So I turn 50 this year.
It's an arbitrary milestone but such milestones gives us an opportunity to take stock in our lives.
I wrote on my Facebook page that I get frustrated being a failure. My friends and family were quite worried and I should have given more context to my feelings which is what I am going to do here.
We all have certain personality traits that can get in the way of accomplishing what we want. Maybe you just want to lose some weight and you just can't stick to a diet. It makes you feel bad. You might feel like a failure. Maybe you have a great family. Lots of friends. But having goals that you fail to meet because of your own character shortcomings is extremely frustrating. That's where my head lives a lot of the time.
People who know much about me know I have a lot of "haters". That sort of thing doesn't bother me because they don't really hate me. They hate a caricature of me. I always joke to my wife "There are so many legitimate reasons to hate me but these people focus on things made up by other people."
What makes me feel like a failure -- what has always made me feel like a failure (going back many years) is that I have 3 gaping personality flaws that prevent me from reaching my potential:
I call it the Barrier of denial.
When you look at someone like Elon Musk, whether you like him or not, it can't be denied he has accomplished great things. Amazing things. And from reading up on him, he clearly does not have the 3 flaws I listed above. Sure, he has other flaws but I don't think people should define success or failure based on how they compare to other people. People should try to be the best person they can be. And it is my failure to do that is what frustrates me.
Let me outline a few examples of what I mean of failure.
Galactic Civilizations for OS/2
I wrote this game while in college. And IBM recommended this guy and his "company" called "Advanced Idea Machines" to publish it at the stores. Now, under the covers, IBM did all the real work to get it at the store. But AIM was actually just this guy, a scammer. And I should have known he was a scammer.
He sent me a bunch of "marketing" shirts for the game with the tagline: "Have you met the nieghbors". Yes, misspelled. That was the moment I was pretty sure that I was being scammed. But I did nothing.
* Cognitive dissonance (IBM recommended him therefore I must be wrong)
* Fear of change (I've already gone this far, I'm sure it'll be OK)
Needless to say I didn't get paid. The game made millions and I saw nothing. Imagine how things might have gone if 1994 era Stardock had millions of dollars to build up rather than $15,000 (that's how much I got selling copies of the "Shipyards" expansion to people via floppy disks over Usenet).
And in my bones, I knew this guy was a scammer.
OS/2 in general
Stardock stuck with the OS/2 market for a long time after it was doomed. For most Stardock customers, we began in 2000 or 2001 with Object Desktop, WindowBlinds, maybe The Corporate Machine game (or later with Sins of a Solar Empire and Fences). But in the 1990s, Stardock was arguably the #1 ISV for OS/2 -- for both utilities and games.
If you walked into a store carrying OS/2 software in 1996 it was mostly our software whether you wanted games or utilities. And yet, I knew OS/2 was doomed in 1996. How? Because I had a bunch of people at IBM calling me telling me that IBM had disbanded the OS/2 team and that I should migrate to Windows immediately. These were colleagues from IBM in Boca Raton and Raleigh who were taking some risk telling me this. And what did I do? Nothing.
* Emotional investment in abstraction (it's just a little bit dead! It's still good! It's still good!)
I was so "into" OS/2. People get behind causes. Look at the people who get emotionally invested in a platform (Steam, PlayStation, XBOX, Linux, Mac, etc.). I get it. I could not admit that the thing I was so into was going to die.
Imagine how things might have gone if I had ported Galactic Civilizations to Windows in 1996 instead of waiting until 2003 when it required a rewrite (because of technical changes). It would have been easy to release GalCiv for Windows NT 4.0 and Object Desktop for Windows in 1996. But I couldn't betray "the cause".
Instead, I waited until I was laying off friends and colleagues at Stardock to limp over to the Windows market in 1999.
And even at that point, we had plenty of OS/2 customers screaming at me that I was greedy or selling out or "betraying" them or whatever. Never become emotionally invested in a platform.
