The Reluctant

 

A Graphic Novel Outline

 

Brad Wardell, July 2006

 

Chapter 4: My dad isn’t a hero
Chapter 3: You will do what we tell you to do…
Chapter 2: We're from the government...
Chapter 1: They're coming for you Ha Ha.

 

Inside a bunker. Inside a conference room. Around a long table men are meeting including agent Bill Gerard who is being interviewed by a general in dress uniform.

 

General: You say he threatened you.

 

Agent Gerard: He did more than that. He hurt my daughter.

 

General: How is that possible? Your daughter was 45 miles away.

 

Agent Gerard: You would have had to been there. It was the way he said it. He knew she had fallen and broken her leg. He caused it.

 

General: Our recordings show nothing. They just have him and you staring and each other and then you ordering the guard to take him home.

 

Agent Gerard: I can’t speak to that. But this man is dangerous. He may not be an intruder but he is definitely  not on our side either.

 

General: We have analyzed the footage of his encounter with the two Intruders. There is a 26% possibility that there is something unusual with him.  But his blood test was conclusive. Compare that to the two Intruders we’ve recovered – we can’t even take their blood. Their “skin” is completely invulnerable.  This DL Bradley can bleed, therefore he can die.

 

Agent Gerard: He may be human but he is a lot more than that. What if he can choose his level of invulnerability at a given time, make it so that we can take a blood sample?

 

General: Doctor, were there any anomalies in the blood tests?

 

A tall, thin doctor stands up.

 

Doctor: No. The only odd thing was that his DNA had a minor abnormality in protein 48.

 

General: What does that mean?

 

Doctor: Protein 48 is often used, crudely, in forensics to get a rough age of a suspect if we have a sample of their DNA.  As we grow older, the protein strand shrinks in size. Typically when someone dies of old age, nearly half of it is gone.

 

General: And what of DL Bradley’s protein?

 

Doctor: That’s the thing, he has no protein 48. Which means either he was born with an unusual genetic defect where he doesn’t have it or he’s so old that that protein has long since disappeared.

 

 

# # #

 

DL and Ethan head towards their house in the truck. The house is completely surrounded by reporters. The slowly make their way into the drive and rush into the house to avoid reporters who are now camping on the outskirts of their house.

 

DL: The fools. Don’t they realize that it’s only a matter of time before the Intruders come here and they’re killed?

 

Ethan: They think you’ll protect them, dad.

 

DL: That’s insane. The Intruders have killed millions of people. What do they think I’m going to do?

 

Ethan: You killed 3 of them already dad. I mean, no one has ever even hurt one and you killed three today! They think you are some sort of, I dunno, super hero.

 

DL: I’m no superhero.

 

Ethan: How did you really do it dad? You can tell me. The world needs a Superman. A superhero to protect them.

 

DL: This is the real world, Ethan. It doesn’t work that way.

 

Ethan: Well why not? Are you saying that if you had super powers you wouldn’t go save the world?

 

DL gets quiet for a moment and looks down, then looks at his son.

 

DL: No. I would not.

 

Ethan: How can you say that?

 

DL: How? Okay, let’s put Superman in the real world.

 

First off, he would have no life at all. His Clark Kent gig would fall apart instantly in the real world. Oh look, it’s Superman with glasses.  So his life would be over.

 

Secondly, the Superman comics wisely start with him in his twenties. But let’s assume that Superman stops aging when he is fully grown. How enthused would Superman be constantly saving the world after 50 years? 100 years? 5,000 years?

 

Ethan: I dunno, he’s Superman.

 

DL: Exactly. He’s a mythical being. But in the real world, a Superman would have a hard time being able to connect to other people outside those he cared for after awhile. The longer he lived, the more he’d realize how transient life really is. He would realize how futile it is to keep his never ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American way.

 

Ethan: But these Intruders are bad people. They’re not some bank robbers, they’re aliens who steal people’s kids. They’re monsters.

 

DL: And I won’t let them hurt you, Ethan. I promise you that.  I’ve called your Papa here to pick you up and take you to his farm with Grandma.  You’ll be safe there.

 

Ethan: What about you?

 

DL: Sooner or later, the Intruders will come here and it won’t be safe for you. I will face the consequences of my actions but you will be safe.

