Stardock's Wardell at GDC

[H.Bogard]

He talked about a lot of things, ranging from digital distro competition being beneficial to the consumers, to yesterday's casual games being the hardcore games of today.

"Before digital distribution, Comp USA was notorious for making you pay... they were real bastards. You would constantly have to write them checks to get them to carry your product. And I think one of the reasons why they went under--they couldn't leverage that anymore. We could walk to them and say, 'Hey, too bad, we can put our thing on our thing and we're still going to make a lot of money.'"

But Wardell cautioned against rooting for a single digital platform, repeating comments from a recent editorial where he questioned Steam's assumed dominance.

"Be careful wishing there is only one distribution platform. You want these guys competing, because what will happen is if you don't have alternatives, is that you do not want to have one distributor to lean on you to give them specials, or special pricing just for them. Because then your options as a game developer go down."


A lot more interesting stuff in there. Read the whole thing here. (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57799)

[Xydarc]

The man knows what he is talking about. He's also right about Steam. Steam is a great service, but it needs competition to keep it great.

[Ancalagon]

Agreed. Smart guy, for a business exec. Most of them cant see the wood for the trees. He's right that Steam needs competition. Its fairly amazing that it is as good as it is even in the near absence of competition, but yeah, I dont think any one of us would want it to completely dominate.

[Telefrog]

Competition is always good. I am always amazed at the amount of common sense that comes out of Wardell's mouth and how it oddly causes all sorts of debate amongst gamers.

It would seem like most of the stuff he says should hardly be under any kind of debate at all.

[biosc1]

I definitely have a man-crush on him...one I wish would turn into a bro-mance...

He always comes across as very well reasoned in his editorials and talks. His service is getting better and better. For the longest time, I only had Sins on their service, but that has increased to about 10 games now that I own through Impulse. Each update they do to the service makes it better and better...even if it's a slow and steady affair. I have high hopes for the next update that comes out to coincide with the release of Demigod.

Interesting numbers:

Galactic Civilizations II


$1.2 million budget (original plus two expansions)
$500,000 marketing
$500,000 distribution
$10 million revenue

Sins of a Solar Empire


$1 million budget (original and one expansion)
$600,000 marketing
$800,000 distribution
$8 million in revenue so far

I didn't realize that GalCiv II sold so well...especially for a game without DRM ;)