So what would Windows Vista look like if it were running a Windows XP skin (via WindowBlinds for Windows Vista)?
The horror. The horror.
(before anyone asks, WindowBlinds for Windows Vista isn't available yet, it'll be on Object Desktop this Fall).
The article I link to below is written by a historian who writes far more eloquently than I can about why conspiracy theories in general and the 9/11 "inside job" conspiracy in particular are annoying to him.
It's definitely worth the read.
For the past few weeks, Stardock and CivFanatics.com have had a contest to come up with some characters to be inserted into the campaign of the upcoming expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II.
We originally intended to only have 3 best entries. But we've found that there were so many compelling entries that we increased the number of winning entries to 7. There were several others that were outstanding but we just couldn't figure out a way (or a budget) to insert them into the game.
Below are the winners:
Character: Ragash
Race: Koranth
Originator: Tiavals
Role: Leader of the Korath military forces. Assigned by Kindar to destroy The Dark Avatar.
Character: Sothos the Mnemonarch
Race: Iconian
Originator: Sarx
Role: Data archiver lord of the Iconian Refuge. They have been trying to rebuild the shards of the Precursor libraries to help give them an advantage. They have discovered a technology that allows for resources to be harvested from asteroids and literally beamed as a low frequency energy to a selected world. Sothos is willing to trade this technology to the Drengin's Dark Avatar in exchange for the Drengin protecting the Iconians from the Korath.
Character: Slir Rah'shi
Race: Drath
Orginator: M.B.M.
Role: Commander of the Drath war fleet. He has brought together the clans of the Drath civilization together in an all out defense of their home world. Slir Rah'shi has even managed to convince convince the Altarians to help defend the Drath home world despite their past differences. He has his own long-term agenda, however.
Character: Delta-3
Race: Yor
Originator: Enigma
Role: Delta-3 is the ultimate arms merchant. He will step in and offer help to anyone who needs help if they are losing a war. Delta-3's motives are unclear but there are rumors he may be linked with the Dark Yor.
Character: Lord Vire
Race: Drengin
Originator: Shane Maness
Role: Lord Vires is the main non-player character of Dark Avatar.
Character: James Solon LOcke:
Species: Human
Originator: Arilias
Role: Locke is the leader of the remaining Terran Alliance forces.
Character: Lok'tar
Species: Drengin
Originator: NIGHT HAWK
Role: Lok'tar is your master sabateur who has been sent to aid you in subverting the Korath. The goal would be to defeat the Korath without going to war with them in one of the scenarios.
In some cases, I've made some minor tweaks to the characters in order to fit them into the game. You can read the full backgrounds of these characters and the other entries HERE.
Thank you to everyone to participated. We will begin contacting the winners next week with regards to their pirzes.
The sheer creativity demonstrated in the contest has inspired us to examing making Dark Avatar an expanded expansion pack (i.e. put in even more features. You can read some of our thinking on that in this thread).
Here is a new screen in which players can now create their own custom opponents.
When you're a game developer, life is easy. Make customers happy. That's pretty much the only thing you have control over. Few (very few) developers are also their own publishers. And publishers have a very different set of criteria -- making sure the retailers are happy too which may involve contradictory approaches.
Stardock has one thing going for it that most publishers don't -- a mature and popular digital distribution network (TotalGaming.net on the game side). This has helped us keep some leverage. After all, who the heck is Stardock anyway? But because we sell millions of dollars a year in software via our own digital distribution network, we have alternatives. That is why, for instance, WindowBlinds hasn't been at retail. For years, various distributors have tried to make us do deals that would be bad for our customers and bad for us but very good for them. Historically, distributors had all the clout along with the retailers so the developer/publisher pretty much had to accept whatever was offered. But digital distribution gives us more options. WindowBlinds, for example, sells more copies -- even today -- than Galactic Civilizations II. And GalCiv II has sold very well. Well into the six figure range by the end of last June. So you can imagine how well WindowBlinds sells and that's direct from Stardock.
