Jive Magazine has reviewed the final release of The Political Machine. Their verdict? 5 out of 5. They lauded it as being both a good strategy game as well as having enough inside track political detail to satisfy political junkies. The Political Machine will be released next week in stores across North America as well as on TotalGaming.net [Read Review] [read more]
8/5/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Theme Manager from Stardock is rapidly emerging as the premiere tool for putting a corporate message on the desktops of millions of PC users. “Theme Manager is emerging as the preeminent desktop marketing tool, used by some of the largest companies in the world,” said Larry Kuperman, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Stardock. “While Theme Manager is a relatively new solution, we have seen our client list grow to include companies such as ATI, Alienware, Marvel Comics, NVIDIA Corporati... [read more]
8/2/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
The official release date for The Political Machine is August 10. Just a little over a week from today. Stardock & Ubi Soft are also working on the "BonusPak" (1.01) for release at the same time. For those who are familiar with Stardock games, Stardock attempts to release a free update to its games that add new features as a way of thanking users for buying its game. These updates aren't bug fixes (i.e. while there are "bugs" fixed in the update, it's unlikely anyone will run ... [read more]
8/2/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Stardock in conjunction with Marvel and FIS has released the Spider-Man Desktop. This new suite has been in development for months by a design team at SkinPlant. Under license from Marvel, the suite includes the software necessary to change the look and feel of your Windows GUI. The entire suite is only $8.95 (there is a discount for Object Desktop users). Check it out for yourself at https://www.stardock.com/products/themes/spider-man/ [read more]
7/27/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Visit JoeUser.com to get a first glimpse of all the cool things being done with Object Desktop this Fall. Object Desktop is a suite of programs that can completely customize the look, feel, and functionality of Microsoft Windows. It''s like having a future version of Windows today. And there are some really cool things in store for the rest of this year. Check it out here: Link [read more]
7/26/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Visit JoeUser.com to get a first glimpse of all the cool things being done with Object Desktop this Fall. Object Desktop is a suite of programs that can completely customize the look, feel, and functionality of Microsoft Windows. It''s like having a future version of Windows today. And there are some really cool things in store for the rest of this year. Check it out here: https://www.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=22485 [read more]
7/26/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Stardock has continued to enhance its award winning PC strategy game with the new version, 1.21 now being available via Stardock Central (http://www.sdcentral.net). The new version has some tweaks in it that make it tougher to cheat on the Metaverse (the massively multiplayer virtual universe scoring ladder) along with dozens of tweaks and fixes suggested by or reported by players. To learn more about Galactic Civilizations, visit https://www.galciv.com [read more]
7/22/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Atom Films proudly presents a hilarious satire of Bush and Kerry in a duel. A duel of songs and dancing! Must see: http://www.jibjab.com/ [read more]
7/21/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Livonia MI – July 20, 2004. Stardock Entertainment, best known for its award-winning PC strategy games such as The Political Machine and Galactic Civilizations launched a new gaming network today called TotalGaming.net. TotalGaming.net allows users to purchase PC games and immediately download them individually or as part of a subscription. Users obtain the games through a powerful yet easy to use program called Stardock Central. “This is the closest thing I’ve seen to iTunes for Games,” s... [read more]
7/20/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
AI Kerry and John Kerry don't agree on the VP choice. AI Kerry is only concerned with winning enough electoral votes. It doesn't have to deal with party bosses, public pressure, personal relations, etc. So today John Kerry announced Edwards would be his VP choice. Good idea or bad idea? [read more]
7/6/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Some of you may recall that back in very early May we predicted that Kerry would pick Richard Gephardt as his running mate. Why? Because in The Political Machine simulations, the AI version of John Kerry kept wanting a running mate to win Iowa or Missouri. AI controlled John Kerry realized that he only needed to win one of those two states in the election to essentially wrap up the white house. At the beginning of June we noticed that that the governor of Iowa was a Democrat so we ad... [read more]
7/6/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Some of you may recall that back in very early May we predicted that Kerry would pick Richard Gephardt as his running mate. Why? Because in The Political Machine simulations, the AI version of John Kerry kept wanting a running mate to win Iowa or Missouri. AI controlled John Kerry realized that he only needed to win one of those two states in the election to essentially wrap up the white house. At the beginning of June we noticed that that the governor of Iowa was a Democrat so we added Tom... [read more]
