Gamespy has an indepth sneak peek at Stardock's upcoming MMORTS that is in development. Check it out to get details on Society..

This is my seventh E3.  I started coming back in the mid 90s to keep up with what's going on in the game industry.  For gamers, E3 serves as an exciting preview of things to come.  For a small game developer, E3 can be scary as you discover that "everyone else" has stuff far cooler than you could possibly imagine.

Going to E3 as a indie developer is like playing the classic game Civilization. You've just produced your first musketman and think you're doing great when suddenly the Mongols land on your shores with a dozen tanks.

For the most recent times, I've tried to "blog" what I see. You can read past ones here.  There you can read glorious predictions such as how great Duke Nukem Forever is going to be and my prediction that the Game Cube is the best of the consoles. But then again, I also used to make games for IBM's OS/2 operating system so..

So what's exciting this year? Well, first off there is the XBOX 360 vs. Playstation 3. Both sides claiming their mega hardware will be the end all be all..  But who are we kidding? We don't all have amnesia. I still remember the Playstation 2 demos which looked incredible. Games are much more taxing than demos.  But from all indications, the Playstation 3 does look like it's a bit more powerful.  But the Xbox 360 is going to ship first.

Hardware specs, aside, the Xbox 360 is being designed for high-definition TV. All its games support HDTV resolutions (1080i/720p) which means that they will be much crisper, cleaner, and just plain better looking than the original Xbox.  Visually, it will likely be an immense improvement.  It will also play DVDs and CDs and connect easily to various digital devices you have (digital cameras for instance). 

I think Microsoft has learned a lot from its first Xbox.  I have an Xbox and it's a big heavy thing.  The new one is much smaller, cleaner and to be honest could teach PC vendors a thing or two about good case design.  It also has fewer wires -- its controls are wireless so setting the thing up at a friend's house is even easier.

And it sounds like Microsoft plans to push its advantage with Xbox live even further allowing people to send instant messages, voice chat, email and provide a host of additional user services over time.  Now, if Microsoft can get some good games for it, they'll be in really good shape.

The Playstation 3 seems to have such advanced hardware that one is left wondering just how much further can game graphics go?  At some point, it's going to be all about the quality of the content.  At 1080i/720p resolutions (the realistic best-case that players are going to have ) there's a hard limit on how much computing muscle you need to have incredible graphics. At that point, it's up to the artists to produce the stuff to take advantage of it.  That's one of the reason why games have gotten so expensive -- as capabilities improve, the content has to improve.

Nintendo will also be showing off its Nintendo Revolution which isn't scheduled to come out until mid next year.  Nintendo is struggling with its third-place position in the US console market.  They just don't seem to have the ability to make the noise and build the excitement for their stuff here the way Sony and Microsoft are.  So it will be interesting to see what Nintendo comes up with.

But consoles aren't the only big news for E3.  There are a lot of exciting PC games in the horizon too.  One of the things that hasn't been discussed much in the press is the significance of DirectX 9 as a platform for games.  DirectX 9 really made doing 3D games much more practical in all settings.  Whereas before there were legitimate cases to make sprite based games (especially in the strategy arena), DirectX 9 makes it much easier to have your cake and eat it too in 3D.

To that end, one of the things I'm here at E3 for is to show off Galactic Civilizations II. A 3D engine for it has delivered not just much nicer visuals than the sprite-based original but a lot of practical game-play additions.  For instance, it's resolution independent -- you can play at any resolutions > 1024x768 you want, even weird ones and it will automatically adjust itself.  It also allows players to design their own ships from scratch.  No more being stuck with pre-canned ships, players can literally dive in and put design up nearly any kind of ship they can imagine.  As a former..ahem..Lego starship designer, anyone who's ever played with legos will appreciate the free form ship design stuff.

Beyond the computer games, there's also renewed excitement over handhelds.  I have to admit, as someone who has never had any interest in a Gameboy, the Playstation Portable (PSP) is pretty damn cool.  I'll be looking at what's new there.

