Shack: Are the Demigods still broken into the Generals and Assassins categories? Where the Generals command units, and the Assassins are more straight combat?

Brad Wardell: Yep. And we don't have Generals in this beta. Basically what we want to do is--a lot of games, they ship and then they discover, oh, they don't work on ATI cards or whatever. That's the point of this particular beta: how are we doing on performance? Because it uses the Supreme Commander engine, but we've made a requirement that it has to run on low-end hardware, much lower than Supreme Commander did.

Shack: Just to make sure--you won't be supporting modding online, correct?

Brad Wardell: Yeah, we're not going to allow--because the game's so competitive online, you're not going to be able to use your mods in a multiplayer game. Which is kind of obvious in a way. If I create myself a mod that's going to make my guy better, that's probably not something you want to encourage.

But in the single-player game, we're not going to stop people from doing whatever. But the game's not going to include a map editor, because the maps in Demigod are arenas, and they're literally designed in 3D Studio. There's no map editor per se.

Shack: So how is work progressing on Stardock's fantasy/strategy game?

Brad Wardell: That's the one most of our developers are on. It's pretty far along, it's actually been in development for a while. We have two people working on Demigod right now, actually three if you count network. But the rest of the development team is on the fantasy strategy game.

Concept Board for Stardock's Upcoming Fantasy Title

Shack: Can you talk about it at all?

Brad Wardell: Sure. We're going to be formally announcing it--the team promises me in November, which means I can't promise that. But it's a turn-based fantasy strategy game. It's essentially--imagine Civilization with magic, in terms of general, broad play style. I mean, it's a lot more than that, because I'm a Civ fanatic--no pun intended, great site--but there's a really good mod for Civilization IV that lets you do magic and stuff. Obviously it's a lot more than just Civ with magic.

It has tactical battles. It has multiplayer. Modding is integrated into the game. I mean users can actually submit--I wish we had gotten this game out sooner, because it's going to seem like a Spore rip-off. I mean you can literally add in your own stuff--it goes into the game universe.

Shack: Spore didn't exactly invent that concept.

Brad Wardell: Yeah, but people are gonna say it's Spore-like, which I guess is good because it explains it. I mean people have already started talking about the Impulse store like it's the Apple app-store for Windows. But we're like, "Urggh, but we had it first." But in five years the Apple people will be saying how we ripped them off.

Shack: So November then?

Brad Wardell: That's when we should be announcing. It won't be out. The beta will start early next year, probably in the spring. And then it will come out basically when we're all happy with it. And it's going to be a public beta, so it's essentially [going to be released] when everyone thinks it's really good.

Shack: Thanks for talking with us Brad.