And on it goes
But these are the kinds of mistakes I have continued to make: Knowing a problem and not acting on it due to a flaw whether that be Elemental, MyColors, or canning the Star Control: Origins project in 2017 when its development had gone off the rails (imagine how different recent events would have gone if I had simply killed that project before the drama stuff came up a year later).
For me, feeling like a failure is an expression of frustration that I still can't overcome my personal failings. I've gotten better about these failings but I still find myself not making "the hard decision" because of the flaws I mentioned above.
I'm probably one of the few customers who started using Stardock products with OS/2, and still buy some of them. I bought more of them on OS/2 though. I really only buy the games now, and I keep one low end computer on windows mainly to play Stardock games. The fact that my windows system is a lowly APU makes me thankful that you guys test your products on modest hardware.
By the time you had gone to windows though, I was already multiplatform. I had my OS/2 laptop, a couple of Linux servers and secondary desktops, a BeOS system, and my one Windows desktop. I'm still running half a dozen different systems on my different computers. OS/2 definitely taught me the lesson to not invest everything in one platform. Use each platform for tasks to which it is suited.
If you could freeze time, and design your idealized 'best self', what would this person look like? What would they have achieved and done?
You complain about these personal barriers to your goals without describing the goals themselves (besides delicious boat loads of money). And if money was your interest, then was building quality video games the road to take? For anyone to make money in their industry, there is a system to it. A game to by played. Looking at the wealthy video game developers of the world, do you want to be known for the creation of Fortnite? Or Star Citizen?
You referenced Musk as an example of someone trying to be their best self. First off. No one here has met Musk. No one really knows who he is, what he actually does in his day to achieve his reputation, which for most of us, is the only way he affects us. Second, his money and name came overnigh.. Musk could disappear tomorrow and no one would remember according to the Lindy effect.
"Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers."
Then you have the Sins of a Solar Empire which is thirteen years old, was made on a shoe string budget in comparison, and has a cult following.
These personal flaws bar you from achieving what exactly? And how do you know who you would have become without this mental nagging and self doubt?
Everyone gets 'things' wrong...it's what defines you. The ability to get past the mistakes.
The reason I cannot 'stand' Hamilton in F1 is that everyone defines him as the greatest driver ever. He isn't. He is only the greatest driver to be consistently with the greatest team long enough for records to be had.
The 'school of hard knocks' is what makes real people. Hamilton wagged every day of that.
I think my greatest goal looking to reach 50 was just still being around to reach 50. Everything else was a bonus...
Seriously, I agree with Jafo.
Means 'skipped'...in school terms...truancy .... sometimes I forget what's Aussie slang...
Things that could of been me if I applied myself, and not shared ideas. invented an operating system. invented the more that one processor on the motherboard. invented the ssd drive. invented what I call the polite ram drive. invented a social network similar to Facebook when the email was invented. invented something like lime wire around the same time. invented Netflix around the same time. invented artificial intelligence in the early 90’s
invented a starship/time machine in the early 90’s. made Minecraft in 2002. made fort nite in 2013. made galactic civilizations 3 crusades in 2009. I still have a clone of spore that would make the game rock.
Very well said.
Thanks for sharing Frog.
The dilemma of how to live an authentic life in a world clearly not designed for it is totally real. As is the dilemma of there being very little benefit to having insight into the situation.
From my perspective, I feel like you've done well for yourself and have never been a shitty person. As depressing as this is, this is actually fairly difficult to do, and definitely does not qualify you as a 'failure' - at least in my book.
A central question I always have with respect to life is: "can one live in modern society and also be ethical?" The more I think about it, the more I arrive at the conclusion that the answer must be: "no".
Given all of this, I think you've done just fine.
🥂🥂 Cheers, hopefully you feel better about your 51st than your 50th !! 🥂🥂
-tid242
Hey Brad just wanted to say a few things after seeing your post. Before i begin im The Mad Fermentor on steam.
