When players design a unit that are asked to give it a name and a quote.

However, we don’t want players to feel like they have to do this.  To that end, we want to create a system where the game will “recommend” a randomly picked name and a randomly picked quote.

We thought it might be fun to let the beta testers get their suggestions on this into the game.

To that end, what kinds of fun and interesting quotes would you like be randomly selected as the default quotes and what sorts of interesting and useful names would you like to see used as suggested unit names?

People tend to project their hopes and dreams onto things based on their name.

They hear “health care reform” and they see their ideological allies supporting it and they assume it does all kinds of magical things.

For those of you glad that the bill passed, be aware that what was passed resembles nothing like what is in Europe or Canada. 

Here’s what it does (you can read the details at CBS News):

1. It “provides” insurance to 30 million Americans. How does it do this? They made it illegal not to buy insurance. Voila.  Seriously. That’s how they did it. If you don’t, you’re fined $695 annually.

2. They make it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. So the person with basic math skills who figures out that $695 annually is a lot less than $6,000 annually ($500 X 12 months) can wait until they get pregnant, diagnosed with diabetes or gets into an accident and THEN buy insurance.  Thus the cost will go far up.

3. They provide subsidies to make insurance cheaper. In theory.  Since the insurance companies are barely regulated monopolies per state who now know they everyone has to buy insurance, they can raise rates (this is what happened with car insurance when it became mandatory).

The right-wingers are going crazy about it because it socializes health-care.  The left-wingers are currently happy because they don’t realize just how much they got screwed. If/when this program starts to get implemented, I think they’ll start to realize how badly they got screwed.

People on the Internet who are from overseas tend to have no real understanding of America’s healthcare system. They don’t realize that the poor already get medical coverage for free (Medicaid) and that the elderly already get medical coverage (Medicare). 

So in effect, all this bill really does is make it illegal to not have insurance. 

Maybe they should use the same system to eliminate poverty. Just make it illegal to be poor.

About 10 weeks ago, I started a diet called 10 pounds in 10 weeks.  I was 180 pounds.

10 weeks later (technically 11, I took a week off for a trade show) I’m down 10 pounds.

I’m going to see if I can get down to 165 pounds (another 5 pounds).

It’s time to name the currency in Elemental.

The Random House team has come up with rigma which we like a lot.

An alternative would be gildars.

But if someone has a really cool name we’ll consider it.

See https://forums.wincustomizetest.com/378475

The beta begins this month…really!

Back in the OS/2 days, Microsoft got caught using what were called “Microsoft Munchkins” (coined by John Dvorak).  Essentially these were guys whose job was to smear OS/2.

Anyone who has had to deal with these kinds of users whether it be on Wikipedia or some forum tends to be able to spot these guys since they usually create accounts only to smear a particular product or service (or boost a product or service).

As many people know, I spend a lot of time online and thankfully, I haven’t seen anything that struck me as peculiar until very recently when suddenly, comments on articles regarding Impulse have detractors appearing out of nowhere. I.e. they create an account specifically to smear Impulse usually saying things that really sound like FUD.

Now, I might think Impulse is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I would be the first to admit that the average person isn’t passionate about digital distribution or development platforms. Certainly not passionate enough to bother creating a new account just to smear something.

I’m inclined to chalk it up to just the usual Internet junk. Maybe people are more into this kind of thing than I thought.

So I thought I’d hand it over to you guys and see what you think.

Here are examples:

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story=62814

User called Gahenna creates an account on Shacknews just to smear Impulse Reactor.

“From my limited experience with Impulse, it's interface is garbage and slow, there's nothing worth purchasing (everything is D list or worse). It's not even close to the same league as Steam.”

Within 24 hours Gamautra puts up its Impulse::Reactor thing and sure enough, a user pops up who has never posted before anywhere as far as anyone can tell.

“While I appreciate the competition with Valve's service, Impulse seems to provide a much lower quality service”

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27687/Stardocks_Wardell_Details_Impulse_Reactor_Specifics.php

And on the same day or so 1Up puts up their article:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178341

And a user called “Grizzt” (real name “dasd asd”) and writes:

“i tried there service before it wasnt quite up to par with steam or the other services i tried.”

Okay, maybe there’s just a dedicated fanboy out there. Or maybe it’s a different fan boy writing up the same points over and over.  Thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, nobody knows. Heck, maybe Impulse just sucks in ways I never realized.

The writing style seems different to me. I’m no expert but it doesn’t seem like it’s the same person.

It’s probably just coincidence. But there’s a lot of news items on Stardock on various sites and it’s pretty unusual to see such…dedication.

What do you think?

If you haven’t seen Joystiq’s article on the Xbox 360 hardware, go check it out:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/18/ben-heck-ponders-xbox-360-slim-motherboard-memory-unit-support/

This is an important article for those of you who buy consoles and can read the writing on the wall on where gaming is going.

My wife was a great cleric. Adina was a powerful wizard. Vic was a noble knight and me, well, I was a scoundrel – I refused to be called a thief. Antarac had no proof behind the theft of the Inzul jewels.

This time, however, we had gotten in over our heads. We had entered the ruins of Uthrong beneath the spine of the world and had come face to face with a Lich. 

Given the effort it had taken Adina to counter the magical seal that had protected the opening to Uthrong, we probably should have known there was something very bad in there. In short order, we were dead.

The Lich, I presume, would have gone on to wreak havoc on the poor kingdom that Uthrong resided in. Being dead, that was no longer my concern…

In Elemental…however…

It would most definitely be your concern. Now you’re the sovereign of said empire and now you have a high level monster running around the world thanks to these “adventurers”.

In Beta 1, we introduce the occasional lone NPC named “hero” to test out the plumbing. In beta 2, they get “the treatment”. 

Champions in Elemental are not random. We define specific parties or individuals of champions with their own 100 character history, stats, and items.  If the player’s diplomatic ability is greater than their battle rating, you can recruit them (if we have time, we’ll allow other means to encourage them to join too like good old fashioned bribery).

Now it’s your turn…

Have you pre-ordered Elemental? If so, feel free to comment on this thread with some of your favorite RPG experiences whether that be D&D or Fantasy Hero (my personal favorite) or something else entirely along with the name of your group, the name of the characters and a little bit about them.  We, in turn, will try to fit as many of them into the game.

We’ll want to know what types of quests you guys went on. What sorts of trouble you caused or what great things your party did. Of course, once you’re running a kingdom, these pesky adventurers may be looked at in a whole new way.

Back a few years ago, more than one person remarked how odd it was that Stardock hosted (for free) its primary competitor in the Windows desktop theming world (Samurize). It competed (and still does but the market has changed quite a bit since Windows Vista came out) with DesktopX.  Why would we do that? 

My answer was: I don’t like monopolies, especially ourselves. 

When we were designing up the specifications for Impulse::Reactor, there was much debate over whether it should require the inclusion of the Impulse store or require the creation of Impulse store accounts.  I was adamant that it shouldn’t because the job of Impulse::Reactor isn’t to replace Steamworks with something that’s just as exclusive. On the contrary, I don’t want Impulse to dominate. I don’t want Steam to dominate or any of the others either.  In the past couple of years, I’ve seen enough of the sausage factory that is the game industry to know that you definitely do not want anyone having leverage over publishers or consumers.

If your motivation is to create excellent things, you want competition. If you’re a consumer, you want competition for your dollars.

No matter how wonderful a thing is when it starts out, the end behavior is inevitably the same once they have leverage. The solution is to prevent anyone from ever having a monopoly in the first place.