The holidays are in full swing here at Stardock, and we’ve had ourselves quite the busy week! Although most of us are local to Michigan, some of our colleagues work remotely with us from elsewhere. For the last couple of years, Stardock has made sure to fly them out for the festivities so that we can spend some time with them in person, and believe me we made the most of it this year! We kicked our week off with one of our patented game nights in the studio’s cafe. We wanted to ma...

Show off your AI generated art! Not surprisingly, I will start with these:       Frog of the year..      

It's easy to take a lot of things for granted when they are part of our everyday lives - like the Internet, for example! Although I do remember a time before the Internet was in my home, it wasn't a huge period; I definitely had online access as early as middle or high school. I don't often stop to think about what an amazing thing it is, but on the occasions where I do it's definitely one of those "whoa" moments. Recently, a team from the Technical University of Denmark and Sweden's Chalmers...

The Orb X is a multi-purpose computing pod that will let you shut out pesky distractions to focus more deeply on gaming or work. It looks like something out of a futuristic Jetsons-era catalogue, but it's a lot more real than you'd think: Cooler Master is already taking pre-orders for their creation. Climbing inside the Orb X will wrap you in speakers, screens, and overall comfort as you immerse yourself completely in the experience. Although the device isn't completely enclosed, a dome will ...

Not paranoia...the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), with a subject's consent (lol), will be scanning computers for vulnerabilities...all in the interest of security, of course. This sort of thing generated our Fourth Amendment. "The scan is the work of the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It says its looking for zero-day vulnerabilities, meaning security holes that hackers are actively exploiting before a fix is available." - John Lister How so...

I've been a member of WinCustomize since about 2003. I mostly lurked the forums and downloaded skins for a while, and then started to participate in a community which I viewed as awesome (and still is). I really enjoyed downloading all the various skins and watching how the community worked. It was all just fun and that got me inspired to start creating some things, which just furthered my enjoyment of the site and community.  After a few years I was asked to be a mod and eventually that...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to our amazing community! We hope you have a great holiday season and a wonderful new year!  Thank you for being part of our great community!  

Pacing in 4X strategy games is crucial.  So I decided to look at GalCiv II, GalCiv III and the GalCiv IV alpha to take a look at how fast things move along.   Turn     GalCiv II (Twilight of the Arnor) GalCiv III (Retribution) GalCiv IV [Alpha] 1 · Researched New Propulsion Techniques [7 turns] · Planet Project: Innovation Complex [16 weeks] · Music: Haunting · Startport: Rush bought Colony ship with monthly p...

The mosaic (left) and geographic (right) maps of Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. Image courtesy of NASA.In case you haven't figured it out by now, we love space here at Stardock. While the premises for our games tend to be fictional, we do our best in many cases to try and adhere to real-world science, and that includes referencing and showcasing planets that actually exist in our solar system. In Star Control: Origins, for example, you start in our solar system. All of the planets in Sol are ...

Supergiant’s Hades made history earlier this week by becoming the first video game to ever win a Hugo Award. Awarded annually, the Hugo Award is a prestigious literary award presented to the best science fiction or fantasy works for the previous year. Typically, this is reserved for works like novels or short stories, but a newly added video game category for 2021 gave Hades an opportunity for recognition. The game was up against others in the science fiction and fantasy genre, includin...

The Galactic Civilizations games are known for their ship design features. But ship design occurs before the ship is made.  What about after?  Galactic Civilizations IV will be introducing a new feature for upcoming Beta version (this Winter) called “The Vault”. The Vault is a set of special items the player either produces or, more commonly scavenges across the galaxy.  Destroying the monster ships, pirates, enemy fleets, etc. will result in scavenging thing...

It's been quite a while since we've mentioned promotions here in the forums, though a few people have been quietly promoted over the years. As some of you may know (more on this in another post soon), this will be my last month at WinCustomize so I wanted to get a few members promoted to Journeyman. These members deserve recognition for their time to create and upload skins and themes here, and for their contributions to the forums and community. Let's say a big congrats to the following memb...

When it comes to teaching a person how to play a video game, there have been two extremes over time that have been prevalent in gaming: “too much hand-holding”, and “throw you to the wolves and see how many times you get shredded alive.” Earlier video games - long before gaming became a mainstream hobby for millions of people - typically skewed toward the latter category. Old school NES games would drop you right into a situation with no explanation of how to play - an...

When you think about objects that you can invest in for hopefully high returns, you tend to think of things like gold, jewelry, art, antiques, and so on. A new study from the economists at the Higher School of Economics in Russia recently released a study that presents a new and unique lucrative alternative: Lego sets. Throughout the course of their study, the economists discovered that the market prices of the retired Lego sets sold on the secondary market grow by at least 11% annually, ...

Christmas is approaching fast, and I hope you are looking forward to a fun and festive holiday season! Animated wallpapers for DeskScapes is a fantastic way to add some holiday decoration to your desktop. Whether it's Christmas trees, Holiday lights, or a beautiful winter scene, we have a variety of wallpapers for you to check out. Here are some of our favorite holiday animated wallpapers! Here Comes Santa   Christmas Winter Window   Christmas Tree ...