This brings us to some of the things we want to do.
We want to lower the price of GalCiv II during the Christmas season. That probably sounds insane. But here's the thing, we want new players to feel like they're part of the rest of the community and hence be able to get Dark Avatar when it's available. And we don't want those users to be spending $70 at once. As a gamer, I can deal with $40 to $50 at once and then $25 to $30 half a year or more later. But expecting to put up $70 or more at once is too much for me.
I know of a lot of cool games I've heard about via word of mouth over the years that I didn't end up buying because I wasn't willing to just get the base game when there was an expansion pack out. Yes, I know I could just live with the regular game and get the expansion later. But I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way -- if I'm going to get a game, I'm going to get the whole thing.
So now we talk about where the retailers come in. Retail shelf space is tight. So one idea was to expand Dark Avatar even further. Put in MORE features than we have listed there. Make it not quite a sequel but far more than a typical expansion pack...
..and then, thanks to digital distribution release the upgrade as the expansion pack digitally so people who bought the original game could get the full new version of GalCiv II at a discount and make the retail version a compilation that includes it all in a single box. This would make retailers happy and new users happy but it would mean dealying the expansion pack until after Christmas (we'd do an open beta this Fall so people who wanted to start playing it before Christmas could play, it would be "Beta" only in name really, no buggier than a 1.x beta has been which means, some bugs but nothing huge typically).
But doing so brings the question of what to call the new stand alone version? GalCiv II: Gold? GalCiv II: Dark Avatar? There is likely to be some confusion either way. One of the benefits is that having an expansion pack and compilation version out at the same time would help sales at retail since that's when all the editiorial coverage and advertising would be taking place. But again, the question returns - what to call the stand alone compilation vs. what to call the expansion pack.
So what got us thinking down this track in the first place? The CivFanatics.com contest. No single entry per se but reading through there just inspired us to want to come up wtih more features to put in. But at a certain point, the features become so long that they're almost a quasi-sequel being made with the same underlying game engine.
We'd love to hear your thoughts...
The 3rd bi-annual GUI Championships are well underway. Over $12,000 in cash and prizes are being given out to the winners of the contest.
The events are WindowBlinds skins, IconPackager themes, and wallpapers. There's approximatley 2 weeks left before the IconPackager themes start getting voted on by users. So far, there's only 9 icon packages submitted into the contest giving entries a very good chance for icon artists to win won of the top prizes.
Similarly, with about 3 weeks left before judging on the WindowBlinds skins, only 7 WindowBlinds skins are in so far.
If you're a graphics designer who ever wanted to try your hand at skins or icons, you can use SkinStudio to make skins and IconDeveloper to make icons and IconPackager to create the icon package.
The home page for the GUI Championships is www.guichamps.com.
Over at CivFanatics.com we had a contest for players to submit their own characters to be integrated into Dark Avatar.
The response was excellent. In fact, they were beyond excellent which brings us to the couple day delay and narrowing down the winners.
Because there were so many good entries, we're going to expand the prizes beyond what we had originally said so that there will be more people receiving prizes.
Also, because some of the ideas are so good and interesting, I'm seeing how much of the story can be altered and adding some new specific features in order to put them in.
Some of the concepts submitted are so interesting that they've inspired some new features to be added to the expansion pack.
So anyway, we're working on it. Should be today or by end of day Friday at the latest.
In the course of Stardock becoming a publisher we've learned a lot about the industry. Here's the dirty little secret -- game publishing is a business. A mature business. One whose models are well understood.
If I make game Wizbang 1, I can't realistically release Wizbang 2 for at least 36 months.
So what you get is this formula (and after reading this, take a look out there at other games).
WizBang 1 released.
IF WizBang 1 is BUGGY THEN release WizBang Complete 6 months later.
ELSE if WizBang 1 is a success release 9 months later WizBang: Expansion Pack which adds NEW content and a token new feature at $29.95.
THEN IF WizBang 1 wins any game of the year edition, create WizBang: Game of the Year Edition which incorporates (maybe) the Expansion Pack.
