Chris Delay writes at length on the Introversion forum about Multiwinia’s release:
Multiwinia has the highest conversion rate we’ve ever seen. What this means is that every time somebody plays the demo version, there is a percentage chance that they will go on to buy the game, and that percentage is higher than any of our other games. This is excellent news, and generally lines up with our belief that Multiwinia is the most accessible of all our collection, the most immediately satisfying, and the most visceral and intense of our games. We can infer from his high conversion rate that people enjoy our game immediately, and that makes us very happy. By comparison, Darwinia had a very low conversion rate, at least initially, because we royally messed up the launch demo. The kinds of conversion rates we are seeing with Multiwinia are in fact excellent by any standards, and we should be very happy about this.
Unfortunately, a high percentage of zero is still zero. Nobody is playing the demo of Multiwinia.
More quotes and additional notes follow…
The obvious question is “Why?”. Chris aims it mainly in no-one having heard of it, as there’s been no reviews…
It’s been three weeks since we launched Multiwinia, and today Metacritic shows four reviews (the minimum required for a metacritic average) for the first time since game launch. By comparison, Defcon had nearly thirty metacritic reviews within a week of launch. Of the reviews we have arranged with websites and magazines, less than 20% of them have been published at this time. One british games magazine has declined to review Multiwinia at all – ever.
Which is pretty serious, as far as it goes, and clearly worrying. To be a little harder, I can certainly theorise why the latter ended up happening. Firstly, I know that review code for Multiwinia was relatively late going out – as in, around the week of release (Chris admits this was probably a mistake). This means for a print magazine, the review isn’t going to appear until a clear month and a bit after its available. This is something magazines do worry about, and at least bear in mind. Secondly, is the time of year. While Multiwinia is hitting just before the major rush of games, we’re in the point where all the major Christmas games are hitting. There’s only so much space in a Magazine. I dare say the one who’s decided not to review Multiwinia is a multiformat magazine. When they have to squeeze in all the Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 and Fallout 3 and whatever, actually including a smaller game is tricky. Especially when it’s a smaller game that’s been out for a while, thus no longer contemporary.
This doesn’t actually explain why there’s relatively few reviews from the online world on metacritic. Chris has an idea…
We’ve heard disturbing rumours from more than one source that major games websites are now cutting back on the number of games they review – and it’s games like Multiwinia that are getting dropped because there will always be hundreds of bigger games. If this is true and is widespread (as we are starting to believe), it has grave repercussions for all indie developers who rely on press reviews as their primary form of publicity.
I was actually the source for this – I was mentioning that I’m finding it harder to pitch Indie (or just smaller PC game) reviews to game sites. Admittedly, the site whose editor who actually explained why – in short “They get far less hits” – is one of the ones which has actually reviewed Multiwinia, which kind of undercuts the paranoia. But as a general rule, Chris is completely right. People talk about whether reviews matter – of course Halo 4’s going to sell a trillion, even if we all slag it off. Point being, reviews matter enormously when a game is smaller. If a gamer isn’t even aware of a game, there’s no chance of a purchase. For the importance of a review, look at Vic Davis’ of Armageddon Empire fame over at Newsweek. Specifically, look at the direct effect the mention in Games for Window and my own Eurogamer Armageddon Empires review had on it. Later, look at Penny Arcade – which is a different thing, of course, but still a clear example of the effect of commentary.
In other words, with only five reviews out there, it’s not surprising that Multiwinia isn’t being picked up enough. I’m not doing a formal review for anywhere – no-one commissioned me, mores the pity – but we plan to do a Verdict next week, after we’ve all had a chance to play it.
Chris ends his piece with two sets of pleas. The first aimed at journalists, and the second at fans. I’ll quote the second…
You guys are the other major reason Introversion is here. The word of mouth that went with Uplink was incredible. Across the Internet, everybody was talking about it. It was the underground hit of 2001. Many of you probably heard about Uplink for the first time on Internet forums, and this wasn’t an accident. At the time we asked our community to help us with this directly, encouraging you to talk about our game to spread the word further. The combination of growing numbers of reviews on bigger and bigger sites and our fanbase aggressively spreading the word on internet forums pushed Uplink to a wider audience than we could ever have reached ourselves.
