We have some usability changes in the works for JoeUser 2. Here are a few highlights:

1) Ignore user. A given user's posts would simply no longer show up (though their comments probably would as there'd be a significant slow down there).

2) Filter category.  Categories you're not interested could be turned off and the site would re-adjust based on that.

3) Blog Friends. You will be able to set given users as friends and be kept up to date on what they're doing on your own blog on your dashboard.

4) Restricted. This will be a new system in which we can isolate users who have trouble playing nice to their own blog without having to ban them.  We are going to be integrating JoeUser into Impulse and we users prone to flaming and insulting users will likely end up restricted. They'll still be able to blog but they won't be able to particpate in other blogs or on the forums.

UGO has reviewed Sins of a Solar Empire. Having rated it an A, their conclusion was "This is what Star Wars: Empire at War should have been!".

Review-wise, Sins of a Solar Empire has received 9.0 from Gamespot, 4.5 out of 5 from GameSpy, 91% from PC Gamer, and an 88 from IGN.

View: Full UGO Review

UGO has reviewed Sins of a Solar Empire with the conclusions "This is the game Star Wars: Empire at War should have been". W00t!

Rating: A

You can see it here.

This past Friday we had our first of many Game Nights. That's where Stardock and Ironclad got on Ironclad Online and participated in games with players from around the world. Good times.

I played in 4 games on Friday right up until the morning sunshine started to creep in.  Here are some screenshots and commentary:

We'll be doing another Game Night soon. Of course, you don't need us to get together and play on-line.  And we were pleased to see a lot of players online helping show new players how to play the game. One of the nice things about the Sins community is that players do try to help one another out to have as much fun as possible even while trying to kill them.

So what's going on at Stardock these days?  The answer is, LOTS of stuff. Where should I start?

I guess first, you're going to notice that we're going to start branding things to simplify what part of the company you're working with:

1. My Games. For Stardock's million+ gamers.
2. My Desktop. For the millions of people who use Stardock's desktop experience software.
3. My Tools. For the growing user base of next-generation utility software programs.
4. My Community. For users of Stardock sites like WinCustomize.com or JoeUser.com.

General Projects

The biggest internal project right now is Impulse.  It is designed to finally pool together all of Stardock's content, software, games, and other strengths into a single package.  For the past couple of years, we've had a program called Stardock Central which was really just designed as a quick and easy way to digitally distribute our own stuff. But we see the future as being a place where people can buy software, games, and other digital content from us as well. We have this immense infrastructure in place to do digital distribution that seems very popular with users. With our TotalGaming.net service, we've dabbled with distributing third-party stuff.  Impulse takes us to the next step.

The goal with Impulse is to let users and producers get together and easily purchase and manage their software, games and other content.

Impulse will go into a preview beta probably next week.

My Games

Stardock currently has the #1 game at retail, Sins of a Solar Empire.  Stardock's growing reputation as a top-tier PC game developer and publisher is something we're very proud of.  Developed by Ironclad, Sins of a Solar Empire is a space based RTS. Stardock was intimately involved in the design and development of this game, far more so than is typical in a developer/publisher relationship. We think that this approach is what has helped make the game the top rated PC game of 2008 so far and the best selling PC game right now.

Stardock does not plan to significantly increase the # of PC game titles it publishes. It will only publish titles that it feels it can give the amount of attention to that will ensure that when people see a game with the Stardock label on it that the user knows it is a great game.

Stardock's also working on The Political Machine 2008. This game is going to be sweet.  We did a version in 2004 which we cranked out in literally 6 months from scratch.  But with The Political Machine 2008, we were able to use the new 3D strategy game engine we've developed for the fantasy strategy game we're working on and the results have been phenomenal. All the candidates are bobble heads and the player designs them from scratch.

Given the interest from retailers, I will be surprised if The Political Machine 2008 isn't one of the top 20 or so best selling PC titles of 2008. Maybe next time we'll be able to get our act together to release a console version at the same time.

In addition to The Political Machine being an outstanding game, it's going to come with an outstanding website. I've not seen anyone try to do a social networking site on politics before. If you want to check out the beta site, go here. It's still on a test server (slow) and we're not yet satisfied with the look of it but you get an idea.

And of course, we can't forget about Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor. The expansion pack is in the final stages of development.

The fantasy strategy game we're working on will be announced as soon as we have enough time to get enough "assets" together to show off what we're doing.  Stay tuned on that.