7/6/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Just in time for the holiday weekend is a fresh update to Galactic Civilizations and its expansion pack, Altarian Prophecy. Galactic Civilizations is a space based strategy game in which players must compete against several alien civilizations for control of the galaxy. Fight wars, conduct trade, research technology, negotiate treaties, manage your economy on the path to becoming the leader of the galaxy. The game won several editor''s choice awards in 2003. Altarian Prophecy is the recent... [read more]
7/2/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
New screenshots and game information updates have been made to the Game page. Check them out! https://www.politicalmachine.com/game.asp [read more]
6/18/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
LIVONIA, MI (June 15, 2003) – Independent game studio, Stardock Entertainment, released its expansion pack for the award winning strategy game, Galactic Civilizations. The expansion pack, called Altarian Prophecy, has been in development and testing for some months to get all the features and enhancements put together just right. “Our goal with this expansion pack was not just to add new content to Galactic Civilizations but add in the kinds of features and tools thatwould give the game, ... [read more]
6/16/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
LIVONIA, MI (June 15, 2003) – Independent game studio, Stardock Entertainment, released its expansion pack for the award winning strategy game, Galactic Civilizations. The expansion pack, called Altarian Prophecy, has been in development and testing for some months to get all the features and enhancements put together just right. “Our goal with this expansion pack was not just to add new content to Galactic Civilizations but add in the kinds of features and tools that would give the game, as ... [read more]
6/15/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
The Political Machine is very close to going gold. At that point, it goes off to manufacturing and then to the stores. Ubi Soft, the publisher, plans to have it in stores in between the Democratic and Republican conventions (first couple weeks of August). Not much time until release. [read more]
6/9/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
The Political Machine's statistical model is not poll based. When we designed it, we concluded that since ultimately it's a video game, we should only concern ourselves with the macro-based statistics. That meant not worrying about day to day fluctuations in polls. Instead, the goal was to use data (political party registrations, exit polling, census data, etc.) that was publicly available to get a clear understanding of the people who live in the states. From there, we then look at the... [read more]
6/3/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
The 4th week of the GUI Olympics has been completed. The GUI Olympics is an international user interface design contest featuring many of the best graphics designers from around the world competing in a series of user interface challenges. This week saw the best OS user interface design (using Stardock's WindowBlinds ) and best themed media player skin designed for Nullsoft's Winamp . Visit here for the full results of this week. [read more]
6/2/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Beta 4B of The Political Machine is now up with lots of bugs fixed, play balancing, and more interview questions. PLEASE try this beta out and let us know how it's working for you! We are getting pretty close to going gold so we want to ensure that everything is working. We have done various things to the videos to see if we have improved video compatibility. [read more]
6/2/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
With The Political Machine heading towards its Summer release date, Reuters interviews Stardock's Brad Wardell regarding the game mechanics and why they think this game will be fun for both political junkies and casual players. Full story: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=5327231 [read more]
6/2/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – June 2, 2004 – Ubisoft, one of the world’s leading videogame publishers, today announced that they have signed a deal with Stardock Entertainment to publish The Political Machine , a strategy game where players take on the role of campaign manager for a presidential candidate. Players must raise money, take out advertisements, win endorsements and appear on popular TV news shows to answer tough questions about today’s most pressing issues. &nbs... [read more]
6/2/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
FileFront has conducted a battery of tests to determine the effects that WindowBlinds has on the performance of PC games. The results are pretty interesting and you can see them for yourselves at the FileFront site.Definitely worth checking out. [read more]
5/27/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Stardock has released Beta 4A of The Political Machine to its beta testers. The Political Machine is a strategy game in which players take on the role of campaign manager in the upcoming US Presidential campaign.Users can become beta testers by subscribing to Drengin.net (http://www.drengin.net). Beta 4A provides a host of bug fixes and new content as the game heads towards its "gold" date. [read more]
5/26/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
¡§Only companies that have demonstrated the highest levels of customer service, proven their experience and attained advanced certification receive the designation of Microsoft Gold Certified Partners,¡¨ says Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft Corp. ¡§Today, Microsoft recognizes Stardock for its skills and expertise in providing customer satisfaction with Microsoft products and technology.¡¨¡§We are very proud to have received this cert... [read more]
