ShackNews Interview with Brad Wardell (Part 1)

By Island Dog on September 10, 2008 7:49:55 AM from

Island Dog

Stardock

Join Date 06/2003

+511

ShackNews has a two-part interview with Stardock CEO, Brad Wardell. The first part talks about the plan to “revitalize” PC gaming. It also covers Stardock's stance on copy-protection.

A quick excerpt:

"Shack: A lot of people think the solution is making games that are so connected with the online experience that everything is validated online, patched online, controlled through the internet. But what you're talking about is an offline, almost traditional solution.

Brad Wardell: Well I think [we need] a combination. You have to be able to protect your intellectual property. And I'm a big believer in activation. Our games, not all of our games, but Galactic Civilizations uses activation for downloads. Basically, our system has always traditionally been that you purchase a game, it has no copy protection, but if you want to update it you have to get it from us with your serial number, and we validate who it is."

It's a great interview, so be sure to check it out.

Stardock Interview Part 1: Brad Wardell Speaks Out on His Plan to Save PC Gaming

If you're making a game for a demographic that's mostly 15-18 year olds, who probably don't have jobs, but it requires a $4,000 computer to play, where are these kids getting the machines?

Yep, it's wild isn't it? But then marketing is always politics I suppose. That is, blaming piracy is lip service to their paymasters as much as it is a debatable bone for the community to gnaw on.

IMO The single greatest thing about Stardock so far has been the effort to make your games run on as many pc's as possible. Such a practical method for opening potential market share is beginning to catch on a bit I think and about time to. All consumers crave substance in the end, maybe not at first, but always in the end. That Stardock specialize in TBS, only means more power to you in this regard. (Gods may this never change)

Regards you comments on the strength of the console, sure, console games "just work," but they also "just date," that is... they stagger the evolution of games more precisely than pc's, which takes alot of power away from the gamer. The strength of the pc of course, is that provided you empower yourself with the appropriate knowledge, you can maintain a more fluid equilibrium with the gaming market. Swapping parts, modding software, etc... With the console you have no option for such empowerment. (Though I admit, they rule for sports )

Anyway, nice interview, you have my sword/cash.

Successfully updated karma reason!

With all due respect, I think Mr. Wardell should get in the practice of practicing what he espouses before assuming to tell all of the PC gaming industry how they should run their businesses. His "Gamer's Bill of Rights", in addition to his comments in this interview, has more than a few hypocrisies.

His 2nd "article" is "Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state." In addition to this he mentions in the interview something to the effect of how with console games, gamers know they won't have to have an internet connection to have a playable, good quality game, and this should be the case with PC games as well. If I recall correctly, the retail, out-of-box version of Galactic Civilizations II was extremely buggy, to the point of being unplayable. I actually stopped playing the game to wait for an update to fix some of the atrocious (some incredibly obvious) bugs that shipped with the game. It was clear that the game had been rushed out to fit some release schedule instead of thoroughly testing it.

He also makes the point, yet again, of how great Stardock is in not using DRM. I really object to this point every time Mr. Wardell makes it, as I find it quite silly. He refers to product activation as a requirement for patches as a way "to protect your intellectual property". That is all well and good, but it turns out that there already is a term for such a system, it is called Digital Rights Management and Mr. Wardell is just parsing words calling it anything else.

As I mentioned earlier, Galactic Civilizations II was practically unplayable upon release. Thus it essentially required an internet connection. And it also essentially required you to enter a license key to obtain much needed patches. How is this not DRM? How is this any different from having to put in a license key to even turn on a game such as Doom 3?

Although I definitely agree the PC gaming industry needs to scrap DRM and put its consumers first, I do not think Stardock has been the champion of this that it likes to self-proclaim. I believe Mr. Wardell needs to stop with the holier-than-thou attitude he had towards the rest of the industry in every interview he does and take a good look at his own company first.

Successfully updated karma reason!

When you think of DRM what do you actually think of CD’s needing to be in the drive, CD-keys? Or do you think of some program that installs and limits what you can do on your computer? If they were to directly say “We have DRM in our games” how many people would start screaming that they won’t buy the game and how many will not care because Stardocks DRM will more or less not affect them?

As for not finishing GC2 before release it was 2 years ago I think it would be better to wait for their next major game (unless they recantly have devolped a major game) to decide if they have changed or not.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting DrSpock,

reply 2

If I recall correctly, the retail, out-of-box version of Galactic Civilizations II was extremely buggy, to the point of being unplayable. I actually stopped playing the game to wait for an update to fix some of the atrocious (some incredibly obvious) bugs that shipped with the game. It was clear that the game had been rushed out to fit some release schedule instead of thoroughly testing it.t.

