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Entries Tagged as 'Stardock'

The Hostile Geography of Fallen Enchantress

November 2nd, 2012 · 13 Comments · Design, Stardock

Exploration is one of the central ideas in any empire building game, and Fallen Enchantress relies heavily on uncovering what resources and settlement locations are nearby. The problem with exploring is that things may follow you home. My scout was doing no harm, and in fact maybe a little good, when he moved outside the […]

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 192: Fallen Enchantress

October 29th, 2012 · Comments Off on Three Moves Ahead Episode 192: Fallen Enchantress · Podcast, Stardock, Three Moves Ahead

This week, original panelist Tom Chick returns to wax poetical about Fallen Enchantress, Stardock’s follow up to Elemental: War of Magic. He finds a welcome audience in Fallen Enchantress lead designer, Derek Paxton. What do Rob, Troy and Bruce have to add? Listen to a discussion of design docs, original vision, AI debates and discussion […]

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Shafer and Stardock

January 5th, 2011 · 16 Comments · Firaxis, Industry, Stardock

When I broke the news that Jon Shafer had left Firaxis, I can honestly say that I had no idea where he would end up. I knew that a deal was in place for him to go somewhere, I knew that he was happy with the move and I knew nothing else. None of my […]

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Big Time Patch Week

December 20th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Firaxis, Patches, PCGamer, Stardock

Last week saw the unveiling of two huge patches for two huge turn based strategy games – in fact the two most disappointing games of the year in the eye of departing Fidgit blogger Tom Chick. I won’t go as far as Tom does regarding Civilization 5. It had a lot of AI problems, and […]

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Three Moves Ahead Episode 81: Elemental Post Mortem with Brad Wardell

September 8th, 2010 · 34 Comments · Podcast, Stardock, Three Moves Ahead

  A terrible launch of a game I wanted to love turns what should have been a “WOW” show into another opportunity for Brad Wardell to explain how Stardock screwed up. Listen how imperfect QA practices, overconfidence, groupthink and not taking every beta crash report seriously turned one of the year’s most anticipated new IPs […]

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Stardock’s Customer Report 2009

November 19th, 2009 · 9 Comments · Industry, Stardock

Brad Wardell has published the Stardock customer report and it’s got little bits of interesting information, especially if – like me – you are interested in, but not necessarily knowledgeable about, the business side of PC gaming and software development in general. For example, on Demigod: For Stardock, the more significant shock of Demigod has […]

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