 

Ethan: Someone’s at the door…

 

 

Next: Monsters & Eternity

 

As some people know, the back story to Galactic Civilizations is based on a series of story manuscripts I wrote back many years ago (circa 1988 to 1992).

The Dread Lords and the Arnor are the same race. Just different sides in a war.

But what were they?  Bits and pieces have floated around.  The handle I use on JoeUser.com and elsewhere "Draginol" is a character from this back story.  And he was one of the Mithrilar. 

So any discussion of the Arnor and Dread Lords starts out with the Mithrilar who were the beings of power who were assigned to be guardians of the universe.  One of the Mithrilar, Draginol, misused an artifact of the original creation called the Telenanth to create the Arnor.

Draginol (the character) is an anti-hero.  He did not start out as a villain.  And that story will go into a lot of detail in future installments of the game. And it will tie up the physical similarities between the Arnor, humans and Altarians.

But the question is, where did the Dread Lords go bad?

The answer is - time.  Draginol the Mithrilar created the Arnor in two groups. One group, the first group he put the most effort into and they are most like him. The second group he put less time into and they are less like him.  The key ingredient that makes the difference is that one group feels the passage of time while the other lacks that capability.

Could you imagine living 150 years? How about 500 years? How about 10,000 years? How about 1 billion years?  Who do you think would be best equipped to handle that? The beings who marked the passage of time or the beings who had no concept of time that we can relate to?

The Arnor were one race for a long while. Millions of years.  But over time -- literally -- the passage of time changed one group while the others remained the same.  When other life forms began to evolve, the Arnor cared little about it but the Dread Lords saw these life forms as play things. What is a lifespan of 100 years if you've lived 10 million years? What kind of understanding or comprehension could something that dies almost as soon as it's born have? Are they even really sentient?

But to the Arnor, the amount of time they lived didn't prove they had any more or less value. They looked to guide them and help them.  By contrast, the Dread Lords saw them as nothing but things for amusement and any sense of mercy of kindness had long since gone away. 

The Dread Lords were the ones most like their creator who, upon nearly wiping out the other Mithrilar, was finally thrown down on a planet that eventually came to be called Altaria.  His mere presence on that world altered the evolution of that planet and gave rise to a second sentient species that look like the fallen Mithrilar who in turn looks human.  This second sentient species eventually outcompeted the first who became known as the Drath and the Drath were left on the brink of extinction until they eventually found ways off the planet in ways that aren't discussed here.

One of the driving cores that leads to downfall in the mythology is the unrelenting power of time to wear down even the noblest of creations. That minds that have been evolved to exist for only so long are not well suited to exist thousands, even millions of times longer. And that time can lead to madness and worse.

In the end, the Arnor were able to defeat the Dread Lords and banish them to a pocket dimension. They won, despite being weaker, because they had, literally, infinite patience while the Dread Lords were always looking for a final confrontation and hence were more prone to be led to their doom by the temptation for a definitive ending.

Of course, no one knows what then happened to the Arnor.  Most have assumed that they disappeared.  But that is, of course, an unwise assumption. The Arnor, unlike their brethren, were never interested in conquest or even overt interaction in the galaxy. The galaxy, indeed the universe, is a big place. No one has ever found Arnoria after all.

The other big unanswered question that we will eventually have to get to is why humans? Did humans, or at the very least an individual human, become so powerful as to be able to create a race of super beings and destroy god-like beings? And how could humans, who hadn't even evolved, manage to be present at the dawn of creation in order to exert this influence?  It's not, as if a fleet of human ships has managed to escape to a pocket dimension in which beings of incredible power lived and full of devices of immense function are just laying around...

So you want to make a DVD eh? Well good luck. Because no matter what you do, no matter your expertise, it's going to take up time. A lot of time. Whether it be a Mac or a PC, video editing, from the moment you hook up a cam corder to your PC to the actual burning of the final DVD seems destined to suck your life force out.

Why is that anyway? I've talked to a lot of people on this and it's the same story -- the software that manipulates video in any way shape or form seems intentionally slow and unresponsive.  It's ridiculous.

I have spent the better part of 2 days (off an on) trying to get TIVO movies onto DVD.  There are cheap/free ways of doing it that look even more painful but for $50 I decided to just pick up Roxio's MyDVD.  I've managed to get several blue screens, weird crashes, and when it does work, it's incredibly slow and unresponsive to the point where I could be waiting several minutes for it to open a given directory.  Not that the Mac is any better. I originally got a new Mac for a similar purpose and its software was just as unresponsive (though much better designed -- yes, that's iDVD 6 and iMovie though in their favor they're not nearly as flakey but they can't do Tivo recordings or yet handle the new camcorders that use mini-DVDs). 