ELSE if WizBang 1 doesn't win game of the year edition, create WizBang: GOLD EDITION which does the same thing.
Here's my problem: I don't want to wait until 2009 or later to put in a bunch of features that users have come up with. I want them NOW or at least really soon.
In the upcoming expansion pack to Galactic Civilizations II (Dark Avatar) we have a pretty ambitious feature set there. But what if there's more we want to add to that? Users post some really interesting stuff. But it's too early for a sequel but at a certain point, you are way beyond an expansion pack.
Heck, a normal expansion pack for GalCiv II would be new ship components + new scenarios + new maps + new campaign + some cool new feature. That's how it's supposed to be done. It's not about whether that's a good thing or not, that's simply what the market has determined is the optimal business strategy for expansion packs. You can go back 6 years and see the same thing.
My other issue with a system like that is the cost to new buyers. For people who have WizBang 1, a $30 expansion pack isn't a big deal. But what about the new buyer? Paying $40 to $50 PLUS $30 is now a major purchase.
I'd like to see soething like WizBang: Half-Away to Sequel for $40 to $50 and then for people who bought the game the $30 expansion. That way, you can get new people into it and still provide a discounted upgrade path to the half-way sequel version.
I think it's not just better for gamers but it's also better for the game companies as well. So why don't they do it? The answer: Retail. Few games can put both on the shelves at the same time. It is confusing to consumers. It doubles shelf space. Since most publishers are completely reliant on retail for their income, we end up with the result: Expansion packs and "Game of the Year" editions.
And I don't want to knock that system. It's not a bad system. But in the case of Galactic Civilizations II, I am really anxious to keep going. It's done so well. It's done so vastly better than our wildest estimates and it's still doing well. Very Very well. And there's no end of fans with interesting ideas.
AND we realize that we can't do a sequel. But why can't we do something that really takes GalCiv II up a notch and then sell the upgrade to existing users as an expansion pack while having the retail version be the compilation all at the same time?
Most publishers couldn't. But thankfully we have something most publishers don't have -- TotalGaming.net. We have the proven capability of selling large volumes of games digitally. And because we opted to NOT have CD copy protection but instead provide a simple serial #, we have the capabilty of being able to tell who currently has the game.
What that means is this: We could potentially have a stand-alone retail game that is a quasi-sequel AND provide a digital (or at least direct boxed version) upgrade path in the form of the expansion pack to users.
The net result is that existing players could look forward to an expansion that has even MORE features than what had been promised without having to pay a cent more than the original expansion pack price AND new players wouldn't have to spend $70+ to join the fun.
I've seen some articles on the net usually from writers on the left-side of the political spectrum argue about how the average American isn't doing any better than they were 30 or so years ago.
According to the consumer price index (CPI), the median household income is only 4% higher today. I've seen people try to make the case that our generation is the first generation that isn't going to be living better than their parent's generation.
So let's be real clear about that statement -- would you prefer to live today with what you've got or would you prefer to live in 1976? How about if your salary, adjusted for inflation, was increased by 10%? 20%? 30%?
For thousands of years, one generation did live pretty much the same as the next generation. That was the reality of most of human history. But common sense tells us that that isn't the case anymore. That each new generation is living far better than the previous. FARRR better.
Going back 30 years means no cable TV, no Internet, no personal computers, no DVDs, no air conditioning (for the average person), dirty air, probably dirty water (Michigan's great lakes were horrible -- Lake Erie caught on fire!), crappy food choices, expensive toys, expensive bikes (my bike cost LESS than my bike when I was a kid without even adjusting for inflation), no cell phones, expensive plane travel, no video games, etc...etc...
And the average American today makes use of all the things I just listed. So clearly, the average American is living better than they were 30 years ago. Not just a little better but a lot better. How much would they have to pay you to go back and live back then? I don't think there's any amount of money that could make me go back then.
Something to think about next time some politician tries to claim that "real wages" haven't increased and that our standard of living is declining.