OK. All you StarDock revolutionaries, it is time to act!
Edge has announced this year's Game Industry Hero nominations for the top 25 people in the industry. Consequently Brad "Frogboy" Wardell, President of StarDock needs YOU!
The Edge editorial staff will select the wins based largely on submissions from the gaming community. To the best of my knowledge I believe this is the third year Edge will be doing this and it gets more fanfare each year. Think of it as the people's choice awards for the industry. If you think all the stuff SD does for gamers beyond merely making games then now is your chance to speak up.
As incentive for people to get their fingers moving on keyboards drafting their nomination Edge is giving away prizes! For more information and to submit your nomination follow the link.
This is the PERFECT year for this nomination for Frogboy because of his efforts to develop the Gamers Bill of Rights (GBR). It is also the "breakout" year for SD as well with the widely acclaimed success Sins and a partnership with GPG for DemiGod, a massive update for Galactic Civilizations II, the timely - truly well crafted Political Machine, establishment of Impulse and the announcement of Elemental as well as all of the other offering SD brings to the table for gamers and PC users alike.
Remember boys and girls: A vote for the Frog is a vote against DRM and oppressive business practices. It is also a vote for true value and respect for gamers! People should make campaign images for Frogboy and post them in different communities on-line to spread the word!!!
Gamers and PC users need a real hero now and as far as I can tell Frogboy is the only one that is hopping ready for the job!
You want it, you got it.
You might want to edit the post and let everyone know/remind them that frogboy=Brad Wardell, chief executive of Stardock.
Sweet! Please tell at least 10 other friends and get them to submit nominations. The nomination can be as little as a few sentences. Something on the order of:
"I think Brad "Frogboy" Wardell, President of StarDock Entertainment deserves to be the Game Industry Hero (GIH) because his business practices and development policies since founding his company, have been very customer friendly and market enlargement oriented. Consequently he builds very positive relationship with gamers around the globe while promoting the industry - very much like we expect from a superhero; plus he is the Frogboy! Need I say more?"
See short and sweet. It gets the job done.
What? You mean everyone HERE does not know Frogboy's secret identity? The humanity of it! Done.
All hail the Frog!
Hey all,I thought it was important to have info about DRM and update stances which I think are so importatn. Here is my letter, feel free to cut and paste if needed:
@Trigeminal - Thanks that should also help.
BTW: The image thing is taken care of already.
My nomination text:
Over the years Brad Wardell at Stardock has constantly bucked trends to produce games by gamers for gamers. He's never treated his customers like criminals. And now, this year, with the Gamer's Bill of Rights he's making a stand and an effort to improve the industry as a whole. With the launch of Impulse he's putting his money where his mouth is. The practice of providing continuous updates as a means of encouraging purchase of Stardock games discourages piracy and rewards users.
Aloha! I think Brad "Frogboy" Wardell, President of StarDock Entertainment deserves to be the Game Industry Hero (GIH) because his business practices and development policies since founding his company, have been very customer friendly and market enlargement oriented. Consequently he builds very positive relationship with gamers around the globe while promoting the industry - very much like we expect from a superhero. He also puts his money where his mouth is; given his company is not public and every dollar he spends in out of his pocket and he has been doing so for nearly 20 years now. Simply put he believes in the idea of games made by gamers for gamers.The company motto should be: customers first, profits second, service always! This year has been a banner year for Stardock and Frogboy because of his efforts to develop the Gamers Bill of Rights (GBR), the widely acclaimed success Sins of a Solar Empire and a partnership with GPG for DemiGod, a massive update for Galactic Civilizations II, the timely - truly well crafted Political Machine, establishment of Impulse and the announcement of Elemental as well as all of the other offering SD brings to the table for gamers and PC users alike. Additionally he is the Frogboy! Need I say more?" Spartan
Aloha!
I think Brad "Frogboy" Wardell, President of StarDock Entertainment deserves to be the Game Industry Hero (GIH) because his business practices and development policies since founding his company, have been very customer friendly and market enlargement oriented. Consequently he builds very positive relationship with gamers around the globe while promoting the industry - very much like we expect from a superhero.
He also puts his money where his mouth is; given his company is not public and every dollar he spends in out of his pocket and he has been doing so for nearly 20 years now. Simply put he believes in the idea of games made by gamers for gamers.The company motto should be: customers first, profits second, service always!
This year has been a banner year for Stardock and Frogboy because of his efforts to develop the Gamers Bill of Rights (GBR), the widely acclaimed success Sins of a Solar Empire and a partnership with GPG for DemiGod, a massive update for Galactic Civilizations II, the timely - truly well crafted Political Machine, establishment of Impulse and the announcement of Elemental as well as all of the other offering SD brings to the table for gamers and PC users alike. Additionally he is the Frogboy! Need I say more?"