It's just maddening how much time is wasted on this stuff.  It shouldn't be this slow and inefficient to simply make a DVD of movies.

The Reluctant

 

A Graphic Novel Outline

 

Brad Wardell, July 2006

 

Chapter 3: You will do what we tell you to do…
Chapter 2: We're from the government...
Chapter 1: They're coming for you Ha Ha.

 

DL sits across a table from a man in a black suit inside what appears to be a bunker. Cement surrounds them both. Behind DL is a door that is closed.

 

Agent: The blood test confirms you are human. You are not one of them.

 

DL: I’ve been trying to tell you that for the past two days.

 

Agent: You will have to forgive our skepticism. In the 65 years that these beings have been here only one has been killed and that involved the United States air force dropping a multi-megaton nuclear bomb on him.

 

They look like us. For all we knew, you were just a renegade intruder.

 

DL: Well, I’m not. Can I go now?

 

Agent: Oh, we’re just getting started.  You may not be one of them and you may be human but you are not telling me everything.  You will stay here until you tell me everything.

 

DL: And why do you say that?

 

Agent: Because of this…

 

The agent presses the button on a machine in front of him on the table. The tape is full of noise and crackling but faintly, but quite audibly the words come floating out…

 

“Very well. This is what is going to happen. I am going to disable you now and kill your friend here. You can deliver my message – leave me and my son alone or you will regret it.”

 

Agent: What is your response to that?

 

DL: I was getting frustrated.

 

Agent: You knew you could kill him. Your tone is that of utter confidence. You knew you could wound him and kill the other and that is exactly what you did.

 

DL: If you’ve been watching the news, which I have been since I’ve had a lot of free time these past two days, you can see that it was sheer luck.

 

Agent: Yes yes, you appeared to fall and turn over. You are good, very good. But not perfect. The news hasn’t been showing the part before where you were able to deflect the blade of the Intruder. We’ve analyzed it even if the media hasn’t, no normal person should have been able to match blows with an Intruder.

 

DL: Fencing was a hobby.

 

Agent: Uh-huh. Sort of a ‘civil engineer’ hobby?

 

DL: What do you want?

 

Agent: I want to know who you really are.  You don’t exist. I checked. You appeared 15 years ago out of nowhere in the records.  You have no birth certificate, no childhood records, nothing.

 

DL: Well, after the Intruders came, I would imagine those kinds of things get lost. I haven’t been back home in years. My parents died in the battle of Austin. 

 

Agent: ..Right.  Or at least, you are right about one thing. We are in a war. And it is a war of survival. I will do anything if I think it helps the human race survive. I think you have knowledge to help in that. You will tell me what I need to know.

 

DL: Or else what?

 

Agent: It would be a shame if something were to happen to your son.

 

There is silence in the room.

 

DL: You would harm my son? (DL asks with deadly seriousness).

 

Agent: I would do anything to save the human race. I would make any sacrifice. It is a shame you do not appear to feel the same way.

 

The room feels still. It is almost unnaturally quiet now.  DL looks down for a moment and then looks at the agent. DL inhales deeply and holds it for a moment. He then says in a voice that is so quiet that it would not be able to be heard if it weren’t for the room being so..quiet.  In fact, it’s so quiet that the cameras in the room can’t even pick up what DL says next.

 

DL:  Bill, may I call you Bill?  You have a daughter Casey don’t you?  I see by your face that you do.  Right now, even as we speak, she is playing on the playground with your wife Emily. That’s a pretty name, Emily.  Your daughter..oh, no… she has just fallen off the slide and broken her leg.  Good thing she turned, there was a rock just a few centimeters away from where she fell that could have broken her neck. It would be..a shame if that had happened.  I think it’s time you let me go to my son and I go home.

 

Without another word, DL is taken to his son and a convoy takes DL and Ethan back to the outskirts of Plainwell PA.

 

Bill Gerard, special agent of the US government, rushes home to see his wife Emily who has just returned from the hospital with their daughter Casey who had an unfortunate accident at the playground and broke her leg.

 

 

Next…My dad isn’t a hero.

