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Stardock's Wardell Details Impulse Reactor Specifics
by Chris Remo [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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March 16, 2010
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As developers look for cost-effective ways to give PC games value-added features like achievements and social integration, as well as combat piracy, the main contenders have been Valve's Steamworks suite and Microsoft's Xbox Live-like Games for Windows Live.
But now Stardock, the PC-only publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire and developer of the upcoming Elemental: War of Magic, is tossing its hat into the ring with Impulse Reactor -- and it believes the ease and customization features it offers will set it apart from its competitors.
"What we're trying to do with Impulse Reactor is come up with a system where we inject ourselves into the game to allow the developer to have all kinds of cool features in there, but they don't have to include a client," Stardock CEO Brad Wardell told Gamasutra in an interview.
"Historically, integrating these libraries into your game has involved one of two ways," he said. "You either get the SDK and integrate the source code into your game, or you get the SDK and make calls to an external client. One's the GameSpy way, and one is the Steamworks way."
"When you're taking a lot of source code into your game, you can customize a lot, and that's nice, but the implementation time can be a lot longer," Wardell continued. "The other way is easier to implement, since you can use the Steamworks API to call Steam and they show overlays in your game. The downside of that is that you have to actually bundle the Steam client into your game."
Wardell sees Impulse Reactor as offering the best of both worlds. It has the ease of integration of a client-based system, but developers don't have to bundle the Impulse client with their game. He says Stardock decided on this approach based on two primary factors: Stardock's historical experience with enterprise-level software, and direct feedback from video game publishers.
"The foundation of Stardock's success in the enterprise space is that we've developed technology to take our code and insert it into other process at a fundamental level," he said. "The most trivial example of this is to skin third-party programs by injecting new drawing code into the application." Stardock currently uses that technique in a number of its non-game offerings, including the Windows customization tool WindowBlinds.
Also of key importance to Stardock publishing partners, Wardell said, is an open system that doesn't tie games to a particular service. "Our publishers came to us and said, 'We're glad you don't require a client, but there's one other issue. Different distributors might object to our developers using Impulse Reactor if they have to create an Impulse account,'" he recalled.
Therefore, Impulse Reactor developers can effectively make the Impulse integration completely transparent. Users don't need to sign in with an Impulse account; they can alternatively access the Impulse-offered social features using an existing Facebook, Windows Live, OpenID, or Twitter accounts.
"You still store a piece of data on our database, but all the identifying information is stored by Facebook or any of these other services that the player already uses," Wardell said. "We don't end up with any contact information. We don't get the user's email address or anything like that."
Developers can Impulse Reactor to whatever degree of depth they choose, from including its basic functions as-is, to replacing the textures that cover the user interface, to completely redesigning the UI to meld seamlessly into the game's style.
At the basic level, a simple Impulse Reactor implementation can include elements like a friends list, chat, a player avatar, and achievements -- the latter of which can be managed by developers using a simple web interface -- but deeper integration allows access to features like Stardock's multiplayer infrastructure.
Elemental, a turn-based fantasy strategy-RPG, uses Impulse matchmaking to sort players into skill-based gold, silver, and bronze ladders. "Coincidentally, very similar to what Battle.net is doing with StarCraft II," Wardell remarked. "Maybe it's because the Olympics were coming up."
The battle for developer support is heating up between service providers. In the most recent turn of events, Epic Games announced it would provide integrated Steamworks support within Unreal Engine 3.
Like Steamworks and Games for Windows Live, Impulse Reactor is offered free to developers -- but unlike those services, it doesn't require users to maintain accounts on those systems. So what's in it for Stardock?
"The requirement is that the developer has to put their title on Impulse, non-exclusively, and the benefit to us is that they're not using Steamworks," Wardell said. "When someone uses Steamworks, that leads to everything being on Steam, and that's a non-ideal situation for us."
"If they spend $10 million making a PC game, they don't want an SDK to come in and steal their experience," he went on. "This is something we heard loud and clear about Games for Windows Live in particular -- 'I have my game, and all of a sudden here's this bubbly interface.' Hey, Games for Windows: you didn't spend the money to make the game; don't hijack the experience as if it's somehow your game. And that applies to anyone who tries to inject their experience into the user's face."
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My (and others) needs for many PC games are related to alllowing mods, especially for the aesthetics of the game, so that we can make our experience appeal to us rather than be forced to accept what a developer thinks is important or appealing. This is why companies like Bethesda have such an active user community, and are so successful as a company.
Companies need to keep us in mind while they are attempting to appeal to various market segments. ^_^
With Steam and Xbox Live, there's a guaranteed audience for your games due to all the AAA games that are already on that service. This draws large numbers of the game buying public.
Impulse only has a lot of lower rung indie games, which means your game just won't be put in front of the same number of eyeballs as the major digital distribution services like Steam, Xbox Live, D2D, etc. On top of that from talking to other game developers and reading about it online, Impulse doesn't seem to have a great reputation either.
Also I don't think the ability to "skin" that interface is a huge draw and it's not really even a good thing for the end user. The great thing about having a consistent interface is that there are no surprises and the user can rely on things just working and being predictable looking. It's important to remember that these parts aren't a game component, they're a community feature. Skinning is going to break that contract and ultimately make things harder for the gamer.
