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Stardock CEO going on modding sabbatical after Elemental ships
Stardock CEO Brad Wardell will take a "sabbatical" after shipping Elemental: War of Magic later this year. It's not unheard of to take some time off after shipping a major product in the industry (horrible example), but Wardell isn't traveling the world. No, instead he's having a full-on geek out: he's goin' modding. Wardell explained to Joystiq, "It's more than a vacation. For the past year I've been doing multiple jobs at once -- running Stardock, managing external game development, coding on Elemental, building a house, and writing a book. I typically start work at around 8am EST and work until around 11pm and do this every day -- seven days a week -- though recently I've been getting in some Starcraft 2 time. But it has averaged around 80 hours a week overall." The executive explains that he wants to mod Elemental to make all kinds of other games and get as much out of the Kumquat engine (the company's new game engine) and Impulse Reactor as possible. Then take those lessons and show it to other developers. He also plans to work on Civilization V mods, which uses the same mod program as Elemental. Wardell expressed the time off "won't affect Stardock's product scheduling at all," he'll still be working on stuff. A lot of that stuff just happens to be modding. [Via Big Download]
Joystiq interview: Demigod, Sins, and the death of PC gaming
With publisher Stardock's rise the last couple of years and the announcement that it'll be publishing Gas Powered Games' next title, Demigod, it was time catch up with the two companies. We spoke with Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell and Gas Powered Games' founder Chris Taylor and asked some niggling questions on our minds ... and fired a few total shots in the dark which yielded results (like Demigod on consoles?). Find out more about Stardock and why Gas Powered Games decided to hook up with the little-publisher-that-could for its next title in our interview.OK, let's get right into it, what's Demigod?Chris Taylor - Demigod is a frantic team-based action game with RPG and RTS elements mixed in. If that doesn't sound familiar, it's because we're sort of inventing a new style of hybrid gameplay. The player selects a Demigod, and fights for a place in the pantheon of Gods in these incredible arenas. Each battle puts the player in command of either an Assassin Demigod, or General Demigod. These two types gives the player a choice of whether they command just the single Demigod, an Assassin, or whether they take command over every single unit in the game, like a traditional RTS, a General. %Gallery-19979%