Got some bad news, our internal network ISP has been down all day today which has restricted our ability to upload files to the servers.

As a result, the 1.3 beta is going to be delayed a few days. Sorry about that. Stay tuned.

The Reluctant

  A Graphic Novel Outline   Brad Wardell, July 2006   Chapter 1: They're coming for you Ha Ha. Chapter 2: We're from the government...  

 

In a make shift army tent outside Ethan’s school we see DL and a military officer. Beyond the tent it is a hive of activity as news crews pull in to learn more about what has just occurred in Plainwell, PA…

 

Officer: Name?

 

DL: DL.

 

Officer: Your full name.

 

DL: DL Bradley.

 

Officer: That’s not a name, that’s initials.

 

DL: It’s the name I was given.  DL Bradley.

 

Officer: Fine.  Place of birth?

 

DL: Austin Texas.

 

Officer: Age?

 

DL: 45.

 

Officer: Current residence?

 

DL: Plainwell, Pennsylvania.

 

Officer: Occupation.

 

DL: Civil Engineer.

 

Officer: How did you manage to kill one of the intruders?

 

DL: As has already been told, it wasn’t me so much their weapon. Their swords apparently are quite lethal.

 

Officer: Apparently.  We have flown in an expert martial swordsman from…a nearby base to examine it.

 

DL: That’s nice. I would like to get back to my son now if you don’t mind.

 

Officer: Very well. Thank you for your cooperation…and service to your country.

 

DL: Thanks.

 

There is a commotion. Even as DL reaches his son, the truck near him evaporates and soldiers are scattered everywhere.  Dozens of soldiers react quickly and begin firing at the source of destruction – an intruder.

 

Intruder: What has happened here? We have sensed the life force of one of our own has been extinguished. You will pay for this. All here and this entire town will suffer the consequences. But we may show mercy if you tell us who is responsible.

 

DL at first remains silent but his son looks up and tugs on his sleeve. DL sighs and begins to move forward when a soldier holding the sword that was confiscated from the dead Intruder moves forward.

 

Soldier: It was I. And I challenge you to a duel of honor here and now.

 

Intruder: I think not. No human could cause us the slightest harm. Not even with that sword.

 

Soldier: Then how do you explain your dead friend?

 

Intruder: I do not. Very well, let me demonstrate the error of your ways.

 

The Soldier maneuvers the katana-like sword with expert agility and skill and strides confidently towards the Intruder. The Intruder makes no move. The Soldier finally makes it to the Intruder and in a display of skill lunges the sword towards the Intruder. The Intruder makes only the slightest move with his own sword to parry and with only the slightest effort impales the soldier. 

 

The intruder removes the sword and the soldier stands stunned and falls to the ground. The sword makes a loud clacking sound as it hits the pavement.  The fallen soldier’s comrades open fire with everything they have to no effect.

 

A mortar falls next to the intruder with the only affect being that the sword (and soldier) are blasted in different directions. The Intruder makes no notice of it but instead makes gestures towards the soldiers which results in the evaporation of those soldiers and their equipment.

 

Intruder: I shall make an example of this town.

 

The news crews, who were previously fleeing recognize their impending fate resign themselves to going out as true journalists. They video the conflagration to the live satellite feeds. The world is watching in horror as this small town is systematically wiped out along with its people.

 

Ethan: Dad, what are we going to do?

 

DL says nothing. He looks down and the dead Intruder’s sword has managed to get blown within steps of DL. 

 

Time seems frozen. DL and Ethan exist as if they are in a bubble of calm as destruction rains all about them.  DL sighs, picks up the sword and turns to Ethan.

 

DL: Stay back and stay down. This won’t take long.

 

It is at this moment that a second Intruder arrives to help begin the extermination of Plainwell PA.  At this moment, he is still relatively far away from the primary Intruder. He calls out to him.

 

Intruder #2: Tendath, did you learn the fate of Imith?

 

Tendath: No, the one who claims to have been responsible is now dead. He claimed that he did it with his own weapon.

 

Intruder #2: Nonsense.  Very well, if we will not know the cause, the secret will die here.  Tendath, a human approaches you.

 

DL is casually walking up to Tendath the Intruder, sword in hand.  He walks with the same manner that we might be walking with a rake to perform some unwanted chores. His head is down and his walk is unhurried.