I think they need to focus more on being genuinely creative with their service and offer new features and ideas that gamers really want, not just being a clone of what Steam does with some fluff tacked on.
That is not true. Impulse carries hundreds of games from 2K Games, Activision, Ubisoft, Capcom, Electronic Arts, N3V, 1C, Paradox Interactive and dozens of other companies from around the world with more coming on literally every day. Impulse is also recognized as have faster downloads than Steam and better customer support overall.
"While I appreciate the competition with Valve's service, Impulse seems to provide a much lower quality service and it doesn't have the draw Steam has in terms of titles."
What do you mean by this? Impulse has most of the same AAA titles as Steam. What do you mean "lower quality of service"? Impulse typically has considerably faster download speeds based on what I have personally seen as well as the fairly regular statements on the Steam forums.
"Impulse only has a lot of lower rung indie games, which means your game just won't be put in front of the same number of eyeballs as the major digital distribution services like Steam, Xbox Live, D2D, etc."
Xbox Live isn't on the PC. You say "etc." without naming them. Implying that Impulse isn't a "major" digital distributor is ridiculous. It has over 3 million users. Certainly fewer than Steam but while D2D and Impulse may quibble over who is #2 on the PC, Impulse is certainly a major player. This is why the major publishers have been migrating titles to Impulse over the past half year so quickly.
"On top of that from talking to other game developers and reading about it online, Impulse doesn't seem to have a great reputation either."
As for "reputation" I would happily submit Impulse to an anonymous survey amongst game developers who have their titles on both Steam and Impulse. I feel confident enough to say publicly that it wouldn't even be close as to which system they prefer -- Impulse.
Impulse doesn't require the client to be installed at the same time. It lets users install their titles anywhere they want and typically provides greater royalties to the developer. I know what developers say to us as well as publicly about the two.
Re Skinning:
I am having a hard time imagining a game developer who would prefer a library that forces third-party branding/experience on them over one that gives them control. You claimed to be a game developer. Can you name a title you worked on?
What makes Impulse::Reactor so significant is that it is the first, and only, platform that allows for in-game overlays without relying on an external client or service to be installed on the user's machine and also does not require the developer to import SDK source code into their title.
From a programmatic point of view, Impulse::Reactor is analogous to moving from 16-bit game development to 32-bit development in the context of existing SDKs. If that's not "Creative" I don't know what is.
Impulse has given me a fantastic service as a customer, having previously discovered Stardock with GalCiv2. It is convenient and unintrusive... unlike some other clients, I get very fast download speeds and the games have always worked with my system without problems.
I dont get bombarded with ads every time I login and my games work even if I lose the internet. No need to use offline mode.
I have purchased Sins of the Solar Empire, SupCom, GalCiv2 and many more and I have never experienced any problems. I am glad that there is competition to steam because 2 or 3 strong players in the market place is both convenient and may perhaps help reduce prices.
My only wish is that as a UK customer, you are able to provide more games in my region... pretty please.
From the PoV of a developer, yeah you'd be stupid not to take advantage of this. :)
Your claims about what games Impulse "only" has are clearly demonstrated to be factually incorrect simply by going to Impulse's website. Furthermore, as the article explicitly states, using Impulse Reactor only requires developers put their games non-exclusively on Impulse, not exclusively. This article is not about the Impulse store, it is about the Impulse Reactor SDK.
The negative to something like Steam is 1) the user must have Steam installed, if not, install it, 2) the user must have a Steam account, if not, create one. This applies to games sold at retail that require Steam as well.
Reactor sounds like it solves both of those problems by not requiring an application to be installed, and not requiring you to have an exclusive account. Meaning there is actually less work and overhead on the part of the consumer to utilize these features.
That sounds like positives to me. Correct me if I'm mistaken.
You are correct. Facts are useful! Fortunately I included a bunch of them in the article, but unfortunately their application requires people to engage in the reading comprehension process.
Taking the steam installer out of games would be a positive for me, because several online companies have boycotted steamworks games.
I perfectly understand why as you dont want to sell a competing storefront to consumers, its just annoying when games like MW2 are only available from steam.
"While I appreciate the competition with Valve's service, Impulse seems to provide a much lower quality service and it doesn't have the draw Steam has in terms of titles."
No offense - and I ask this in jest - but are you on drugs? Because clearly only someone in a drug induced state of stupor could make such a ridiculous statement.
This Steam vs Impulse has more to do with preference than it does with QoS.
Competition is always good and thats just the bottom line.
Either way someone needs to send a memo to the crazies over at UBIsoft for the latest travesty to hit the DRM landscape. And to think that they actually have games on Steam and elsewhere is just funny as hell.
@ Kevin
lmao!!! Classic.
@Ed - so if Steam started selling say movies you'd stop using it? I'd hope not. I remember when Amazon.com only sold books. Some people were upset when they started selling everything.
I remember back in the 1990s (when Derek and I hung out on Usenet). I was an OS/2 guy and back then everyone loved Microsoft. Microsoft could do no wrong and people wished that other OSes would just "go away" so people could standardize on Windows.
The best way to keep companies honest is to make sure consumers have alternatives.
Sure, Steam has its virtues, but it really pushes the idea that Steamworks is part of the game experience. Impulse shows the opposite philosophy of offering these features for devs and consumers who wish to take advantage of them but letting you simply download the game and play if that's all you want to do.