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. 

In addition, retail ceased to be a consideration for release dates. Only quality. When the game was deemed unequivocally excellent, only then would we start thinking of release dates. Then, we would use the additional time to polish polish polish. 

Mind you, we always have tried to make sure our games were excellent. The difference, however, was that they had specific release dates because we had to sign contracts with retailers many months in advance.  So, for instance, we knew Galactic Civilizations II would come out in February 2006 -- a full year before it was done.  We just managed our project in such a way to have enough time to make it as good as we could make it in that time frame.

But with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, the concept of a set release date was tossed out. instead, only when the game was deemed by the team to be “awesome” would we evaluate it and come up with a release date.  How this works out, from a profitability stand-point remains to be seen. 

We’ve never released anything nearly as polished as Rebellion. Since Stardock and Ironclad developed Rebellion as a unified team (gotta love the Internet and VPNs), the undefined release dates meant a lot of flexibility in making sure both teams had time to do what they thought was needed.  We’re really pleased with the results.

Quarter To Three’s Tom Chick takes a deep dive into the new Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion.

>>Read the full review

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion’s release immediately placed it at the top seller on Steam.

And at GameStop

Have a PC? Like games? Like really really good games? Then get Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion!

Introduction – The Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins of a Solar Empire is a game set in a distant future where mankind has expanded into the stars, creating a loose networking of colonies that become known as the Trade Order. Over a period of a thousand years, the Trade Order worlds experienced peace and prosperity. All of that, however, changed twenty years ago when the aliens arrived.

The Vasari Empire once ruled over countless worlds. For thousands of years, they were unstoppable and considered invulnerable to any external or internal threat.  However, approximately 10,000 years ago, an unknown force began wiping out their worlds. When it became clear that they were helpless to stop this force, they fled their own empire and have, ever since, traveled across the stars, just ahead of the unknown terror that pursues them.

While lacking numbers, the remnants of the glorious Vasari empire never had any problems entering into a new space, taking what they needed, and moving on.  That is, until they came in contact with the humans of the Trade Order.  At first, Trader worlds fell to the Vasari. But soon, mankind formed the Trader Emergency Coalition (TEC), relearned the art of war and began to push back against the invading Vasari forces.

In this stalemate came the exiled race called the Advent.  Once human, they had been banished from Trader space long ago due to their experiments in human biological and cybernetic enhancement. Now they’re back and they wish to take what they believe is theirs.

Entrenchment & Diplomacy

Through the course of the conflict, different techniques were attempted to bring the war to an end. Massive star bases were built to defend planets in the hope of making it too expensive to conduct war. Instead, casualties simply soared. Then diplomacy was attempted to try to bring about a negotiated settlement. It failed.

The Rebellion

This brings us to Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. The three races have each been split in two as civil war has broken due to years of conflict and destruction.  The TEC, Vasari and Advent have slowly ground one another into dust with the survivors clamoring for their own vision of what constitutes victory – at any price.

The highlights

Without going into all of the hundreds of new features, changes and additions in Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion here is a brief summary:

For the first time since the original Sins of a Solar Empire was released, we have a single, fully integrated game, built from the ground up to deliver a spectacular PC-exclusive strategy game experience.  Unlike the two stand-alone expansions previously released (Entrenchment and Diplomacy), Rebellion expands across the board. Nothing in the game was untouched.  The starbases got enhancements, the diplomatic features were improved, the graphics engine was overhauled, the computer AI greatly updated, the pirates reimagined, the multiplayer vastly improved.

Of course, those kinds of meat and potato improvements don’t tend to get a lot of attention in reviews or in marketing. But to gamers, they matter. They matter  because the things that have made Sins of a Solar Empire the most popular space RTS of all time have been taken to their next logical step.

More obvious, however, are the new additions to the game. These include:

The Titans which are, in essence, like the super star destroyers of the Sins universe. As huge as capital ships were in Sins of a Solar Empire, the titan class ships absolutely dwarf them.

New ships such as the new capital ships and cruisers such as the Corvette help ensure that each faction doesn’t just play differently but plays even more uniquely than ever before. Having two years of player feedback on cool ways to make the Vasari, Advent, and TEC play uniquely didn’t hurt either. : )

Factions of the three races now bring new depth. They come in two flavors – Loyalist and Rebel. As you can imagine, this feature results in hundreds of additional changes to the game play since each faction has their own tech tree, ships, etc.

Victory Conditions. We heard you. We listened. We added.  Sins of a Solar Empire is famous for delivering 4X strategy in a real-time game.  But for players who wanted to be able to focus their games (particularly for shorter games), new victory conditions were added that help ensure that Sins remains a compelling multiplayer experience as well as being able to enhance single player replayability.