I've also brought with me my Canon Elph digital camera which has some video capture features.  I'll be recording what I see and putting it up for you guys over the next few days.

DesktopX 3 lets users take total control over their Windows desktop. Add desktop objects, widgets, or create entirely new desktops.

DesktopX is very powerful but at the same time, it's quite easy to use.  It has thousands of objects, themes, and widgets available to end users.  But to a new user, all this stuff may seem difficult to get into.

To that end, Alberto has put together a new on-line manual for DesktopX that lets users learn about all the things they can do with DesktopX as well as show how to create their own stuff.

DesktopX comes with Object Desktop or can be downloaded on its own at www.desktopx.net.

Check it out and see what you can do!

In the mid 90s, we put together what we thought, especially at the time, was a really cool and fairly unique idea for a game. The game was called "Mobilization". 

The game would use the Total Annihilation engine and allow users to build up cities that, in turn, they used to conquer the world map by map.  These maps would be part of a larger world much like Cavedog's fantastic Boneyards universe where Core and Arm (the factions in Total Annihilation) battled for control of the galaxy.  In this case, things would be even more persistent, more interactive, etc.

In terms of game mechanics, Mobilization didn't have peons. Instead, your citizens were born and it was up to you to create the right conditions to get your population up there.  You would direct what your population was doing through sliders so that there was no micro-management of units.  The only other buildings you would build were for military purposes to "mobilize" your citizens. You would then draft citizens into the military and send them off to war (which is where the TA engine really shined).

The project got as far as pre-production as GT Interactive was interested.  But then they got bought out and everything kind of stalled.  And by that point, we were busy with other projects anyway.

As time went on, and hardware improved and net connections improved and our development resources grew, our design changed, expanded.  We had other ideas we wanted to incorporate into the game to make it much more open ended and provide multiple ways of playing the game other than war. 

At that point, the name "Mobilization" didn't quite fit anymore and so we came up with the name "Society".

Over the months, we hope to give you glimpses and then eventually beta versions of Society to play. It will be available first to TotalGaming.net members. But eventually it'll be available for everyone.  And then after that, released to everyone in its final "gold" form.

These journals will hopefully be interesting and give you some insight into how a small development house goes about creating a massively multiplayer game.  You'll hear a lot of details on how the servers are put together, the issues we run into in terms of budgeting and technological limits, and all kinds of other details.  In short, you're going to see the sausage factory.

This year's E3 promises to be one of the most exciting ones in years.  Not only will Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft be showing off next-generation stuff but the PC games arena should be a pretty exciting place as well.  With Civilization 4 and Age of Empires 3 and new first person goodies from iD and Valve, gamers are in store for quite a treat.

On the other hand, E3 also takes place during the opening of Episode III which is a bit of a bummer.  But some of Stardock's game development team, including myself, will be there.  And so we'll be trying our best to blog what we see and hear while there.

I've done writing on what I saw at E3 in the past, here are some links to them:

• E3 1998
• E3 1999
• E3 2000
• E3 2001
• E3 2003

So you want to create a massively multiplayer strategy game.  How do you go about designing something that will keep players coming back.

In a MMORPG, players are building up their characters. And those character die but they come back.  In an MMORTS like this where city creation and its customization are what the player is worried about, then losing a city becomes a serious problem.

 

Therefore, the first challenge is to narrow down what exactly the player will become attached to and make sure that that attachment is not imperiled (at least not in the premium version of the game).  Players will need to have tangible things to care about for the persistent world to draw players back month after month.
 
In the MMORPG, the character is the only thing the player really cares about. Gameplay is to make the character more powerful by acquiring new skills and items which directly impact future gameplay.

 

You don't want players just battling it out forever. There has to be something specific for them to care about.  So what do you make them care about? A ficticious ruler? Their lands? Their people? Whatever it is, it can't be too abstract.  There's nothing abstract about your Paladin in World of Wacraft getting an epic dual handed hammer of doom. 

