The game industry has its share of myths.

1. Units sold is usually meaningless. I turned down an offer to sell a million units of Demigod because they would have been sold at less than $1 per unit.  So if you see someone talking about units sold, take it for a grain of salt (incidentally, every copy of Sins of a Solar Empire is a full blown copy).
2. What gets talked about by the media has little to do with how successful the title is. You’d think the world was dominated by first person shooters. Ask Walmart or Best Buy what they think of first person shooters.  Strategy games sell better but tend to be treated as second-class citizens to first person shooters.
3. Piracy is a joke. Freaking out about piracy is what executives who don’t actually play games do. Piracy is real. Lots of people play pirated games. But the % of them who would have purchased the game is nil. Some genres attract pirates more than others (See first person shooter item above). 

I’m doing a session on what’s involved in making independent PC games that are both fun to make and profitable to produce.

Here' are the details for those of you who plan to attend the Game Developer’s Conference:

Stardock On The PC Hardcore Scene As Indie
Speaker: Brad Wardell (President/CEO, Stardock)
Date/Time: Monday (March 23, 2009)   4:15pm — 5:00pm
Location (room): Room 131, North Hall
Track: Independent Games Summit
Format: 45-minute Lecture
Experience Level: All

Session Description
Stardock's Brad Wardell is the founder of an independent game developer and publisher with such titles as GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS II, SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE, DEMIGOD, and ELEMENTAL. Through its choice of game projects combined with its digital distribution platform, Impulse, Stardock has been able to tap into the core PC game player, a group that has been often ignored in recent years, with the ability to create games they want and deliver those games to them. Wardell will discuss the strategy Stardock uses to design such games as well as how they deliver these games to the target audience through both retail and digital channels.

If you know someone who is going who might be interested, tweet this.   Hope to see you there.

 
Doing a gazillion things at once.

I have not loved a computer upgrade like the upgrade to 64-bit/12 gigs RAM/Core I7 since I got a Pentium with OS/2 years ago.

One of the things that I’ve been thankful for is the blessing of good health. And by good health, I don’t mean a life free of disease or injury but I mean a life free from getting colds, flus, etc.  I never get sick.

As I’m getting a bit older, I once in awhile will have a day where I get say a migraine or am sore from working out in the yard and my productivity drops to nil. That sort of thing would have a devastating impact on trying to succeed if it was common.

A world broken in two

The continent of Cartagia was broken into two at the climax of the titanic war between “the powers” in what became known as the cataclysm. From this we now have what the inhabitants simply refer to as “the west” and “the east”.

When the world was broken, all was laid waste and much lore was lost. In the time that became known as the “War of Magic”, we saw Channelers begin to return and carve out kingdoms.

During the War of Magic, the world was again largely split between the Kingdom of Altar in the west and the Empire of Magnar in the east. The near millennium migration of Men going westward and Fallen going eastward made the War of Magic largely unavoidable.

Once the Henge had been crossed, it was only a matter of time before both races would strive for dominion over the whole of Cartagia. This is told in more detail Elemental: War of Magic

Our story so far…

In Elemental, you design your own units. The only units you can create in Elemental are either men or Fallen.

So that we can kill any illusions now: There aren’t cities where you get to crank out armies of Unicorns and dragons or goblins.

There are dragons and trolls and other such creatures in the game. But they are rare, special and have to be recruited.

Your units start out as peasants. And you can train them (which gives them more HP) and you can arm them (which gives them more attack) and you can give them armor (which increase their defense). 

As anyone who has spent time in the military can tell you, one well trained, well armed man is the equal of many many unarmed, untrained men.  So the scale of men in battle is significant.

Of course, when you bring in magic or deal with some of the titanic creatures of the world you quickly see the scope of battle. If you like the Total War series, you can imagine some of what we have in mind except here you can get that Lord of the Rings battle feeling where certain units just make mince meat out of whole squads of enemy units.

Lunch time at Stardock..

 
Demigod QA fire team (or where they sit anyway)

Cari (CariElf’s) workstation working on Impulse Reactor’s NAT code for Demigod

Elemental being worked on

Next free update to Galactic Civilizations being worked on.

I had a nightmare last night that a review of Demigod was released based on playing Beta 3. The reason it’s a nightmare is that while many people think Beta 3 is where Demigod became “fun”, it’s still so much less than what the final game will deliver in terms of an overall experience.

Here’s a recent screenshot of our internal build of Impulse Reactor. As you can see, it’s a lot more than just chatting. Now you’ll be able to look at your profile, check updates, see what DLC is going to be available (that’s how we plan to deliver the 2 additional Demigods GPG/Stardock plan to make – which will be free btw) and of course bringing in Friends into your game.

And of course, that’s just a piece of the overall Demigod experience besides the game itself. Stay tuned.

Whenever someone argues that if you raise taxes too much then most productive and successful people will begin to withdraw their talents, another person will say “And someone else will step up and replace you.”  Every time.

In fact, in the comments section of “Going John Galt on Obama” I wrote "Thus, if the government begins to do things to the movers and shakers of our society, you can be sure that it will “trickle down” to everyone else.” a liberal user responded:

...and a whole new group of "movers and shakers" will evolve and/or the old ones will adapt to the changing conditions and times

Well, Detroit Michigan, starting with the 68 riots and culminating with the long adminstration of Coleman young effectively drove away the “movers and shakers” from Detroit.

It’s still waiting for someone to replace them.

United Artists Theater

Michigan Central Station

Time Magazine article on the issue.

If Obama gets his way, this is a preview of the entire United States.

The Democrats have introduced a bill in congress that will put an end to those Farmer Markets. The bill’s sponsor, Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), is married to the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research does work for Monsanto.

The bill would force anyone who produces food and transports it (even in state) to register with a new federal agency called the “Food Safety Administration” and have their food inspected prior to sale which would, effectively put an end to those road-side stands or farmers markets.   The big factory farms, of course, would greatly benefit from this and the government takes away just another small liberty from private citizens.

Incidentally, I am a hobbyist beekeeper and it’s already illegal for me to sell my honey without jumping through a bunch of hoops. No biggie for me since it’s just for fun. But to put things in perspective, one beehive can produce around 80 pounds of honey. An 8 oz. jar of honey can sell for about $4. Or put another way, a single beehive could make $320 a year.  Point being, the people most affected by this red tape are people who are poor who could make some extra money growing things on a small scale for local consumption.