 

Tendath: Human, you are brave to approach. The few remaining fighting men fire their useless weapons that are certainly not useless to you and yet you still approach with the sword of our comrade.  Tell us what happened here and we will spare your life.

 

DL continues walking, not even looking up, but speaks in a quiet voice half to himself.

 

DL: I didn’t want to get involved. I really don’t care what you…people do as long as you left me and my family alone. I tried to explain that to your friend but he didn’t listen.

 

Tendath: What do you mean? 

 

 

 

DL: Your friend left me no choice. But you still have a choice. Leave this place. Leave me and my son alone.  Heck, in time, I won’t even be here anymore and you are, if memory serves, essentially immortal.

 

Tendath: You..dared kill…a lord?

 

DL: He left me no choice.

 

Enraged, Tendath takes out his sword and briskly approaches DL. He makes a motion to the other Intruder to come as well.

 

Tendath: You will die.  I will cut you in two and lay waste to your city.

 

The television cameras haven’t been able to pick up the conversation but clearly see a single human being approached by both Intruders. One intruder has his sword out, the other is walking in a hurry towards the human and the Intruder.

 

They expect to see a repeat of what happened with the soldier. But instead they see DL effortlessly blocking every move that the Intruder makes. It appears that DL is still trying to say something to the Intruder but the Intruder merely seems more agitated. 

 

The second intruder gestures towards DL and the now familiar shimmering in the air as energy can be seen going seemingly instantly towards DL.  Yet it misses due to what appears to be an almost coincidental move by DL to the side. The blast evaporates a nearby building.

 

DL: Very well. This is what is going to happen. I am going to disable you now and kill your friend here. You can deliver my message – leave me and my son alone or you will regret it.

 

And with that, DL steps back and seems to trip and falls on his back. Tendath doesn’t hesitate and jumps to end DL’s life but instead finds himself on his knees as DL appears to blindly roll over with one arm covering his face as if in fear and the other arm swings the sword and cuts Tendath across the legs making him fall to the ground.

 

With a shriek, Tendath reaches towards DL with his hand and just as the shimmering of energy begins, DL falls onto his back and the energy blast strikes the second intruder instead squarely in the chest knocking him to the ground.

 

Tendath howls in rage and looks at DL with naked hatred.

 

Tendath: You will regret this, human. I shall deliver your message and it will be your ruin.

 

Tendath limps away, concentrates and seemingly disappears.

 

Soldiers rush up on the fallen Intruder who begins to rise with menace. Bullets continue to bounce harmlessly off of him.  DL strides over and with a quick thrust ends any threat the second Intruder may have represented.

 

The scene of carnage is now complete. The little downtown of Plainwell PA is in ruins. Army trucks and other vehicles are smoldering.  The sound of a lot of clicking sounds interrupts the silence as dozens of soldiers surround DL who in turn are surrounded by camera crews who have filmed what has just happened to the world.

 

 

Next…You will do what we tell you to do…

So you want not just a strategy game and not just a strategy game with a fantasy setting but a 4X, turn-based fantasy strategy game.  That answer received more votes than all of the other choices put together.  There are some very good turn-based strategy games out there already. They're not 4X per-se, but they are excellent games.  A few I recommend include Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic and Dominions 2 (Dominions 3 is in development).  Heroes of Might & Magic V was also recently released.

As some people are aware, Stardock has been trying to license the rights to Master of Magic.  For various reasons that I can't go into, it's not looking like that's going to happen in the time frame we're looking for.  And if we did make a 4X fantasy strategy game that didn't use the name Master of Magic, it would not be a clone of MoM.  We would proceed with our own design (though we have some ideas that are similar such as randomly generated maps, city building, spell research, etc.). 

Another popular choice was surprising -- NON-MMO RPGs.  I have to admit that we'd like to do an RPG.   A Baldur's Gate / Planetscape Torment style RPG but with a 3D engine.  I think the traditional RPG market has been underserved in the last few years.  Oblivion and the upcoming sequel to Neverwinter Nights have definitely helped but I think it's a market that has been under served.

