What a great little organization, Stardock. Their President/CEO, Brad Wardell is all over forums I've been frequenting, such as Gaming Trend and Octopus Overlords, touting and answering questions about the new game they are offering through their gaming service, Sins of a Solar Empire (SSE).
Others might know about Stardock from their windows extensions/enhancements or their critically acclaimed turn-based strategy game series, Galactic Civilizations, which has really pushed strategy AI to new levels. SSE is an ambitious new title (published by Stardock, developed by Ironclad Studios) that seeks to marry the detailed strategy layer of a traditional turn-based "4X" game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) to the tactical immediacy and flash of a real-time strategy game (e.g., Homeworld, Starcraft and the like) in a large free-form outer space arena.
Now there are number reasons I support Stardock/Ironclad:
1. They put out quality products
2. One of the reasons they put out such quality products is that they are small enough and dedicated enough to establish relationships with their player base. If you ever get a chance to check out the SSE forums, posts from developers abound and revisions to the game are made based on intelligent feedback from the forums. This, in turn, promotes further intelligent feedback as it is consistently rewarded.
3. They do not include copy protection in their products. Instead, they offer frequent updates and extensions to their games through their online tools which require product keys to acquire.
4. I can't emphasize enough how much they seem to listen to and react to user feedback.
5. I can't emphasize enough how frequently quality balance tweaks, AI upgrades, content expansions, etc., become available through Stardock.
In an economy like ours where larges piles of money generally beget larger piles and begetting said larger piles tends to become the raison d'etre of most surviving companies, as consumers we can make statements for the economic viability of quality by using our spending dollars to support smaller companies who have the opportunity and the motivation for refreshing the gaming landscape with good ideas and profound experiences.
I say, lets do it. Check out Galactic Civilizations. Check out Sins of a Solar Empire.
Comments (1)
Thanks for this post. We always appreciate the support and look forward to good things to come in the future. :)
-Island Dog
Stardock
Posted by Spencer | February 8, 2008 2:36 PM
Posted on February 8, 2008 14:36