Join us

If you don’t have Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, join us.  Few games have been able to keep the same team together to polish and enhance for as long as the Sins team has had.  Thanks to gamers like you, Stardock and Ironclad got to spend a lot of extra time on Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion to make sure it was “just right”.  

[Get Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion]

At long last, June 12th is just about here!

It's hard to believe how long we've (us and the Sins community) have been working on this.  Back at the start, June 2012 seemed impossibly far away.

But we wanted to make sure Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion was just right. Each new faction, each new ship and titan, each new victory condition got plenty of spot light in their own beta releases. We wanted to make sure the updated graphics engine looked amazing but also performed well for people.  

I and the rest of the Stardock crew plan to be hanging out this week playing Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion online.  My Steam ID is draginol if you want to find me on there.

Good luck to all of us! Tomorrow can't come soon enough.

This is my first shot at demoing Fences.  It also gives you an idea of just how compelling the new features are.

I’m playing with the latest internal build of Fences 2. I can describe it in one word: WOW.

Let me show you some screenshots that will explain what I mean:

Folder Portals:

At first glance, this looks like Fences 1.  But look closely… See the Videos and My Pictures? Those portals to folders. This is huge. Think of all the people you know that dump every picture and such onto their desktop. With Fences 2, people can put pictures where they belong – in their pictures folder. Then, using Fences, just create a portal fence on the desktop.

Pages:

This screen looks really busy right? Here’s the thing: It’s a Fences page. I got to it by clicking on the edge of the screen and dragging the screen to the next page. I use this page because I often have to interact and/or move stuff between these three folders. I bet I’m not the only one who gets pretty tired of having to open up folders, place them around the screen to drag and drop things between them.

Let me video this to really drive it home:

Fences 2 pages in action

Easier to use

Fences 2 installs as a Control Panel item rather than its own proprietary UI..thing. So you can always get to it through the control panel and the UI works the same as any other control panel.

Also, for people (like me) who just want a clean desktop, Fences is still the world’s best solution for this: Double click on the desktop and your icons go away (double click to bring them back).

More powerful

The power-user features of Fences 2 are presented in a way that they’re easy for power users to make use of but don’t scare off casual users. For instance, in the above screenshot, I’ve got my pictures displayed as details while my videos are showing their items as large video items. I’m also configuring a new fence to be the place that intercepts things trying to add their junk to my desktop.

Besides the obvious addition of being able to have different sized icons on your desktop, it lets you use your desktop as it was originally intended – your portal for all your stuff.  If you’ve used Windows 8, you can really appreciate how important it’s going to be to be able to use your desktop more effectively than ever and for everyone else, it lets you craft your desktop to work the way you want it to.

Fences 1 is, as some know, the world’s most popular desktop enhancement (by far).  Fences 2, is more than a mere evolution of the fences concept. It’s is the realization of two decades of what the desktop can be when given the right tools.  Fences is a simple program that has profound benefits.

Let me get this out of the way: I like Steam. I like Valve.

We have a poll up right now that asks whether you use Steam. Let us know please.

I’ve been in digital distribution since before digital distribution was a thing.  The very first computer game that was launched at retail and digitally distributed was Galactic Civilizations back in February 2003.

For us, digital distribution was a matter of life or death. Consider this, how many other independent (or heck, just non-publicly traded) game studios have been around 20 years? Go ahead. Count them up. Not many eh?

I incorporated Stardock back in 1993 from my college dorm room. And I can tell you, if it weren’t for digital distribution, we would have stopped making games a long time ago.  That’s because the more people that are between you and your customer, the more opportunities there are for theft. Not by players but by retailers, publishers, distributors, etc. 

One of the reasons why the whole “piracy” bellowing from publishers irritated me was because the biggest obstacle to getting paid for my work wasn’t from pirates. It was from the middle men.

In 1994, we released our first game. Galactic Civilizations for OS/2.  It was published by a company called Advanced Idea Machines.  The game was a huge hit. So I heard anyway. We didn’t get paid. And being a poor college student at the time, I couldn’t afford a lawyer.

So in 1996, we released Galactic Civilizations 2 for OS/2.  This time we released it ourselves. But our retail distributor, Micro Central, went bankrupt and didn’t pay us and our mail order distributor, Blue Orchards went out of business as well and didn’t pay us.

So then we moved to Windows and we released Galactic Civilizations for Windows, published by Strategy First….and again, didn’t get paid.

Do you see a pattern here?