Society, which is a long-term development project at Stardock, got some decent support.  It continues forward at a steady pace.  The IT infrastructure for it is what ultimately will take the longest to do more so than the game itself.  And there was a healthy demand for an RTS.  I would definitely like to see an RTS version of GalCiv II -- a streamlined UI with streamlined game mechanics.  I'd want to see an RTS with tactical battles that are integrated into the main screen.  I think next year when Supreme Commander comes out that the RTS world will be in for some real changes in how games of that genre should be made.  Total Annihilation remains my favorite game of all time and I think it introduced a lot of concepts that we take for granted today and its spiritual sequel will likely do the same.

Arcade and adventure games didn't get much support. But come on, who here wouldn't love to see a remake of Planetfall or Loom?

Our eventual goal at Stardock is to be able to release a new game each year.  We're not quite there yet but we're hiring developers and 3D artists as fast as we can. Go here if you're interested. We would essentially need to build out 3 full game development teams to do that.  We've got just about 2 now so we have a ways to go.

Stardock which develops and publishes Galactic Civilizations actually makes a lot of different programs as well.

Some of them you may have heard of such as WindowBlinds and ObjectDock.  But others may be new to you. 

Stardock's website has traditionally looked...well terrible.  Today a whole new website was re-launched.  Check it out and tell us what you think.

I own a Mac. But I mainly use a PC.  What really makes me sour on using a Mac or even buying a Mac is firstly the fanatical Mac community that acts more like a cult at times and secondly the pretensiousness of Apple in how they market the thing. It's like they consider the on-line "jerk" to be their core market demographic.

When I hear some Mac guy talking about how they're doing all these neat things I just want to say "Yea, that's nice. I've been doing preemptive multitasking for a decade now. Sit down."

Check out this parody / spoof of the Mac vs. PC ads.

I do a podcast -- PowerUser.TV. It's a tech podcast but with a lot of tongue in cheek. I play up my more offensive side of things with lots of weekly rants.

We really enjoy doing the podcasts, but the problem is that the work vs. reward is just not there.

Here's some of the problems with podcasts:

1) The sites that syndicate the feeds are the ones who get all the rewards. ITunes, PodNova, Yahoo, they're the ones who make all that advertising revenue without having to create the content. It costs Stardock thousands of dollars each week to do the podcast. Even the Neocast version costs Stardock money too even if it's not producing it, it runs/maintains the site for it. But the iTunes of the world merely have to link to the MP3 file leaving the content providers out in the cold.

2) The effort vs. reward is totally not there in terms of listeners. Take PowerUser.TV -- it involves 3 salaried people plus 1 volunteer to produce the show plus another salaried person to maintain the website. That same staff could put together a pretty impressive website. A popular website like Neowin.net might get a million visitors PER DAY. A popular podcast might get 100,000 listenres PER WEEK. It's not even remotely as effective a means.

3) Podcasts aren't sticky. You can't say in the middle of a podcast "Hey, go check out this post on Neowin.net" and the user be taken to the website somehow.

Can you imagine me saying http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?show...#entry587710294 on the air?

"I repeat, that's st=0%#..."

4) Bandwidth costs. A page view on Neowin.net might use up 60K. A download of a podcast might be 60 MEGABYTES PER LISTENER. Ack.

5) Podcasts are being crowded out by radio shows and other NON-podcasts (i.e. things that were produced with a totally different audience in mind and then tossed onto the web as an MP3 with an RSS feed and called a "podcast"). You can't even find most real podcasts anymore.

Of the top 50 podcasts on Yahoo, nearly HALF of them are now NPR (that's National Public RADIO) shows that have been tossed onto the net as "podcasts" despite them not really being podcasts. It really aggravates me because a) they're paid for by taxes and they're abusing the medium. It would be like Electronic Arts submitting games into the independent games festival.


That doesn't mean podcasts are doomed. It's too early by far to say that. What is really needed first off is a way to filter out the NPR's of the world off the various podcast lists so that people can actually find genuine podcasts.

Secondly, we need to learn who the listeners really are. The lack of raw numbers could be made up for if the listeners are "industry influencers". For example, Neowin.net may not get even a fraction of the traffic of a Digg.com but the difference is that (I believe) Neowin.net's average viewer has a lot more influence over what kind of technology people around them use over the average Digg.com viewer (and the average Digg.com viewer has a lot more influence than say the average MSN home page viewer and so forth).

It will be interesting to see what happens to podcasts. I don't think it'll be going away but I think it may become like blogging where at first everyone was starting to have blogs (and just as annoying then was on-line columnists turning their articles into "blogs") but now it's found its own particular niche.