Stardock to be on the podcast

[Aberrant]

The Multiplaying podcast will soon be speaking with Brad Wardell, the founder and CEO of Stardock, a PC software company that has emerged as one the top gaming developers/publishers. Some of their top PC games are Galactic Civilizations I & II, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Demigod. Two of their games currently rank in the top 10 on metacritic for PC games released in the past few years. They also developed Impulse, a digital distribution service for games and Windows software that is very user friendly.

We are very excited for this opportunity! If you have any questions for Brad, please feel free to post them here or email them to [e-mail]. While we can’t promise to hit all of the questions, we will do our best. Stay tuned for the podcast episode to air towards the end of the month.

[Keinermacht]

Whoa, this is awesome! The first time I heard about Sins of a Solar Empire was in reading an interview with Brad Wardell where he voiced his opinions (mostly negative ones) about highly restrictive DRM on games. His views were pretty highly contrarian to what I was used to hearing from industry types and that got me interested in checking out Stardock's products. I had a blast playing through Sins and its expansion pack last year.

Some possible questions... the first three are easy "softballs", the last two, not so much



1) How has the DRM landscape changed in PC games over the last year or two? Do you feel your/Stardock's viewpoints (i.e., don't antagonize your best customers) have gained more acceptance during this time throughout the industry? Or are you even more isolated than before?

2) Tell us about any current/future plans for Stardock to support PC gaming on non-Windows operating systems. Gal Civ was THE game to play on IBM OS/2, what is Stardock doing in terms of porting some of their newer releases to Linux/OS X/Chrome and has there been any buy-in for this from other partners on Impulse?

3) We keep hearing about the "death of PC gaming" and how it's right around the corner. Tell us if Stardock has any plans to get involved with console gaming in the near future, even if it's something minor like licensing a Stardock IP to be developed for a console title by a third party.

4) What is it that REALLY distinguishes the Impulse platform from Steam, Direct2Drive, and Games for Windows Live? There are some subtle things that stand out (much less DRM, correct Dollar-to-Euro pricing parity, a more "indie" selection) but these seem difficult to promote. How can we best describe Impulse to our fellow gamers in a single sentence or less? Right now I tell them it's "Steam with less Suck and more Weird" and they just scratch their heads... got something a little catchier?

EDIT 5) We want a single player campaign for Sins dammit!!! Who do we contact at Ironclad to yell at?

That's all from me for now.... this should be a good podcast

[Zeli]

Good questions Kein! Thanks so much!

and remember if you ever want to help write for multiplaying...

[Winin]

1) What games/companies inspire you and/or your games?
2) What are you playing these days?
3) What programming language do you use?
4) How long does it take to go from initial idea to release for your games? How does that compare to other games?

[Slurm]

I just plan on starting off by saying, "how the fuck ya doin' Brad?"

[Winin]

1) What are you drinking?
2) Did you actually listen to any of our previous shows, or are you in for a real surprise?

[Keinermacht]

Sept 18, 2009 22:42:51 GMT -5 Slurm said:

I just plan on starting off by saying, "how the fuck ya doin' Brad?"

^^^ this is why the podcast actually has listeners, because Slurms is on it and not me ;D

and oh yeah, another question from me (actually a friend of mine):

6) Are you hiring? Even unpaid interns? What advice would you give to a new graduate trying to break into the industry in a bad economy?

[Winin]

1) Give us an interesting example of a day in the life of a game company CEO. You just play all day, right? Come on, no one's listening. Just between us.