On Tuesday Stardock will be announcing the fantasy strategy game it's been working on.  (November 4).

My son's claymation...

Well I ran into a big bummer with Live Mesh today.  It apparently doesn't allow Windows search to index Live mesh folders which greatly reduces its utility.

As seen in the latest iteration of the Gamer's Bill of Rights Stardock has been working with trusted partners to come up with a framework that would give PC gamers a better experience while still having a realistic chance of being adopted by publishers.

One of the issues that keeps coming up is IP protection.  What we keep being told privately is that "Sure, your games don't need copy protection because your demographic is less likely to pirate but even if we agreed with your philosophy, we will never be able to sell DRM-free games to management".

This eventually leads to the issue that the alternatives for intellectual property protection are limited. 

So what alternatives do developers have today?

SecuROM. This is what has been used by Electronic Arts in Spore, Mass Effect, and most other titles. Ubisoft uses it as well such as in Far Cry 2.

Pros: Makes developers feel their IP is well protected.  It is quite effective at slowing down cracking of games, especially to on-line features (Spore was leaked day 1 but only the unprotected versions of it, you couldn't make use of on-line features).

Cons: Apparently installs a device driver that stays behind. Developers have used it to hard-code a limited number of life-time activations (3 in Spore initially raised to 5 more recently).

Steamworks. Valve protects its games and offers to third parties the ability to protect their titles and gain the feature benefits of Steam.

Pros: Proven 0-day protection by installing the last bit of the game upon installation. Includes a ton of other features such as hardware tracking, updates via the Steam client, and more.

Cons: Requires Steam (the client) to be installed with the game. Requires the user to create a Steam account.

 

Starforce. Starforce is pretty well known in the industry.

Pros: Quite secure at making games harder to crack.

Cons: Installs drivers on the user's system. Reported compatibility issues.

There are a number of others but those seem to be the most prevalent right now. 

My opinion on the matter, reflected in Stardock's position on copy protection is that anything the inconveniences legitimate customers is unacceptable.  The goal should be to increase sales, not stop piracy. Focus on the people who buy games and make them want to buy your game. Don't make them feel like chumps for buying your game (such as having them jump through hoops to get it to work while a pirate can just get a torrent).

One of the major philosophies of Impulse has been to try to change the way licensing works.  Today, licensing tends to focus on the PC rather than the user. This makes the user feel like they're renting a game.  If I buy a game, it's MINE. I paid for it. I should be able to use it on my machines as much as I want as long as only 1 copy is being used at once (unless it's a Stardock game where we allow multiple people on a LAN to play from a single copy).

So what could we make that might help gamers but still be acceptable to publishers?

I think, for starters, is that any IP protection should correspond with some user benefit. 

Here are some examples:

a) Publisher wants Internet activation in their game.  Okay, label that you require that but give the user the ability to re-download it.

Publisher wants to provide 0-day protection to their game.  Okay, but be clear about that but also make sure you're giving the user the latest/greatest version so I don't have to hunt for patches on day 1.

In many respects, Steamworks takes care of a lot of this.  But it requires the Steam client.  A game that uses Steamworks can't be on Impulse or be sold in other channels where the website/store/distributor doesn't want to be distributing a competitor's store to people or having their customers create a Steam account. I have a Steam account and I like Steam but I don't think it would be a great thing if there was only 1 vendor. Particularly if the one vendor could potentially (and likely) be acquired by one of the major publishers down the line.

Impulse has the Impulse Reactor platform.  The Political Machine, Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1, and Demigod use Impulse Reactor for multiplayer match-making and a variety of additional game and software functionality. Impulse Reactor has the benefit that it's free and is simply a DLL that users include with their game.

We could integrate IP protection features for developers who want to protect their IP and do it in such a way that is just as effective as other methods but a lot less intrusive. Because while Stardock itself can and will continue to release its retail games with no CD copy protection, other publishers have different needs and as a practical matter, they are going to use something. The question is whether they should have more alternatives?

What do you think?

The more cool stuff I see coming from the team, the more confident I feel that Object Desktop 2009 will be a real milestone.

First, the all new Theme Manager is going to make a LOT of Object Desktop users very very happy. It has that great combination of polish and power that is so often lacking these days from software.

Another new feature for Object Desktop 2009 is a Vista version of BootSkin.  This will be a nice feature for users.

And the third new feature we're hoping will make it in time for release is the XP version of DeskScapes. Animated wallpapers for XP users should make a lot of Object Desktop users happy.

I should also mention that our documentation has gotten a lot better too. Lots of cool stuff in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

Right now GPG is in the process of implementing generals.  Before I spoil it and tell you how they work it would be cool to hear HOW you guys think they should work?

Now, bear in mind, there's balancing and scope involved here. While on paper having assassins play like they do now and have generals play like a Supreme Commander style RTS might sound good, that would be impossible to balance and probably not very fun in practice.

So what would you guys like to see? After enough comments, we'll talk about how we're doing it and then see what tweaks we can make based on your feedback.

Cisco doesn't support their VPN's on Windows Vista 64. What does this have to do with Galactic Civilizations? A lot actually.

I have been working on the GalCiv II v2.0 (tentative release date is November 5) to update the AI and take care of a long list of little pet peeves of when I'm playing.

When I do this from home, I need to use the VPN because I use Vista 64-bit. And Cisco's VPN doesn't support 64-bit Vista which makes it tougher to get updates back into the main source tree.  I can still do it, I just have to use other machines at home to transfer but it's annoying.

Speaking of 64-bit, I will tell you right now that no future Stardock developed games will go out that don't explicitly support 64-bit Windows Vista and beyond. And what I mean by that are native 64-bit versions.  Not 32-bit games running in compatibility but full native 64-bit.  Of course we'll still support 32bit too but there's a lot of performance boosts we could provide to 64-bit players in the future.

Some Mac users are pretty unhappy that the latest Macbook doesn't include a Fireware connection.

The article below shows how Apple has a long history of dropping technologies that are heading into the twilight:

http://technologizer.com/2008/10/17/firewire-isnt-alone-a-brief-history-of-features-apple-has-killed/

Great article outlining the different views of left and right wing Americans.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/10/14/there_are_two_irreconcilable_americas

Good article at the WSJ discussing the likely results of the upcoming election.

- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.

Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.

The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.

- The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman's Web site for a not-so-brief target list.

The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.

- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.

The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.

Read the whole thing: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html