Recently ive been thinking a bit like looking at what actions people are taking and the possibly outcomes, seeing what choices people older than me have made and making me think more about what i do and say before hand. There is certainly wisdom for younger generations to take onboard simply by observing the choices others have made.
Without knowing your religious views i want to say that the lord god loves you and even if you don't believe there is much after this life whilst your still here on this planet there is always hope that you might fill the void that seems to be persisting in your life. I felt compelled to send this as you did or do seem to be suffering. Usually people only post like this when they are getting low. I also want you to know that i consider Stardock one of the last good PC games companies in existence and apps as well. So many companies have sold out gamers. I love that regularly there's SOSE official games setup, and Gal Civ is strong too not that i play cause i cant do turn based anymore. I think you have quite a sense of humor considering the way things worked out with Paul and Fred, i dunno why people would hate you. I appreciate that during all the turbulence over Starcontrol that instead of closing down the awesome Ur-Quan Masters project you left it to continue if not supported it. I don't think many people would say your not a gamer, which really says it all. Seeing too many companies these days sell out leaving their customers feeling cheated, its not so with Stardock and its not so with you. I hope Stardock continue to keep producing top quality games and i greatly look forward to the next chapter in SOSE. Onwards and forwards with better and greater
Bless ya.
Take care of yourself and your own people Frogboy, sorry to hear you are feeling like crap, going through some serious health issues, both with myself and my Beloved Wife, so it has to be one foot in front of the other and make positive plans, not the big stuff, little easily achieved things to build both Mind and Body, become stronger, none of us know what the future brings but Tomorrow has not happened yet, best wishes to you.
I've long suspected maturity is not born of knowledge, emotions, or even habits. It comes from self-awareness. When we think "that's it, I'm grown up" is exactly the point at which we do become the eternal child/fool.
That is to say so long as a person is aware and able to admit to their ignorances, emotional instabilies or bad habits then you continue to mature and grow. Most people seem to stop growing at some point usually due to their own perceived success or another quirk of personality or circumstance.
As bad as it might sound, I believe the fact that you are able to say these things, publicly at that, is proof that you are continuing to grow. That even approaching 50 you're not the same person you were even 5 years ago.
Well, at least that's how I look at things when I think about mistakes I repeat or just generally what an idiot I've been in the past. I know I'll continue to be an idiot too, just hopefully a little less idiotic as the years go.
When this thread popped up again I thought 'here we go again....spam" ....but it wasn't...
Never count your fish.
I have felt that I have seen a bit of a philosophical shift in the way Stardock is tackling Windows 11. It is a good change. For example, Start 11 made a pretty big change by evolving the start button themes. It would have been easy to have stayed with just Windows 7 theme like most start button replacements are doing. But, the new windows 10 and EVEN 11 themes show a shift in direction. I think it is great that Stardock is moving away from its Windows 7 comfort zone and kind of embracing Windows 11.
I am not sure you are getting enough credit because it really challenges the fallacy that fears change. I have been told that change is the only constant in the universe. So to be successful you kind of have to go with it.
I am glad to see you facing your fallacies that have held you behind in the past, and this is a great piece for a CEO to post.
From failure which can feel like death, I know we have all experienced this, can a phoenix rise from the ashes and still eventually find success in life.
Ha, I must admit I think I missed this one on the first round. It's always an important reminder that we're only human though.
Its not wrong to assess the choices you've made in life and see where you went wrong, truthfully you can learn alot by looking at that objectively. Certainly something that comes with age - wisdom.
I think Brad's post will serve to help others whom might be looking at getting into the video games industry, its always useful for veterans to share past experiences. I loved reading about the development of an ip called Dark Sun and the company that developed it try to make a third game in the series which was an mmo of sorts and this was way back in the stone age of pc gaming sometime in the 90's possibly before games like Everquest. Ultimately the game was a failer but it was fascinating to read about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sun_Online:_Crimson_Sands
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