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]
Reader Comments (9)
Posted: Mar 20th 2010 4:05AM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said
What a terrible name for an engine.
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Posted: Mar 20th 2010 9:56AM Funkmaster General said
I like it. A lot of engine names seem to be so serious. A little ridiculousness is nice.
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Posted: Mar 20th 2010 6:27PM (Unverified) said
Note that this is also the guy who boycotted UPS when they, in turn, boycotted Fox News. I'm also nonplussed by how they act all high and mighty and anti-DRM, and yet they're allowing Ubisoft's new "connection required" crap on Impulse games.
I still hope Elemental is awesome, as I loved Master of Magic, but it'll take more than a love for modding to make me a fan of a Fox News supporter who caves on his stated values the second a major game publisher waves a giant check.
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I still hope Elemental is awesome, as I loved Master of Magic, but it'll take more than a love for modding to make me a fan of a Fox News supporter who caves on his stated values the second a major game publisher waves a giant check.
Posted: Mar 20th 2010 7:50PM Gumbercules said
MWoody,
I don't think Stardock taking Ubisoft's giant check to the bank is a bad thing if it helps them make more great, non-intrusive games (like, hopefully, Elemental) for me to buy instead of Ubisoft products.
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I don't think Stardock taking Ubisoft's giant check to the bank is a bad thing if it helps them make more great, non-intrusive games (like, hopefully, Elemental) for me to buy instead of Ubisoft products.
Posted: Mar 20th 2010 11:35PM DomoBraden said
Wow, 80+ hours a week... that's dedication, or even maybe obsession. I wish I had that sort of drive.
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