Stardock: Only 23% of Demigod Players Even Tried to Play Online
Stardock: Only 23% of Demigod Players Even Tried to Play Online
Posted 11/19/2009 at 8:35pm
| by Nathan Grayson
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Single-player RTS campaigns are great and all, but matching wits with the CPU’s cold robo-logic is only enjoyable for so long. After the story’s curtains close, we dive straight into multiplayer and never look back. But – if Demigod’s numbers are any indication – we may be in the minority. See, according to Stardock, a pithy 23% of players even tried to march their troops across the information super highway in Demigod. In other words, many never even succeeded in playing a single online match.
“Demigod continues to sell thousands of copies weekly – enough to remain at retail during the Christmas season despite it coming out last Spring – but the number of people available to play online is typically less than 2,000 at a given time. This is in stark contrast to MMORPGs and FPS’s which tend to have very large online communities,” read Stardock’s report.
This, of course, is made all the more startling by the fact that Demigod doesn’t even have a single-player storyline. Future Stardock RTSes, however, won’t make the same mistake.
“Our conclusion is that strategy games that we make and publish in the future will support multiplayer but will not sacrifice the single player experience to do so,” Stardock noted.
Granted, Demigod was notorious for hobbling out the gate with crippling online issues, so that may have sent a few players back into the CPU’s cold embrace. Still though, the game’s been out since spring, so we doubt those early missteps are completely to blame.
Maybe we’re just so awesome at Demigod that we scared everyone else away. But, uh, we can’t play a match right now. We, er… have turkey in the oven! Yup.
(Phew. Only time of year that excuse actually works!)
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tomihendirnk
January 31, 2010 at 7:26am
yeah this is very good.Nice work.Submit your websites to Directory2009 now for free!
JohnP
November 21, 2009 at 1:57am
Diablo2, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Heroes of Might and Magic, Warcraft, the list goes on and on. I have played all of these and finished all the single player campaigns. Even with WOW, I never group and the only guild I belong to is one I created just for my own players. They has been a lot of games that I never bought because of a lame or non existant single player campaign.
Why? three good reasons. One is the frustration of waiting around to find someone to play with and then having the person just bail for no good reason. Another is that I enjoy my games set at my own pace. Having to frantically mash buttons just to try to keep up sucks. Finally, having a player who is clueless or even worse, much better than me.
I avoid chess and Monoloply for the same reson. Stratego and batgammon are fine.
Josiah Charley
March 04, 2011 at 1:45am
I too have played all these games and I'm currently playing Hellfire again, just for old times' sake. But not playing Starcraft online, after you've finished the campaigns, kind of ruins the whole training part. If you would have watched Yellow's replays, you would had definitely wanted to crash everything in the way. With a good Internet connection and a PC protection that doesn't take a lot of memory up, like Data Center Security, I am waiting for the right players, like you said.
Tekzel
November 20, 2009 at 4:28pm
I was somewhat intrigued by Demigod, so I downloaded the demo and tried it out. Lasted about 15 minutes and then it was gone. I just have zero interest in playing mutiplayer any more. Hell, the last time (other than my MMO addiction, but then I am avoiding all MMOs for that reason) I played multiplayer was in the heyday of Quake II.
For one, I am almost 38 and gaming with teens or young 20s folk, ESPECIALLY if there is any sort of chat in the game, is just too annoying. It's not that they are better or anything, I am an old school gamer. It's just that they are generally so damn infuriatingly immature. My wife plays some dumb game called "Gunz" and she is always bitching to me about what some little twit did or said, and I just get tired of even hearing about it. I also get tired of trying to decipher what it is they are even saying. "r u a n00b?" No, dipshit, I just know how to construct a coherent sentence.
samduhman
November 20, 2009 at 8:37am
Only clueless devs and gamers say singleplayer is dead. WRONG! I game singleplayer the huge majority of my gaming time. No disrespect intended to Stardock. Love any devs that support PC gaming.
jcollins
November 20, 2009 at 10:22am
I don't think the developers are clueless. I think that they're going the easy/cheaper path. Doing AI/etc. for single player is hard work. It's easier just to toss in multiplayer and have live people deal with being the competition.
ChuvelxD
November 20, 2009 at 6:35am
Firstly, Demigod can't really be considered a true RTS game. It's more of a hybrid RTS/RPG game. It is a GREAT game, it just take some mental prowess to figure out at first. Once you get the hang of the general concept of the game, going online is the ONLY way to play this game. The AI is great for figureing out how to play and forming strategies in terms of gameplay, but online is where the action is.
Ilander
November 20, 2009 at 4:42am
I'm kind of guilty...after all, I never took Sins of a Solar Empire online...still waiting on my single-player storyline, too...and with such a dramatic opening cinema, I just feel hollow and bitter without one...Come on Stardock, hire some writers, produce some good old fashioned single-player content, complete with a gosh-darned protection-mission.
averageGrod
November 20, 2009 at 2:16am
There really was no online at launch and it didn't get much better as time went on. I was looking forward to the online tournaments but hugely disappointed. This game had great support and GPG/Stardock did everything to fix the game and still offer support but the player dropoff was simply to great. Demigod is easily one of my favorite and most disappointing games of 2009.
Mighty BOB!
November 20, 2009 at 12:12am
EA did a study of their RTS titles some number of months/years ago (within the last 5 years) and 70% of players did not go online.
K0BALT
November 19, 2009 at 9:38pm
The closest thing I've played is Final Fantasy series on PS1 and loved it..... i mainly play action/fps's... i thought id give this a try, but couldnt figure out how to play.
MuppetMower
November 19, 2009 at 9:33pm
The reason it wasnt that succesful is that you can play the beta for Heroes of Newerth for free, and its a better game.
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