neowin.net

It's been awhile since I've been able to code on anything. But with Elemental going into beta, I'm back in the saddle again. W00t.

Some game sites picked up what I covered in my session.

Here's one from Shack:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57799

Next week I'll be at the Game Developer's Conference doing a panel on indie game development.

If you've ever wanted to hear some of the details on what it's like making indie games, please drop by.

(Stardock On The PC Hardcore Scene As Indie
Speaker: Brad Wardell (President/CEO, Stardock)
Date/Time: Monday (March 23, 2009) 4:15pm — 5:00pm
Location (room): Room 131, North Hall
Track: Independent Games Summit
Format: 45-minute Lecture
Experience Level: All

If I were building a machine for best long-term value and short term performance, this is what I would currently put it together with:

CPU: Intel Core i7

Graphics Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4870X2

Memory: 12 Gigabytes

OS: Windows Vista 64-bit (moving to Windows 7 with the first beta)

Hard Drive: Intel X-25E Extreme SSD for the boot drive, A 1 Terrabyte drive for secondary.

Monitor: Good 24 inch LCD.

Must-Have Software:

Object Desktop Ultimate
Multiplicity
Windows Live Mesh
Impulse
Microsoft Office
Steam
Corel Draw
TechSmith Jing

Must-Have Games to install immediately

Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate
Sins of a Solar Empire
Left4Dead

Must-Have Games to prepare for in 2009

Demigod
Dawn of War 2
The Sims 3 (yea, I admit it)

I have two PCs that I use a lot.

My work machine is a monster. Solid date boot drive plus a 15k RPM data drive for compiling and such. It runs Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit with 3GB of RAM. Dell XPS 730.

My second PC is a mere laptop. A Thinkpad T400 with a T9600 CPU in it. It runs Windows Vista 64-bit Business with 8 GB of memory. Fairly generic 7200 rpm drive.

Guess which one feels faster in day to day use? Yep, the laptop. It turns out that when it comes to feel fast, the extra RAM, which deep down we always knew, trumps all. As I type this Vista has reserved a 4.3GB disk cache. What that means in practice is that it's rare for my hard drive light to even come on because after some hours or days of running the machine (I rarely reboot) everything's in memory. So when I open up my compiler or Word or Impulse or whatever, it's all in memory already and comes up basically instantly.

I really wish Microsoft would just have Windows 7 be 64-bit only. It would be a great opportunity to make a clean break and let users see a substantial improvement in performance. I have to admit, I've been really surprised at just how much of a difference having the extra memory is. It's not like I run a ton of extra programs, it's just all the caching.

I don't know about you guys but I love the new Neowin home page design!

iTunes, Steam, Direct2Drive, Amazon.com. Digital distribution is the future. We all know it.

Right now, how it's going to work is in flux. Amazon has taken some great strides in weakening the demand by publishers for intrusive DRM.

Yet, at the same time, in the game industry the direction has been towards ever increasing copy protection and DRM. But it has not been set in stone yet. It's not too late.

So, Neowin users: If you were designing a digital distribution platform, what would you want in it? How would it work? What features would it need? How would you protect the intellectual property of developers, musicians, movie makers, etc. but at the same time not inconvenience customers or make them feel like criminals?

I say this because Stardock is working on Impulse, the first generation 3 digital distribution platform. It's already either signed or is in the process of signing most of the major PC game publishers to go out later this year. It has some major OEMs on board, video card makers, etc. all signed on as well.

But when it comes to HOW it should work, Neowin and Stardock want to hear from you. Because we're looking to make sure it functions in a way that you guys like.

About once a month someone, somewhere, will comment on something I've written saying how "A CEO shouldn't act so unprofessionally in public". Over the years, I've gotten that message hundreds of times along with predictions of demise for my company due to my "public" behavior.

Now, I think the case could be made that we live in a different time. The new age of companies have executives who hang out on forums and mix it up with people. But I'm not going to make that argument because, ultimately, it doesn't matter. I would still do what I do no matter what.

My personal and professional objectives have always been the same: I want to do what I want to do.

That is my top priority. Freedom.