Spartan
As much as Frogboy deserves the nomination, so do others. Let's not forget them My nomination list, without text for now:
Stardock -
Brad Wardell, Brian Clair, Seabass (as soon as I figure out his real name). Need to figure out who was the project lead for Impulse. I know it was done by Stardock's .NET team, but someone's got to lead it
Ironclad -
Blair Fraser, Craig Fraser, Jamie Seward.
--
I think it's a bit unfair to Ironclad to attach the success of Sins to Brad. Stardock published it of course, but it's a hit because of how it was made, after all
@Annatar - I thought Frogboy worked on the AI and that SD was fully part of the dev team since the get-go. Could I have been delusional all this time?
Anyway, you are correct there are several other deserving people involved. It is as I stated in the subtitle you can name up 25. I just figured for forum post purposes it would be best to select a figurehead and spiritual leader aka Frogboy and make a post in the two most appropriate forums that cover all of the SD system with regards to gaming.
There of course, was no intent of casting dispersions on others who have contributed greatly to the products and community we all enjoy.
Maybe you should start a nomination thread on one of the Sins only fourms. I already have two threads going and I dont want to look like a spammer and you are the karma king there (for now).
BTW: You should be able to get all the info you need on the MVP side.
Here's my submission:
I nominate Brad "Frogboy" Wardell, president of Stardock. When other gaming companies began destroying PC gaming by consolizing them, Wardell's distribution company released polished, high-quality, PC-only games such as Galactic Civilizations II and the excellent strategy game-of-the-year Sins of a Solar Empire. When other gaming companies inconvenienced purchasers with nasty DRM protection, Stardock eschewed add burdensome DRM crap.Thus, I am happy to nominate Brad "Frogboy" Wardell and hope that he receives the recognition he deserves.
I just sent them my nomination for our mr. frogboy wardell.
I feel his gamer bill-o-rights and DRM free policy is not only raising the bar for the gaming industry, but multimedia in general. Congrats! I hope you win.
Did I mention I think stardock games rock
Mostly The Stardock dev team had no involvement in Sins' development. I think I remember at one point Brad did say he offered some AI/code suggestions, but I don't think even he actually worked on the code.
I just figured that there are always those folks not in the public eye do do a lot of important work, as well Seabass is the like the epitome of good customer service (something Stardock is well known for). Brian (Yarlen) is the one who approached IC about the publishing deal with Sins, and he's the one who finally clubbed a European publisher enough to take on Sins in Europe. The Impulse lead dev obviously for the very ambitious (and so far pretty damn good) project that's aiming to be more than just another way to buy a game.
On the IC side, obviously the Fraser brothers for founding the company and for proving that sometimes the underdog can win, and win big Sins was made on what, $1 million or so? And it's better than so many games the bigname companies dump millions and millions into. Jamie's nomination has a bunch of back story to it so it'd take a long time to explain, but in a snippit: it's very rare for a developer to spend time integrating new code into the game to help track an issue that they haven't been able to reproduce for half a year,but he did because some folks on the forum posted about it.
Gotta spread the love around, so to speak, you know?
@Annatar - No doubt.
Maybe SD & IC should make a news post about the nominations and post bios on everyone as I'm sure few people really know all the particulars.
I also nominated Seabass, Kyro and Yarlen but given this thread is about Frogboy it did not seem appropriate to post the nominations here.
I started to work on one for Zubaz but the professional troll element is still a little rough yet. I have to revisit it tomorrow.
I have not had time yet to write up nominations for the IC side of the house yet however. It is already 3:00AM here and I'm buring sleep now.
Done and done
@Spartan: I made a thread on the Sins forums for IC nominations
He's got my vote.
All Hail the frog lord!
From what I've seen is Brad worked a great deal on Sins in terms of game design. I don't think he wrote any code but the game would have been very different without Brad's involvement.
That's what happens when I try to write hurriedly We all know that Stardock gets their hands dirty on the design side, but I was just saying that the dev teams weren't fully integrated in the sense that Spartan meant it (working on code, assets, etc).
Ultimately, though, a lot of people were involved in the design, and the game would have been different without any of them
There were quite a few Stardockians that worked on Sins actually. Several artists provided and/or tweaked assets. Brad and Yarlen (and others) significantly shaped the game that shipped.
Check the credits in the manual to see a list of all the Stardock employees that contributed enough to have their name put there. That many people do not get credited just because Stardock was the publisher.
Done and done.My submission:
I nominate Brad "Frogboy" Wardell, President of Stardock. All of Stardock, spawned from the swamp-like lake in Frogboy's backyard, is all-round awesome, and if 'the Frog' don't win, I'll throw rocks at you.
That is all.//Varenus von Luckmann II of Scandinavia and all associated territories.
Nominated!!!
Don't forget to join the "I love Frogboy" group on Facebook too!!!
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