If only because pretty much every publisher stardock has used in the past has disappeared, gone bankrupt, or otherwise shafted them out of their royalties... IIRC they are only able to self-publish now due to pre-order income and profits from their other products. But hopefully now that they'll be guaranteed their due profit from GC2, things will really start to pick up.

I wonder if someone internally will comment on this... It seems that a key part of Stardock's ability to survive is the fact that the majority of its revenue streams come from non-game applications, particularly productivity-type applications, which seems to me to be cheaper to produce and returns a more stable, consistent revenue stream. (This is pure conjecture on my part; I'm not in the industry.)

If this is the case, then maybe this is the model that new indie game developers can take in the future. From a portfolio management perspective, you have to have some stable assets and a few risky investments. If all you do is develop games, then you're going to focus on franchises, sequels, and category killers (a la EA). Maybe the way an indie game developer can get up and running is by building out a portfolio of stable assets outside of gaming before betting the farm on a truly innovative game idea.

Crossing over to non-game product lines also gives you a distribution channel outside of traditional publishers. Direct sales online is nice, and is made possible by the infrastructure it has in place selling productivity software.

sounds like a smart way to do it the only promblem is that now those indi game developers have to try and figure out how to design a software product that lots of people or businesses need, after they did nothign but games for years. i think that it would probably be a very hard transition to say the least.

amaevis, you are right. Stardock could not make the games that it does if it were subject to the pressures faced by most game companies. Games can make significant amounts of money, but few do, and it is very "lumpy" and delayed income which can result in layoffs due to cashflow problems. The applications side ensures that this does not happen at Stardock.

Our first objective with GalCiv 2 was to make a great game. It will be nice if it made a profit as well (and it should), but as shown by the release of the original GalCiv we'd rather wait a while and take a hit on sales than compromise the quality of the game. After all, we hate it when a game company releases stuff too early just as much as everyone else.

Thanks, GreenReaper, for the reply. Was this product mix originally intended for Stardock? If so, it shows incredible vision and foresight in an industry that lacks both.

Civ3Fanatic, most existing indie developers are dead. New companies have to find a new way. There's been a lot of hand-wringing online about the current state of the games industry, especially the relationship between developers and publishers, and the cost of meeting increasing market expectations for multimedia assets, but not much mention of the most basic fiscal facts: steady cash flow and portfolio mix. Stardock's structure should definitely be highlighted as an example for new companies to follow, because no one is talking about this (at least, I haven't run across it in my web travels).

Maybe it should get its own manifesto. It would be a great boon to the gaming community if a simple adjustment to business models could breathe new life into indie development.

Stardock could be described as a hobby that just got out of hand.

We just want to make cool stuff and we're fortunate enough that people like our stuff enough to keep us in business.

The application side is absolutely our ace in the hole.  Stardock's best month ever in terms of both gross revenue and profitability was this past December.  So even when we're in the midst of making a game, the company is in very good financial shape.

The effect of that creates some interesting situations when dealing with publishers, distributors, retailers, etc.  We can wait until we're happy with a game.  As some gamma testers pointed out, we could have probably gone to manufacturing a couple weeks earlier and not been an issue.  The last two weeks of testing were largely tweaking playability, balancing the campaign, etc.  I can't think of any "killer" code bugs that were fixed in the last few weeks of development.

So I'm not sure if the original poster's goal is applicable generally.  Most game developers make just games.  By having both, we have the luxury of being able to do the whole thing -- develop and publish and do it all without it causing a financial strain.

As much as we love GalCiv II and hope it is a big success, even if the game didn't sell a single copy, Stardock would still be in solid financial ground.  

The future of our game development obviously will depend on how well the game does.  Every sale counts.  But people who buy it don't have to fear about us not being able to support it. Our level of support on the game isn't tied to its sales level.

Congrats on the banner month! I hate it when a developer releases an awesome game and then disappears, discontinuing support. We all want a happy and healthy Stardock.

I'm a data warehousing and business intelligence programmer, and I've always wanted to launch my own business. I would love to go into game development, especially strategy game development, and I think I could sustain myself with productivity apps and widgets.

I have a few questions about staffing. If these are trade secrets, just tell me to buzz off and I completely understand.

Are there specialized programmers that simply cannot be reassigned to a non-game development project when a game goes gold? I would imagine that artists and graphic designers would be difficult to use on a non-game project. What do you do? Do you simply carry them on your P/L? Or is there enough expansion content to create that this isn't a problem? Do you contract this talent?

Also, it seems that Stardock is heavily geared towards Windows programming. For BI, most OS-specific programming would be non-Windows (UNIX, MVS). How much Windows-specific talent is required to do a game like GalCiv II? If I were to launch a BI company, Windows talent would have to be viewed as game development staff as well. That's probably one less point of flexibility that Stardock has.

Wow, those are all very good questions that even I am curious about, and I am only 16 with no plans to start any sort of business.