I am really gald they are going to focus more on the SP portion of their games. There once was a time I spend alot Online playing nothing else. But I am just not big into multiplayer anymore. Maybe we get another Sins with a great SP campaign down the line.
You’d believe wrong, at least as far as Stardock’s customers are concerned. I’m in the camp that believe MP is the cry of a vocal minority of gamers. Demigod’s stats back that up, though obviously it’s way to small a sample set. There was also a thread here on Qt3 not too long ago with hordes of people noting they’re only single player gamers.
Stardock’s customer base may be part of that as well as it’s predominantly male (96% or some such) and appears to skew older, though it didn’t list the % of folks like me over 40 or folks under 20. Older, male, strategy gamers are going to tend to be less MP focused than today’s teens.
In that case, I’d say that either marketing hasn’t reached its target audience or that the game simply did not appeal.
Word.
Or, if you really want to compete with an online-only game, you should make your game online-only as well. I imagine that would’ve really cramped Demigod’s total sales however. The DotA genre is still pretty rabidly hardcore and insular. I know I certainly wouldn’t have given Demigod a second look if there was no skirmish or SP mode.
It might have cramped the sales, but it might have been cheaper to make.
OTOH, it’s it a bit more difficult to learn a game in a multiplayer setting. You play your first game and get your ass handed to you, you may not want to play a second game.
Not game related, but I found the windowblinds section to be both particularly candid and thoughtful. He’s absolutely dead-on, and while I still won’t be buying windowblinds7 due to the value not being present, with the direction change it’s at least not an absurd concept.
I wonder if Stardock is publishing those Demigod numbers to justify their desire to get away from multiplayer again. Not quite a “see, we told you so” but a confirmation of their original game design model?
I hate the different Impulse/Stardock forums.
The document did include a reference to Fences, which I knew nothing about, which ended up with said free software installed happily on my computer.
As for everything else – I fire up GC2 every once in a while, get my ass owned, then go do something else. Is Impulse like Brad’s Steam or something?
Out of the loop a bit? :)