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--------------------------- WarpCast -------------------------
Source: Brad Wardell (bwardell@stardock.com)
Moderator: Trevor Smith (editor@os2ezine.com)
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Stardock prepares to make Entrepreneur widely available 

Near the end of last Fall, Stardock released Entrepreneur 1.0 and it
immediately became popular with strategy game fans all over the
world. But Entrepreneur was only released in select areas. Due to the
game s unusual game mechanics, Stardock was uncertain of how well it
would be received and held back its general availability until after
it could receive initial feedback.

Entrepreneur is a real-time strategy game in which players start
their own companies and must compete against others in a chosen
market. By balancing their resources between marketing, researching,
and manufacturing, the players grow their hold on the world until
they have conquered the vast majority of the market. One Usenet
player described it as "SimBillGates" though its emphasis on making
tough resource choices makes it similar to Civilization.

The game s lead designer, Brad Wardell, says he was inspired to
develop Entrepreneur not by Civilization so much but by a classic
game called MULE. "I had been hesitant on developing Entrepreneur
because I figured that someone else would eventually create a good
follow-on to a game like MULE." Said Brad Wardell, Stardock Systems,
Inc. "Though in actuality, the game also has a lot of elements of a
lesser known game called Lords of Conquest." To Stardock s relief,
Entrepreneur 1.0 has received universal praise from the mainstream
print magazines such as Computer Gaming World, Strategy Plus, and PC
Gamer. The magazines pointed out the game s addictive game play,
outstanding computer AI, and unique strategic elements help combine
into making a very good game.

One unexpected chain of events have gone into Entrepreneur s favor:
Microsoft and the Justice Department. With the object of Entrepreneur
to take over the market using extremely ruthless tactics and one of
the computer players called "MitroSoft", Entrepreneur has caught the
attention of the general press.

With articles from the Wallstreet Journal, Business Week, and
Corporate Detroit and TV mentions on NBC Today and The Nightly
Business Report Stardock has suddenly found it has a hit on its
hands.

"We re getting a lot of calls from the press about Entrepreneur and
how it plays like Microsoft would," said Wardell. "We wrote the game
in the days of the OS-wars DOS vs. Windows vs. OS/2 vs. Mac and it
did influence our development considerably. All I can say is, Yea,
Microsoft plays to win and I m sure there are a lot of people out
there who want to play a game in which they crush their opponents in
a somewhat real-world scenario." But Stardock hasn t been sitting on
its laurels since its original release, it used the time between 1.0
and now to address the feedback received from the early reviews as
well as from gamers. While the reviewers praised the game itself,
they also pointed out that the game s steep learning curve and very
dry graphics might turn off some players. To that end, Stardock
worked on enhancing those two areas of Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur 1.1, due to be generally available on Wednesday, March
11, brings a complete graphics face lift to Entrepreneur (see
included screen shots of 1.0 and a similar 1.1 screen shot). It also
made subtle playability enhancements to make the game more intuitive
to beginners while maintaining the challenge for expert players. The
computer players, already considered amongst the best in the genre,
have been heavily enhanced and will continue to be enhanced well into
the future.

The game ships with a single market module the computer market, to
play in. Stardock used the time between 1.0 and now to work on two
new markets that will be available in late March. Moreover, the game
ships with over a dozen different maps to play on and Stardock plans
to release several new maps in the coming weeks.

The free multi-player service that comes with Entrepreneur,
Stardock.Net will also get a free Windows client so that users can
not only launch multi-player games from within Entrepreneur itself
but also launch games from a small GUI client. "With the Stardock.Net
client, people will be able to keep a little window up on their
desktop and chat with people and wait for just the right game to
start instead of having to keep Entrepreneur loaded all the time."
Said Wardell.

Stardock expects Entrepreneur to be available in the following stores
by March 11 or soon after:

CompUSA (March 11)
Micro Center (March 11)
Future Shop (March 11)
United CD ROM (March 11)
Babbages (Late March)
Software Etc. (Late March)
Fry's (Late March)
Electronic's Boutique (Late March)

Stardock can be reached at 1-800-672-2338.  Entrepreneur lists for
$49.95, requires Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or OS/2 Warp to play and
8 megabytes of memory on a 486DX2-66 or better system.

Entrepreneur 1.1 update will be available FREE to all 1.0 users on
Stardock's website on March 11.

Stardock s website is http://www.stardock.com


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