Brad Wardell

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Brad Wardell
Born	June 24, 1971 (1971-06-24) (age 36) Texas
Occupation	CEO, founder of Stardock Corporation
Website http://draginol.joeuser.com

Bradley R. Wardell (born 24 June 1971 in Texas), commonly known as Brad Wardell, is an American businessman and programmer residing in Michigan. He is the founder, current President, and CEO of Stardock, a software development and computer games company.

Brad graduated in 1994 from Western Michigan University with a degree in Electronic Engineering. His first notable achievement was the design and implementation of Galactic Civilizations for OS/2, one of the few games ever released for that operating system. He proceeded to organize the development of OS/2 Essentials, and followed it with a second product called Object Desktop, a package of utility, skinning and desktop enhancement applications. When the OS/2 market collapsed in 1997, he led Stardock onto the Windows platform, where he designed and led the development of the PC game Entrepreneur (later Business Tycoon, now known as The Corporate Machine). Brad was a member of Crains Detroit's 40 under 40 in 2003, and has been a finalist for Ernst & Young's Michigan Entrepreneur of the Year for 2002, 2003 and 2004.

1 Work
2 Online personality
3 References
4 See also
5 Further reading
6 External links

[edit] Work

Brad is best known as the President and CEO of software developer Stardock. Brad has been a long advocate of digital distribution ^[1]. He is also widely known for his advocacy of gamers rights in the form of limiting DRM^[2].

At Stardock, Wardell is both an executive and a software developer. His programming speciality is artificial intelligence for turn-based strategy games^[3]. Stardock's games are known for their advanced artificial intelligence in helping provide a challenging single player experience. This was one of the reasons Galactic Civilizations II won Game of the Year^[4] from some PC publications.

[edit] Online personality

Brad is well-known to regulars in the skinning and customization community. He is the co-founder/webmaster of WinCustomize, a site specializing in the distribution of skins and themes, and founder of JoeUser, a blog community, as well as being an administrator at Neowin, a technology news site. In the past, he was a columnist for the game websites The Adrenaline Vault and Quarter to Three. Brad usually goes by one of two nicknames — Draginol or Frogboy. The first tends to be a personal screen name, while the latter is often used instead of his name when representing Stardock.

Brad is a regular on the PowerUser.TV podcast, which aired from October 2005 to December 2006.

Brad is also known in the gaming world. Brad's approach to game development tends to be open, allowing users to see what is involved in making games - both good and bad. However, some critics have noted that it also means that Wardell will aggressively defend his positions. An example would be regarding Galactic Civilizations and Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, on the topics of artificial intelligence and the obfuscation of many of the game's internal mechanics, where Wardell has accepted some criticism while defending other choices. For example, after announcing a recent patch for the second game, Brad talked about the patch here.