My Desktop

Stardock's main desktop product is called Object Desktop.  We have two other programs in addition that are popular called CursorFX and ObjectDock but Object Desktop is Stardock's most popular product.

We sell the individual programs of Object Desktop which are immensely popular in their own right.  The three most popular Object Desktop programs are WindowBlinds (which can change the look of the Windows graphical user interface), IconPackager (which can change all the icons on Windows) and DesktopX (which can extend Windows to more natively support gadgets and widgets than other implementations).

Since its release, Object Desktop has been, by far, the dominating piece of software for power users to customize Windows. We're the Electronic Arts of digital customization. And I mean that both in the good sense and the bad sense (i.e. we get beat up by users who think our software is "bloated" or "buggy" or whatever).  It's a multi-million dollar market to be sure.  We have more users on our desktop enhancement software than we do on our games by far. A lot of the controversy comes from power users who actually aren't power users who really shouldn't be tweaking their computer in the first place.

MyColors

And so for the past year and a half, we've been working on a customization package designed for the mainstream: MyColors.  MyColors is a package that lets people pick a theme, press a button, have have their desktop change.

We just released MyColors 2008 which even takes care of updating itself and the themes. We've had some growing pains with getting the authentification of serial numbers nailed down and some people have had problems downloading but the last of those issues should be gone in the next couple of days. It's just an immense project involving so many different parts of the company that it took a bit of time to get everyone on the same page.

There's hundreds of MyColors themes available though with more coming on the way. The NBA themes are almost done and we've got a series of inspirational themes in the works. A lot of time is being spent getting classic content updated to Windows Vista and released as MyColors themes. 

Most of the major OEMs have expressed an interest in bundling MyColors on their systems with some of them already committed to doing so later this year.

DeskScapes

There's a ton of work on various desktop items including DeskScapes, which is our animated wallpaper program on Windows Vista. But we still have quite a bit of work to do in stability before this is ready for prime time. We'll likely be doing an open beta in the near future to help nail down this program.

Other Goodies

Object Desktop users got a sneak peek at IconDeveloper 2. It's a program designed to make it easier for people to take images and turn them into good looking desktop icons. Version 2 supports the new Windows Vista icon format and is a complete rewrite.  WindowBlinds 6.1 is in development and supports glass explorer backgrounds and other cool stuff.  Once we get Object Desktop 2008 out the door, we want to start concentrating more on 64-bit Vista support which right now is spotty.

My Tools

Our long-term project with ThinkDesk has been a real challenge for us.  Multiplicity and KeepSafe have continued to evolve.  TweakVista has been a big hit with 1.1 getting a very positive response. As much as we want Microsoft to improve Windows Vista, it is proving to be a good business for us to make software to fix it.  We're planning to eventually add TweakVista to ThinKDesk (our suite of tools) even though ThinkDesk is in a perpetual beta.

KeepSafe 2.0 is being worked on. You can check  out its updated UI here:

My Community

This month we re-launched the all new JoeUser.com.  This is the free blogging community we've built. We plan to aggressively add more social networking features into it shortly to allow bloggers to better organize their friends lists and interact with other people.  We're not intending JoeUser to compete with a Facebook or MySpace.  Rather, we want to be able to gather together people who like to socially interact online in terms of writing and let them work together -- as a community.

And lastly, WinCustomize.com, our most popular website, has seen its traffic grow and grow this past year.  Its due to get a major bit of work later this year based on the new JoeUser technology.

Since no one will stand up for greedy evil capitalists these days, I'll take a stab at it.

I support outsourcing.  That's right. I love it.  I would have its babies if I could.  I love a globalized economy. The more globalized the better. The more free trade there is, the better. I feel sorry for countries that don't have the amount of free trade we have here in the United States. Even with the dollar at an all time low, products and services here are incredibly cheap. I love working with people from around the world. I don't care where you're from.

So why do I love globalization and outsourcing? Because it's the only check against federal government power.  For the first 150 years of the republic, the federal government stayed largely out of the economics of the country. Instead, the states competed vigorously with one another for the best, brightest, and most productive Americans.  But over the last 50 years (and in particular the last 20 years) the federal government has greatly reduced the differences between doing business in one state versus another.

Now, the federal government is the driving force on minimum wage. States can still have their own but it's only if they want to make them higher than the federal minimum wage.  If you're making a widget trying to compete on the global market costs matter. And Americans are incredibly neutral about buying things made wherever.  So Americans push for minimum wage but buy goods made in countries without them. Result, companies ship jobs to those countries.

