One of my idols is Brad Wardell because he seems to really understand the economic underpinnings of computer game development. This is a rare skill, the lack of which has doomed many promising projects. While Stardock's resources may be growing, and they certainly have taken some risks in the market, this is not a smart risk and would just leech resources from projects that clearly would have a greater chance of success. While the major companies in this industry experience lukewarm profits due to pumping out an endless stream of franchise rehashesm, Stardock has been working mostly on innovative turn-based games. These have unfortunately become "niche" games as the major American producers have been dumbing down their products over the last ten years in an attempt to capture the "Casual" market (which they apparently think is dumber). I am hoping Stardock's success will cause turn-based gaming to return to the mainstream.
Tabula Rasa was a game full of promise and had some really great ideas. Long-term, however, I think that MMOG's need to encourage interaction to maintain their player base. Doing the same content over and over again with a few friends is not enough. I personally am a strong proponent of a strong virtual economy within MMOG's to encourage interaction and to keep players sucked in. My theory on WoW's longevity is that while it shipped with a weak economy, it did have a well designed Auction House. The player base (and farmers) got so involved with the Auction House that a whole economy quickly evolved which the Blizzard staff were astute enough to encourage. They did many things wrong, but they did enough things right that the economy survived and people got sucked in by it. TR and DDO are both games with wonderful gameplay but both shipped with zippo economy and so players run through the existing content and get bored. The next WoW or Eve will be successful not because of graphics or raid content, but because the game was built ON a virtual economy, instead of the virtual economy being slapped on like a bandaid at the last moment.
