From a distance, Activision Blizzard seems to be an unstoppable publisher. On the Activision side of the company, you have Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. On the Blizzard end, you have StarCraft and the biggest online game ever created – World of Warcraft.
But are these two publishers, now united as one, truly unstoppable? Or has the cold-as-ice union survived on luck, commercialism, and corporate dominance alone?
Whatever the case, there’s another guy in town that might have what it takes to dethrone Activision Blizzard: Stardock.
Think I’m crazy? Then you haven’t been paying attention. Over the past several years, Stardock has been working hard to build a loyal fan base by producing high-quality games that are free of DRM. And that is only the beginning. Let’s take a look at some of the things that Stardock is doing to become the number-one developer and publisher of PC games.
Stardock is Owned and Operated by a Gamer, Not a Suit
We all know what Activision Blizzard’s head honcho thinks of video games. We all know what game developers think of him. We’re aware that his words, as well as his actions, have been known to get him into a bit of legal trouble. And we’ve all seen the, uhh, supportive editorials that bloggers love to write. If you missed it, his most loyal fans have created a page for him on Facebook.
Stardock, on the other hand, is owned and operated by a gamer. Its founder and CEO, Brad Wardell, is such a huge gamer that he once considered developing a sequel to one of his favorite games – Master of Magic.
Wardell’s philosophy on game publishing and development can be summed up pretty easily. “I care about the games being profitable, but it has to be really good,” he said, speaking on the matter of quality game releases during our first interview in 2008. “I want to put out games that when consumers see Stardock on the box they say, ‘That’s a good game, I can trust it.’”
Brad Wardell is a Multi-Talented Artist (With Feelings)
As if producing an entire game wasn’t enough, Wardell has also written a novel called Elemental: Destiny’s Embers, which will accompany the release of Elemental: War of Magic.
“Maybe if [the book] does well, I can finally quit my da*n day job,” Wardell joked during a recent interview with Gamasutra. “If there are negative reviews, I’ll cry. So write that in your article: ‘Don’t write any negative reviews.’ I’ll cry like a baby. There will be tears.”
Stardock Sticks to What it Knows Best
Stardock’s lineup includes Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire, Demigod, and Elemental: War of Magic – all of which are strategy games.
Activision Blizzard’s lineup consists of everything but the kitchen sink. Actually, Activision was rumored to be working on a game that would finally exploit the financial viability of kitchen sinks. The project was dropped, however, when the publisher realized it was easier to continue milking the Call of Duty series instead.
Money is Not a Multi-Platform Motivator
Unlike a certain other publisher, Stardock isn’t going to pummel every platform with the same batch of games. “We make PC games because the games we like to make do best on a PC,” Wardell told GameZone in 2008. “Real-time strategy games – they don’t do so well on a console. But if we were to make an action game or something that would work on a console, then that is definitely something we’d consider.”
Stardock is Community-Focused…
No one listens to gamers more than Stardock. Prior to completion, Elemental: War of Magic went through several betas, allowing players to give feedback regarding the things that they loved as well as those that they despised.
Earlier this year, Wardell told IncGamers that the economy has been the central focus of the beta. “I was not really satisfied with how the economic system in Galactic Civilizations worked at times and wanted to try something very different. So the beta testers and us have gone back and forth trying different systems to see what we found the most enjoyable to play.”
…But Not at the Expense of the Greater Good
The community is important, but it will never be allowed to get in the way of a sound development decision. “In the beta [for Galactic Civilizations], every time I tried to change [the economic system], the fans would go nuts about how they liked the 30 slider bars and stuff,” said Wardell, who spoke to GameZone this July.
The solution? During our interview, Wardell hinted that, if he were to develop Galactic Civilizations III, the beta would be limited so that he could “make some of the changes we really want to make without there being an uproar in the forums over every little thing.”
Stardock Doesn’t Make Excuses
Is piracy a problem? Of course. But unlike most publishers in the PC games business, Stardock doesn’t use piracy to cover up the reality of poor sales. In an interview with Neoseeker, Wardell said that he knows that piracy is annoying “but it’s not the primary cost; it’s not as big of a cost to us as everyone tries to claim.”
“But it feels good,” he continues. “It’s very easy to blame piracy. If the goal is to eliminate people from playing your game for free, piracy is a huge problem on the PC. If the issue is real lost sales, it’s still a problem but not nearly as big a problem as people say. I suspect we all know people that go on binary newsgroups and get every movie that’s at the theater right now [laughs], yet I’ve never heard of a movie executive blame piracy for why such a movie failed. It’s only in the PC game industry. Movies are vastly more pirated, too, yet it’s not brought up. And movies don’t have to be cracked.”
Stardock Was the First to Officially Denounce DRM and Other Rotten Schemes
If you haven’t read the Gamer’s Bill of Rights, do so immediately.
Some key points include:
“Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.”
“Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.”
“Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.”
And my favorite, “Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.” It should be noted that Stardock created the Gamer’s Bill of Rights more than a year before Ubisoft’s must-be-online-to-play DRM went into effect. Clearly, not every publisher has been listening to Stardock’s advice.