5/24/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
"Only companies that have demonstrated the highest levels of customer service, proven their experience and attained advanced certification receive the designation of Microsoft Gold Certified Partners,¨ says Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft Corp. "Today, Microsoft recognizes Stardock for its skills and expertise in providing customer satisfaction with Microsoft products and technology.¨ "We are very proud to have received this certifi... [read more]
5/24/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
The beta 4 series will be the last set of public betas of The Political Machine. After that, it'll be on an individual basis based on feedback and such. Hopefully this version corrects any remaining technical glitches. Just a reminder: 1) This game requires DirectX 9 2) It needs a 3D video card with typically 16 megs of RAM or more on it (so some laptops or very old machines may have problems) Remember: At this point, the game is running flawlessly in our internal compatibility l... [read more]
5/20/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
This month's Stardock TV takes a look at the GUI Olympics, widget making, DirectGUI and how to do other really cool things to your Windows desktop. [read more]
5/20/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Link Check out the hand's on preview of The Political Machine... [read more]
5/19/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
The beta 4 series will be the last set of betas prior to release. Users who want to pre-order and beta test the stand-alone game (as opposed to Drengin.net) will only be able to do so for a short amount of time. After we go into release candidates you will have to wait until the game ships to get it. Stardock is about to sign a publishing deal with a major retail publisher which will affect the release date. We expect to go gold near the end of this month but general availability ... [read more]
5/18/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Lots of changes. Hopefully very stable now. Let us know! [read more]
5/15/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
We're still tweaking the algorithms for The Political Machine and for what it's worth, we have put together our first official model prediction of this November's election based on our current variables (which are obviously subject to change). Bush loses to Kerry by between 20 to 40 electoral votes. There are a few reasons we're predicting this. First of all, there really aren't that many toss-up states. The media has states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Washington State and Oregon a... [read more]
5/13/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
A new build is available. In the short time we've had sicne the last beta, we've tried to address as much of the feedback as we can. Please tell us if we're on the right direction and which big trouble spots you see that we need to address. Thanks! [read more]
5/7/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
Blog Navigator is a fully featured Internet article reader that reads in RSS feeds (most major sites have RSS feeds these days) and displays them in a clean interface to make it very easy and fast to read through tons of news. There are other RSS readers out there already, but Blog Navigator has a few features that, when combined, make it really stand out: 1) It automatically pre-fetches articles. That is, it caches articles you haven't read yet so that when you get to them, it's already t... [read more]
5/5/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Blog Navigator is a fully featured Internet article reader that reads in RSS feeds (most major sites have RSS feeds these days) and displays them in a clean interface to make it very easy and fast to read through tons of news.There are other RSS readers out there already, but Blog Navigator has a few features that, when combined, make it really stand out:1) It automatically pre-fetches articles. That is, it caches articles you haven't read yet so that when you get to them, it's already there. An... [read more]
5/5/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
We are really looking for more feedback on the beta. We know hundreds of you have the beta, but we're not getting a lot of feedback. Especially in specifics. We will be letting those who pre-ordered the game on its own (as opposed to getting Drengin) start getting it next week. But in the meantime, we really need your help in this. The game is going gold and we're in crunch time now (the amount we can do in 4 weeks you'll be amazed by). What things would you like to see that can be ... [read more]
4/30/2004 By Frogboy in Political Machine News
A new beta of The Political Machine is available for Drengin.net subscribers via Stardock Central. You will need to delete your *.DDS files to make use of the new graphics (in the \gfx graphics). Multiplayer works! Join #PolMachine on Stardock Central's chat to get games together. Let us know what problems you run into in the game forum on PoliticalMachine.com (or in this news item). New features such as exit polling, candidate creation, and lots of other goodies are now in. Have fun! [read more]
4/29/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
Won't you be my neighbor? [read more]
4/27/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
testing... [read more]
4/27/2004 By Stardock Central in Political Machine News
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