Freedom has consequences. I am certain, beyond a doubt, that my public postings on various topics over the years has alienated some percentage of users who have encountered what I written to the point that they have decided to not purchase products and services from my company. I'm okay with it. It's a price I'm willing to pay to be able to do what I want.

Here are some examples:

This week, Neowin.net publicly revealed its affiliation with Stardock. Stardock owns 40% of Neowin.net. It doesn't really affect the way the site is run. I was already on Neowin's staff as a volunteer long before I got Stardock involved with it. I just love the site and its community. And I wanted to help so we put together a new company to do just that and it's worked out great.

As an active user on Neowin, there are some people who don't like me. There have been many arguments as to why news items that get posted about Stardock get trolled. Here is one user's explanation:

The problem with this whole thing is that the staff here assumes most people have a problem with Brad due to his Stardock affiliation, but that's not the case at all. People just flat out don't like him. It has nothing to do with the companies he owns or doesn't own. It comes down to the way he treats members here.

Now, users on Stardock sites who read my posts know how I "treat" people. It's not that I treat people badly. I'm just not very sympathetic to people who incessantly complain about every little thing. I particularly have little patience for people whose idea of "free speech" is to flame some person, product, or company and then be taken aback when that person or representative of that product or company defends themselves.

A user on WinCustomize.com wrote this today:

You guys have GREAT products (I am paying for virtually everything you make these days), but Brad tends to do all the PR himself, via grass roots article posts on sites like Neowin.net, etc. Their limited effectiveness contributes to the pervading sense that Stardock will never rise above a niche player, but the REALLY big issue here is that Brad is doing the grass roots posts AND then engages in these childish "my tiny little software company is bigger than your even tinier little software company" flame threads. Having the same person covering both of these communication avenues really really makes both the company and its executive management look very small and unfortunately rather petty.

I totally agree with most of what he said. Having the CEO of a company personally slogging it out on forums makes Stardock look small. He's totally incorrect if he thinks this is some for of PR. I don't do PR. Our PR team does PR. Hanging out on forums talking about games or bee keeping or skinning is not PR. I might also quibble that a company that makes $20 million a year is not a "tiny little software company" but that's just me.

In fact, I think he speaks great truth. My public postings and such do give the impression that Stardock is really small. I imagine the typical user on Neowin who reads my posts would be shocked to know that Stardock is a major game developer and PC game publisher. Or that millions of PCs this year will ship with our software on them. Or that our technology powers 911 call centers across the country. And so on simply because they assume that a "real company" wouldn't have their CEO slogging it out on some web forum with some user about Windows device drivers or whatever.

But the main point he's trying to make is totally correct. The fact that the CEO of Stardock is out on forums talking to users or even arguing with them or responding to some flame from some piddly quasi-competing "skinning" company does impact the perception of Stardock. However, I don't care. Or more accurately, I don't care enough to change because I value being able to say and do what I want more than I care about people's perceptions.

Stardock isn't a public company. It's not investor run. It doesn't even have investors. It's my company. It's a company with around 60 people these days that I can proudly say has not had any voluntary turn over in over 2 years. How many other software or game companies of that size can make that claim? And the reason for that is that my public attitude is my private attitude too -- we're going to do what we want to do. Not just me but the people there too.

When Steve, Marcel, and I formed Neowin LLC, my suggestion to them was pretty straight forward: Do what you want to do. In the 3 years since we got together, there hasn't been a single time I've tried to veto anything they wanted to do. In fact, there's not be a single time we've even disagreed on a Neowin idea.

Sure, there's a cost to doing what you want to do. I have gotten plenty of ribbing that we're working on a TURN-BASED fantasy strategy game instead of making it an RTS. But I want to make a turn-based fantasy strategy game. It won't sell as well as an RTS would but so what? What good is more money if you can't do what you want to do?

I'm 36. I've got a beautiful wife. 3 wonderful children. Plus I've got the toys. The Porsche 911 Turbo, the boat, the lake cottage, the big house, etc. And I get to work every day with people who I really like. Not just professionally but on a personal level. So I've already got what I want personally. So freedom to do what I want matters a lot to me.

Every day at Stardock is FUN. Even during crunch-time it's FUN. And why is it fun? Because every day we do what we want to do.