Similarly, there's an ever increasing effort to have the top 1% pay more and more of the taxes than ever before. Even today, the top 1% pay 20% of the taxes.  And in a democracy, who is to argue what is "fair"?  If 51% think it's "fair" that 1% pay 20% or 30% or 50% of the taxes, the 1% are basically screwed right? Not so in a globalized economy.

Who are "the rich"?  80% of them are small business owners. Most people don't realize that. But that's how you get rich. You start a successful business. And in a globalized economy, they can take their skills anywhere they want.

I've seen politicians argue that outsourcing is unpatriotic. That's a ridiculous argument since outsourcing is just another way of saying "shopping based on price". If Americans buy things based on price, why shouldn't employers hire based on price? It's the same thing. An employer is no more unpatriotic for outsourcing jobs than the consumer who buys something made in China. They are, in effect, both doing the same thing.

If Americans want to vote in politicians who think it's okay to steal from the most productive to give to the least productive with nothing in return, then those people, thanks to outsourcing and globalization, have the freedom to distribute the burden imposed on them as well.

In the long run, it's a good thing for our society as it will require the citizens of the country to take more seriously the consequences of the policies of panderers. If a vote for Obama or Hillary Clinton is likely to result in the loss of your job or that of your spouse, you might rethink whether "change" is always good.

Now, if you don't mind, I have some baby's blood to drink.

Further reading: Who pays taxes

A harsh lesson in dealing with the Advent - focus fire can kill you. The Advent have a whole set of abilities that deal damage back to enemies.

I don't know if I like the Advent. I tend to play as TEC. The consensus seems to be that the Advent are slightly more powerful than the other races at this stage but I think it's too early to say really. I think Advent ships are more lethal man to man in the hands of equally skilled opponents. But TEC players should have more units because of their economic advantages.

Every year it's the same thing. I get emails asking me if I'm going to have time at GDC to meet with them about some game, industry partnership, licensing opportunity, etc. And each year I respond "Sorry, I won't be at the GDC" (Game Developer's Conference).

They're almost universally shocked that I don't attend. It's not that I'm boycotting it. I think the GDC is a great conference. I just don't see what particular benefit it would be to go. 

From a social aspect, I'm only in contact with two game developers outside Stardock who would attend (Soren Johnson who's working on Spore these days and Adel Chaveleh at Timegate, makers of Kohan and other great games). That's it. And even that's only a few times a year.  I have some friends who work at Microsoft and Ensemble and Blizzard but they're not likely to attend either.

When I have gone, I always feel like a total outsider. Like there's a club that I don't know how to join.  It's pretty much the same feeling I get about the "Association of Shareware producers" (there's a whole shareware industry thing too).

Whenever I stick my foot in the water, I just get that "it's a private club" feeling. Not an exclusionary one necessarily just one that I'm not part of.  

Of course, the PC game industry itself is kind of a club, one which Stardock in general and myself in particular aren't really part of.  We're about as unconnected as you can get. 

It generally doesn't have much impact on our actual business. We miss some industry awards and some glory as as a result.  TotalGaming.net, for instance, is probably the 2nd or possibly 3rd most popular digital distribution system out there but if there's a round up of them in the media, we'll manage to be ignored because we're not on the radar of those in the industry. The millions we make are never measured or counted by anyone in the industry.  Our alternative to DRM (SSD - Secure Software Deliver) never gets much mention even though I suspect that the future is going to be some combination of the two anyway. The guys from Starforce are more likely to get on a panel discussing dealing with piracy than any of us are.

I wish GDC wasn't held this time of year.  If it were held in May (for instance), when the industry is in its slower mode, then it would be easier to go.  But with 3 major game titles due out by the end of June (Sins is already out, GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor is due in about a month and The Political Machine 2008 is due in June) it's hard to justify the time to go.

So anyway, that's why I don't go.

-Brad Wardell (Frogboy/Draginol)

Some screenshots of Sins of a Solar Empire from Friday Night Game night. It was a real blast.

There's a lot of important tactical decisions that players make that I am still learning about.

Gamasutra has released their weekly best selling list across all platforms.  On the PC:

1. Sins of a Solar Empire (Stardock)
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision)
3. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Blizzard)
4. The Orange Box (EA Games),
5. SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition (EA Games).

View: Gamasutra