What saved us was digital distribution.  With it, we could sell directly to customers, cutting out the middle man.

As you can imagine, when Steam came out we started to get a little nervous. Not because of the competition but because we feared the idea that we would one day need to sell our software through a third party and hence risk not getting paid…again.

As it had turned out, our fears have been unwarranted.  Impulse, now owned by Gamestop, pays like clock work and so does Steam.  By contrast, with a retail distributor you were lucky to get paid merely 90 days late. And that’s not counting the obnoxious and expensive RMA games they play. I like the service Steam provides. They’re easy to work with, they’re honest, and they’re passionate about what they do.  And most importantly, they let me, as a game developer, focus on what matters: making games.

Anyway, the point here being, what are your feelings on Steam these days?

There’s a show on National Geographic called “Doomsday Preppers”. I’ve never watched it. But I have read a number of blogs from people on the subject and I’ve become convinced that most people, even those into “prepping”, haven’t thought through what would be the likely, and even predictable, steps our society would take as it self-destructed.

The doomsday scenarios I have seen discussed revolve around one of the topics below:

• Economic collapse
• Nuclear attack
• Stellar impact (comet/asteroid)
• EMP attack
• Solar EMP event (Carrington Event)

I don’t feel qualified to discuss the likelihood of any of those things. I do, however, feel sufficiently qualified to say that there is one general scenario that I think is likely enough that it bears discussing: The collapse of our electrical grid and the consequences of that collapse.

A few years ago, I started doing research for a project on was premised on the fall of our civilization.  What could cause it? Was it plausible? What would it look like?

What I discovered was that our own civilization was far more fragile than I ever imagined. What’s worse, unlike the dramatic scenarios I read about, the most likely series of events would instead of a horrifying, gradual descent in which people didn't even realize that civilization was collapsing even as it was occurring.

In essence, our civilization dies as if it were a frog in water that was slowly brought to a boil.

Why guessing the scenario is irrelevant

There are a lot of different scenarios that could cause the power grid to be taken out.  I remember the blackout of 2003. It affected 55 million people and the power was out for 2 days. This all happened because some power lines in Ohio came in contact with some overgrown trees. Seriously.

55 million people lost power for 2 days because of a cascading failure that boiled down to some power lines getting tangled up with trees.  Hence, the specific trigger for a power grid collapse is less important than knowing the consequences of it.

General parameters

For our purposes, let’s just assume that the power grid has been damaged by something that will take 90 days to repair. Cars still work. Anything that wasn’t connected to the grid still works (like gas generators). Let’s assume this whole thing happens in August -- that tends to be when the electrical grid is under the most stress anyway.

Week 1: No big deal

The first few days are a party. The food in the refrigerator is going to go bad anyway so there’s a lot of BBQ’s. People talk about how this event is helping restore a sense of community. It’s like an extended camping trip in some ways. If only they knew.

The only friction that comes up at this point is that everything has to be bought in cash. People running to the store to buy their own generators (which sell out on the first day) are having to buy them in cash because credit card processing is down. Inconvenient.

By the end of the first week, the stores have sold out of their inventory of food along with other items one would expect to need “just in case”. Every army surplus store gets cleared out. No looting. Cash and carry.

Week 2: Some people have run out of water

It’s in week 2 that things start to become widely unpleasant.  Personally, I think a lot of people would start to be seriously concerned after day 2 but for the sake of argument, let’s assume most people tough out that first week.

Every real television station is still broadcasting. They have backup generators that are hooked up via natural gas and the natural gas pipelines are working just fine, for now. The gas stations are still working too. They have backup generators that run off gasoline. So people who need gasoline or diesel for their generators are doing fine as long as people have cash to pay for it. That also means cars can still get gas.

So the good news is that people are still being informed on the status of the blackout. The bad news is that they don’t know how long it’s going to take to restore power because it turns out that most of the transformers on the grid were damaged.

If you live in a major city, things aren’t so good. There’s no running water for most people.  If you live in the suburbs, there’s no running water either but those with houses can tap into their hot water heaters or have some local pond or something that, if they’re smart, they’ll boil first.

The federal, state, and local governments are bringing in water but it’s slow going, chaotic, and tense. The government is setting up relief centers in urban areas to supply food and water. The problem, however, is that there are a finite number of generators and, for the time being, no new ones are being made. The ability to fix anything that breaks down is compromised.

In summary, the urban areas are a bit scary because no power means reduced security and no independence but at least there are relief areas to walk to.  Suburbs don’t have the relief centers but still, generally have access to water and “community” food stocks are still holding up. People can drive their cars to the relief centers to pick up dry food goods and water bottles.

