| The site of game designer Andrew Greenberg. All opinions expressed here are my own and are not reflective of any organization to which I belong. | Thursday, 6 August 2026 - 15:39 |
I hope you can join me at these
Title: The state of video games
Description: Our panel brings their diverse experiences in the video game development to the table to talk about where we came from and where video games may be going in the near future. Q&A to follow.
Panelists: Richard “Lord British” Garriott, Andrew Greenberg, Alison Carrier, Harrison Giles Pink
Time: Fri 11:30 am
Location: Augusta E-H Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
As a heads up to fellow devs, today is the second time a player on Steam has sent me this concern after a game update: “An Application Control policy has blocked this file.” I have a hard time figuring out exactly what triggered their “smart” app controls, but this work around took care of it for them both times:
1. Right-click the game and select Properties
2. Go to the Installed Files tab and click Verify integrity of game files.
3. Relaunch the game once the process completes.
As opposed to many theorists who like discussing video games, Scott Steinberg actually spent his time in the trenches, working on game dev and publishing, before moving more firmly into writing about the future. That might help explain why I have been enjoying his “The Shape of the Future” (written with Aric Dromi Jankov) and its insights on planning for uncertainty.
I found one of their quotes especially applicable to what the Emperor of the Fading Suns Enhanced team and its mod community have been doing to make this 30-year-old-game relevant to modern gamers:
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I meant to write about this when we launched Emperor of the Fading Suns Enhanced last year, but releasing Machiavelli the Prince Enhanced last week reminded me of it – all the people who claim defunct Twitch accounts to use them for their own skeezy purposes.
Right after launch, we received AI-generated emails from people claiming to have Twitch accounts and wanting to stream the game. At first glance, these look pretty good – several thousand followers. Dig a little deeper and you quickly see that they have not streamed in three or four years.
This article, about how many games do not turn a profit on Steam, has been making the rounds. The problem it highlights is legitimate, though it does not take into account how many of these are student projects, in early access, etc.
Even with these issues, and having sold games in physical stores, on mobile, on consoles, and in the modern online stores (Steam, GOG, Zoom Platform), I much prefer the last category (though seeing your game in a box at Target is a thrill). Yes, HOLISTIC DESIGN, INC. games face A LOT of competition on them every day, but these channels also give us sales year after year, as well as the chance to improve our games and find their audience.
We rereleased Emperor of the Fading Suns on GOG.com about five years ago, and it sold all right. When we released the Enhanced version in 2022, sales on GOG jumped. When we released the (even more) Enhanced version on Steam this year, sales on both platforms jumped again. There is no way we could have done this through any of the other sales channels, especially considering our near $0 marketing budget.