I don't agree at all with that. I'm not sure what "obvious" bugs you think were there. The game most certainly wasn't buggy on release. We literally finished the game at around Christmas 2005 and play tested it between then and the late January gold date. Beta testers and gamma testers seemed pretty happy with it too and so were reviewers and others.

I'm not saying GalCiv II was perfect for everyone, but it was certainly finished.

I can't seem to find the part where I said Stardock was "great" for not using DRM. As a practical matter, most of our software uses product activation. I have no problem with DRM philosophically, I have a problem with ANY system that punishes legtimate purchases of software. If developer can create something that is seamless to a user, then that's great.

Successfully updated karma reason!

People are trying to broaden the meaning of the word DRM. To me DRM means encrypting or signing content and allow only trusted software or hardware play it. This hurts the customer's rights in a serious way, because there usually are perfectly valid reason to get access to the actual content. A server based customer authentication does not fit under such a description, the game is fully functional without it and you have full access to the bits and bytes you bought.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I must say I'm pretty impressed with what I just read the gamer bill of rights is just a FANTASTIC IDEA !!!

It's been a while since I came on this website, I hope someone from stardock will see my comment...

I have to add something to the examples that Brad Wardell gave :

when I was young (12 year old exactly), I started to have a "decent" computer... (Pentium 75 )

Relatively quickly I learned everything about installing Operating Systems and such...

I bought a few games but what I want to say here is : My Parents almost never bought me a game

Why is that ? well because of two points in fact :

-they didn't know what type of game I would like

-they for sure didn't know at all if it would run or not on my computer

Now, the question asked is : if they did have to only figure a game type to buy me but were sure it would work, would they have bought me some ???

I seriously don't know, but this interview just begged the question ...

Thanks to stardock & GPG for the gamer's bill of rights initiative, in the end it can only serve us gamers

now I'm going to buy both galciv2 expansions

Successfully updated karma reason!

arf seems like I can't edit my post (FF3 here, don't know if it's related)

Successfully updated karma reason!

Something like a GBoR is a really good idea. Sounds promising that Microsoft and others are interested in it.

The downsides are many though. The worst one must be if it eventually becomes a stamp on boxes that has no meaning (like the THX certificate). I thought just a month ago that a THX certificate was a must for great sound. Then I talked to HiFi people and learned that it's basically useless and just a gimmick that average people think is great!

Successfully updated karma reason!

@ Mr. Wardell (Frogboy)

This website (as I would assume other sites owned by Stardock) headlines everytime you give an interview or other appearance where you essentially paint DRM as evil and as a practice abhored by Stardock. There have been many such occassions. I simply feel that the solution Stardock uses, which is perfectly legitimate by the way, is DRM. I think that it is wrong of you to paint the entirety of the rest of the PC gaming industry as being so obsessed with stopping pirates that they scare away legitamate customers when your own company uses its own form of DRM.

My other point, about the bugs at release of Galactic Civilizations II- I seem to remember you yourself remarking something to the effect of how you were humbled at how much you actually missed before releasing the game and you had been overly confident in your testing. I have written software myself, (albeit obviously at a much much smaller and simpler level) and I remembering finding it hard to believe some of the bugs that had gotten through.

I remember a particularly annoying one; I think it was a button in the ship design screen that was supposed to take you back to the colony you had navigated from, instead took you to the central game screen. This was an important peice of UI in a very often used screen in the game, and such a bug had shipped with release? I felt it had "rushed to release" written all over it, as so many games sadly do these days.

I do not believe for a second that you can honestly tell me that 15 years ago, before most people even had internet connections, a time when games had to get it right at release such a bug (among the many others) would have cut it. Stardock is as guilty of rushing games out and adopting the "we can always patch it later!" attitude as any other game company.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well I have to agree with those who said that galciv2 was quite buggy on release

Though I wouldn't be as quick to judge. After all, galciv was an outsider and support in the following years has been quite amazing to say the least. So in the end there's far far worse on the bug side. There's also far better but often it's not at all the same budget... (even if budget doesn't fix bugs all by itself ...)

@DrSpock 15 years ago there was Master Of Magic, an awesome game but buggy as hell, ok accorded most bugs you could live with it, but still some spells could crash the game (crack call), or even completely wack out your savegames ...

and it was never fixed ...

In any case I feel like Mr Wardell is heading in the right direction and paving the way for better things to come. Letting a buggy game go on sale isn't such a problem if there's adequate support thereafter... Making "mistakes" doesn't prevent one from trying to do better (or you could say : it's not because someone make a game with some bugs that he is forbidden to promote the fact to prevent bugs on game launch)

EDIT: ho and last thing : DRM (in the broad usage meaning) IS actually THE ULTIMATE EVIL

Successfully updated karma reason!

ShackNews Interview with Brad Wardell (Part 1)

Island Dog

Stardock Interview Part 1: Brad Wardell Speaks Out on His Plan to Save PC Gaming