Shack: Are there studies on piracy that you guys refer to? Are there any numbers you can point to when you're debating this issue?

Brad Wardell: Well when we debate it, we know--we certainly have the hardware specs of people who play our games. Just as Valve's Steam has the hardware specs of people who play their games, and that's a pretty large sample.

And so if you go and just use--and let's just use Steam, because they're a competitor of Impulse, so clearly I'm not biased in their favor. So let's use their stats, and then look at the systems that they have, and say, "How many people can literally run these games that come out, based on those stats?"

As an example, Valve has been very successful with Steam. They've got 15 million users, right? So after three years, 15 million users, and the hardware requirements to run Counter-Strike are nothing. Wouldn't that say to you then that your best case scenario on a PC game would be 15 million users right now, by definition? And if you're just using those stats, how many of them could potentially play some of these super high-end games that are complaining about sales?

And then you figure out what percentage of those people are likely to have actually bought it? Because you're obviously not going to get 100% penetration. Remember the old business plan argument that, if I can get 1% of such-and-such market I'm doing great? 1% of 15 million is 100,000 people.

Shack: There are a lot of multi-platform ports that will hit the PC and require Xbox 360-level hardware. What would you say to publishers who are trying to stay competitive in the PC market while still serving the consoles? For instance, EA canceled many of its PC sports games this year.

Brad Wardell: Part of the problem is you really have to make the right game for the right platform. We make PC games because the PC is the best platform for the game we like to make. But if I was making a sports game I wouldn't even consider the PC, and it has nothing to do with piracy--it has to do with the controller. I know that my players are going to have this controller, and it's going to work, and I know they're all going to have relatively equal hardware specifications.

But the example I usually hear is that a game comes out for the PC, and on the console it sold five gazillion copies, but on the PC it only sold a tiny number. Well first of all, if piracy was the cause of it, if piracy is so rampant on the PC, then why are the console numbers still high? If game X comes out for Xbox 360 and the PC, and piracy is the scourge, then why wouldn't it also affect the Xbox 360 sales? I mean, what's the percentage of Xbox 360 owners that don't own a PC? So that begs the question, I mean you can do a Shack survey: how many Xbox 360 owners do not own a decent PC?

The second question is, how many of those Xbox 360 purchasers bought it because they knew it would work? They could install it, they could put the DVD in and it's going to work. Whereas my friend who got Oblivion, he didn't even consider the PC version because he didn't know it could work on his computer and he didn't have time to mess with it.

Shack: So would you say the future of the PC development is a lineup of games solely developed with the PC in mind?

Brad Wardell: Actually I wouldn't. Well, I think it will become that way if we don't clean up our act as an industry. If we don't create the same gaming environment that you already have on the consoles, where someone can go to the store and have some confidence that it's going to work on their machine, then that's going to happen.

For example, Intel did not do us any favors with those embedded video cards that made a lot of games not work right. I mean, one of the concepts behind Impulse--a lot of people look at Impulse and say, "Isn't that just Steam?" And it's like, well, no, it starts out similar to Steam, but it really is a platform. I mean our whole company objective with Impulse--and the Gamer's Bill of Rights is related to it--is to provide a standardized platform, not just for us but for everybody. And they're not tied to Impulse, but we just want to provide these services that make the PC gaming experience better.

Impulse has video card updating built into it. So if you get Demigod, the Demigod beta for example--I had the default Vista drivers on my own box, I'm ashamed to say. It's a relatively new install, but it had literally 2006-era drivers. So I load up Demigod and it has graphical corruption. So first of all, that's a strike against the PC game experience right there, right? If I had a Demigod for the console, it's just going to work.

Impulse at least takes the first step of letting me update my drivers within Impulse, which is nice. Obviously the next step is for it to automatically update my drivers, which we have to formalize our agreements with Nvidia and ATI to get that going. That's not in yet--that's the long term.

But to speak to your question, if we don't want the PC to be a niche game platform, then we have to clean up our act. We've got to make the PC experience better. Period.

Come back tomorrow for part two of the interview, in which Wardell and I discuss Stardock and Gas Powered Games' upcoming title Demigod, as well as his company's mysterious 4X fantasy title.