 

Many role playing games are already well suited for a massively multiplayer setting.  Diablo practically was an MMO.  But you can't just take Warcraft or Rise of Nations or whatever your favorite RTS is and make it much bigger with people fighting it out all the time.  There have to be opportunities for players to savor what they're building up. And that means deciding precisely what the player is building up in that persistent world.

Next week we're going to be at E3 showing off Galactic Civilizations II and giving sneak peeks at our upcoming MMORTS game, Society.  If you're going to be at E3, comment here, maybe we can organize some sort of get together.

My last article on inheritence taxes sure drew some controversy.  Surprisingly, much of it from conservatives.  Perphaps it's because I'm an only child or perhaps I just don't have the "correct" attitude on families but to me there are two types of income: Earned and unearned.  My problem with welfare is that it provides unearned income to people.  And so to me, inheritence isn't much better than welfare.

Before you turn your flame throwers on, hear me out.  My view is very straight forward -- inherited wealth should be taxed as any other income.  If I bust my ass and earn $10 million over my lifetime, it's going to be taxed.  So why should some guy earn $10 million while sitting on his rear end without having to pay taxes simply because he shares some genetic material with the provider of that wealth? To me, that's insane.

Realestate was used in my previous article to illustrate how this can really get out of hand.  The more you know on how huge tracks of private land in the US was acquired, the more I think people will rail against the idea of a free lunch when it comes to handing down land.  So let's use some southern plantation as an example.  200 years go Johnny Reb builds a plantation on 100 acres of land in the deep south. He didn't really "buy" this land but rather squatted on it until it became his by default.  Through generations, that same land stays in the family through inheritence.

Fast forward to now. Johnny Reb V passes on leaving the 100 ascres to Johnny Reb VI.  It's valued at say $10 million. Should Johnny Reb VI just get that land? That's where the debate is.  I say that Johnny Reb VI owes income taxes on it.  At $10 million, that would be 35% ($3.5 million).  Assuming Johnny Reb VI hasn't been complacent, having grown up with immense wealth around him, he should be able to get together with either other family members or investors and pay that $3.5 million.  Then the land is available to be handed over to Johnny Reb VII.  If not, the land is sold and Johnny Reb VII pockets $6.5 million of it (not bad for not having had to spend a lifetime earning it through labor). At that point the land is available for Billy Yank I to purchase it and pass on to Billy Yank II if he is able to pass the tax muster.

I do agree that traditional inheritence taxes are too high. Inheritence income should be treated as any other income and not discriminated against.  But at the same time, it shouldn't be eliminated entirely either.  You earn your money, it's taxed it's yours.  But that has nothing to do with your children, let alone your great great great great grandchildren.  They did nothing more than be born to "earn" it.  The system should be biased in favor of keeping assets within a family, but it shouldn't be a free ride.

Stardock has released Theme Manager 2005.  Theme Manager is a free program that takes your various Windows customization programs and integrates them together into a single user interface.  From Theme Manager, users can change their themes, skins, visual styles, wallpapers, screen savers, and much more.  It works with other programs to allow users to control their desktop's look and feel from its interface. If the user doesn't have a needed program, Theme Manager will offer to download and install it for them.

Users can also save their desktops. Once they've got their perfect desktop, they can go to file->save desktop and it will create a .suite file which can be kept locally or shared with others.  The .suite file contains the various visual styles, skins, wallpapers, themes, etc. in it.  Theme Manager is one of the programs that makes up Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancement programs.

Screenshots:

Apocalypse's World of Warcraft suite

 
Pixtudio's FlyOS suite

 
Steve G's MacOS suite

 
If you have SkinStudio and WindowBlinds installed, you can apply msstyles without hacking any of your system DLLs!

 
Create your own suites to share with others (don't upload them unless you have rights to the content, however)

 

Welcome to the game of Society. Stardock's massively multiplayer real time strategy game.  It's long ways off but we're hard at work on it.