And part of doing what you want to do is being able to show some obnoxious customer the door or not hiding the fact that you're an expert in some area when discussing a topic on some web forum.

One last example from Neowin:

No matter how much money Stardock has given Neowin, no matter how much better services Neowin has been able to provide it's members as a result of this (which I highly respect Stardock for leaving NEowin virtually untouched, don't get me wrong), it will never, ever, justify an Admin acting with a "better than thou" or a "know it all" attitude towards its members.

Lest you think that their interpretations are wrong I'll say it myself. Yes, I do know better than most people on the topics I participate in. The typical loud-mouth posting on a web forum is a cretin. And I am willing to say, on the record, that yes, I do know more. On Neowin, when i get into debates on OS technology or whatever then yea, I do know what I'm talking about and most of the time, the person ranting is a bloody loon. And yes, I will act as "better than thou" attitude if I want to simply on the principle that I'm going to do what I want to do. It has nothing to do with being an admin. Any user who thinks that the forum postings of any individual, even a CEO, are going to have a noticeable effect on sales or traffic has no idea what they're talking about. I've been running on-line communities since I was a teenager (20 years now), so I think I can be a "know it all" on that factoid.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether I'm justified or not because I'm going to do what I want to do. And so far, it's worked out pretty well for both me, my family, my coworkers, and our customers.

One topic that gets heavily discussed internally at Neowin is what to do with the large number of anti-social, toxic users who seem to get off on poisoning threads, news items, etc. here on Neowin.

These are the people who will go out of their way to insult people, companies, or anything else purely out of some need to spew forth venom.

On the one hand, we don't want Neowin to become excessively moderated where people are afraid of what they say. But on the other hand, it's an increasing problem that Neowin is ending up the refuge of all the jerks who have been banned from other sites.

You know the types. They're the ones who comment on posts calling people names because they didn't like the post. They're the ones posting on news items saying "Why is this news?" or Flaming the software or game announcement without knowing anything about what is being announced. Or they're the guy who flames the poster who is asking for help because they didn't search every last post on the site before posting.

We seem to have a lot of these toxic users here. Some of us would just do a big house cleanining at once. Just start going through looking for these users and getting rid of them. They're such a tiny % of our traffic that they add nothing to the success of the site. Others want to do that but are concerned about the back lash.

So I'm curious as to what you think? Would you like to see us take a harder line against toxic users or do you think the concept of "free speech" (even on a privately held site) trumps the desire to remove the jerks? Or something in between.

I read a news announcement about a new freeware program that does some cool stuff. I check it out and it is vastly superior to an existing freeware program. Yet when I read the comments, the new, superior freeware program is being flamed. Why? Because the guy making it also offers a for-pay version that has more features.

I check out the forums of a game I enjoy playing. Normally people are singing the praises of this game. Now, the forum is full of flaming and angst. Why? Because the developer started offering optional premium content for players if they want.

Let me tell the whiners a truth about life: Money is exchanged for goods and services.

Before the current generation of vocal "free beer" people started taking over forums we had a concept called shareware. Someone would make something cool and offer a version of it to try. This version might time out or it might have fewer features or it might just work on the honor system. If users liked it, they bought it. End of story.

Nowadays, we have it better. People make free stuff and release it. No nags. No missing features when compared to other "free" competitors. No time outs. But the developers will also release an even better version. Despite that, you will still have people flaming the free version as being "crippled" or "trialware" even though it's actually freeware. Even if the free program is better than free programs that have no "better" version as an option, people will still flame the one while praising the other.

Now, I'm all for people expressing their opinions, but that's not what a lot of these people are doing. They're basically trying to bully developers (or shame them) out of even making the optional premium version.

I think a lot of the free beer crowd actually think that there's so alternative universe where the premium content might have been free if the developer could just have been shamed out of their "greed". But that's just not going to happen. Professionally developed software costs money to make. Someone has to pay for that cost.

And so the problem comes that a lot of us don't mind paying for extra stuff. I have plenty of favorite games that I'd like to see continued updating of that I'd be willing to pay for.

The mere existence of premium stuff doesn't hurt me. If I want it, I'll pay for it. If I don't, I won't.