The death toll is far less than it could be. People who need assisted living or are vulnerable to heat related stress are the worst off. It’s easy to forget that large swaths of the United States are only comfortable thanks to air conditioning.

Week 3: Fraying

If you live out in the country, none of this is that big of a deal yet. You have generators. You have water sources. Some people, mostly suburbanites that decided to move into the country, have run out of food but they’re probably being supported by their neighbors. At least, I like to think so.

The suburbs, however, are fraying. Most people are out of food and are now flooding into the cities to those relief centers. While water is not a problem there, food is.  That’s because our distribution system in 2012 is based on just in time delivery. It’s very power hungry and the lack of a power grid is creating a lot of holes that are not easily patched.

Put yourself in this itself in the situation for moment.  It’s been 15 days without electricity. You have no more cash on hand. You’re out of food. You have some gallon containers of boiled water. Your car still has gas but you no longer have a way to get any more. You’re only 5 miles from the nearest relief center but you hear from neighbors that they’re now handing out MREs instead of “normal” food.

What do you do? Well, a lot of people have just moved their families to camping out near one of these relief camps. Should you do that?

Week 4: The Unraveling begins

So 22 days into the black out the scale of the problem is well known. Thank goodness communication still works. In the various EMP scenarios, there’s no communication.

On the other hand, communication still works.

A lot of the electrical transformers are out. This in turn damaged a lot of the grid infrastructure. It’s all repairable except that some of the parts can’t easily be replaced and that the supply of spare parts is very finite. As a result, certain parts of the grid have been restored.

The US power grid

Since communications still works, assume that the government has directed that the limited spare parts be used to restore the power grid in the most populated areas. This means the major urban areas, the east coast and the west coast.

This creates some sub-scenarios.  Do people migrate to those zones? Do those zones act as logistical bases to send out supplies?

I think we can surmise a few things here:

First, a lot of the equipment, having been running 24/7 for the past month, is going to start to break down. Those relief centers are going to start running out of food to supply. Water deliveries will start to become a problem as the number of vehicles available start to dwindle. Absenteeism is going to start to become a serious problem throughout this logistical network. To make a long story short, the patch work of relief centers is going to start to break down. This also means the delivery of fuel to gas stations and other consumables that rely on our vast, electrically powered, logistical infrastructure will start to come to a halt.

Second, a lot of people are going to start dying. The ability to supply medication in a timely manner is gone. If 15,000 people in France can die from a heat wave, one can imagine what would be happening in the American south in late August with no air conditioning.

Third, security will have started to seriously break down. Those that recall the problems in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina can probably imagine what will be happening in those vast camp grounds surrounding every relief center – especially as supplies begin to dwindle.

And we’re only 22 days into this…

And mind you, we’re only 22 days in.  If an event occurred that physically damaged the power grid, particularly some of the very expensive, hard to replace, hard to manufacture elements of it, we’d be looking at large swaths of the population being without power for months.

There are a lot of variables that come into play and the further we go out, the more speculative we have to become. Here are some of the questions that would have a lot to do with the outcome:

1. Is this a worldwide issue? Just North America? Just the Eastern and Western Interconnect?
2. How effective would the local/state/federal government be in delivering vital supplies to population centers and how long could it maintain those supplies?
3. If transportation is still available, what would be the migration patterns? What percent would stay put versus move to where power is versus would camp out at a relief center?
4. How quickly would violence arise on a scale to disrupt or event overwhelm local authority?
5. How long would secondary elements of our infrastructure function without the grid (utility companies that rely on regular deliveries of supplies and components to function, communication grids that rely on power)
6. What is the MTBF of various types of backup generators?
7. To what level would people be able to obtain more cash and/or use credit cards if the grid went down?

Week 5: It Falls apart

Depending on the answers from above, it’s about week 5 that things start to go to hell. 

For our purposes we’re going to assume the following going forward:

• It’s a worldwide issue
• The government aid goes as well as it possibly can (i.e. benefit of the doubt)
• Non-Cash payment is a significant issue where the grid remains down (not that it’ll matter much longer)
• Best-case scenario regarding the rise of mobs, looting, and gangs (i.e. benefit of the doubt).

The second month

• Think you can hold off the hordes of starving because you have guns and a fortified house?
• Should you migrate to where they’ve restored the grid or should you stay put or should you “go to that cottage your grandma has”?
• How serious and how fast will things get violent?

Join the discussion

I’d love to hear from you in the comments area.  Corrections to my data. Supplemental information. Things I haven’t thought of. Link others to this article to get others who are knowledgeable on this topic to have access to it.

Follow @draginol

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