Now we need you to do the same. You all hang around on different internet forums all over the Internet as well as the Introversion community – go to those forums and strike up conversations about the game. Include screenshots, link to the videos on youtube, link to the demo on our website (www.multiwinia.com). Tell people why you love the game, get them excited about it. Most importantly of all, you are bringing Multiwinia to their attention – they may have heard of it or not, but at no point have they felt compelled to investigate further and try the demo. You have to encourage them past this point. This is a game they have missed, it’s fallen through the cracks, but they should give it a try because its really good fun.
To help you with this, we’re working on modifying the current Multiwinia demo so that demo users can join a LAN game, so long as the host owns the full game. The purpose behind this is to make it very easy for you to play against your friends who don’t yet own the game, without having to buy more copies. LAN parties in particular are great events for trying new games – take Multiwinia along and show it to people, fire up a game and invite other players to join as demo users. They’ll have a great experience, and they’ll thank you for showing them this game that they’ve either not heard of or ignored.
The opening up of LAN play is particularly welcome, I think you’d agree. I actually think a future true Multiplayer demo would also help the game down the line, but that’s clearly speculation. I kinda think it’d be an idea to push that MP demo later, after the Christmas chaos has calmed down a little, but I’m just theorise.
I think Multiwinia is well worth playing, even if you don’t ultimately like it – though I also think you will. Like most Indies, Introversion go from game to game with the money for one paying for the next. In a hard way, Multiwinia not selling more than it is could be the end for the company. I think that’d be tragic.
Man, that’s a guilt trip, innit? Just play the thing, yeah? It’s fun.
Related Stories:
“In a hard way, Multiwinia not selling more than it is could be the end for the company. I think that’d be tragic.”
It’s tragic, sure. But living title-to-title is a reality for every developer, not just indies. While everyone enjoys bashing publishers, the people that make their games face this same reality with every title.
As for the main topic, there’s a bit of irony here that print magazines could be the saviors here, except most print magazines are dead. In print, I would always cover obscure games because my reviews were already late anyway, I had the space, and I figured people might get a kick out of reading something they hadn’t read about elsewhere. Since my magazine was crushed by ones that focused almost exclusively on ginormous AAA games, I was probably wrong.
But here’s the thing: I didn’t track what people read on a per-article basis, which is why I was willing to take make that decision. For a website, they know what articles are being read, which makes it an easier decision to kill low-performing reviews. If indie game reviews have low traffic, it isn’t cost-effective to pay someone to do them. Much like you wouldn’t except publishers to keep funding developers who make games that don’t sell, why keep paying for articles no one reads?
Bloggers could help a lot, and if I was Introversion I’d probably focus as much attention as humanly possible not on the IGNs and Gamespots of the world but on every single blogger on the planet. Since few get attention from mainstream publishers, they’d probably be ecstatic to write about their game. Send out some freebies, get some underground buzz. If that reaches a certain fever pitch, perhaps the mainstream will come around.
I’m converted, but only in the sense that I’ll buy it the next time it’s on Steam-sale. I like it much better than Darwinia
Y’know what. I’m not even going to play the demo, I’m just going to buy the damn game.
I’ll probably never even play (online strategy rarely appeals to me, all my friends who play can kick my arse too easily and playing with strangers is rubbish) but I’d hate to see Introversion go down.
Actually… fuck I never bought Uplink either. I really loved that demo. Completely forgot I meant to buy the game.
TO THE INTERNETS!
It seems a bit odd to go complaining about this before the XBOX version is even released. I don’t partake of consoles myself, but I hear a lot of people do, and I expect there’ll be many a sale on there.
I can understand if a lot of people aren’t interested in this game though. Darwinia was flawed; later patches improved it considerably but it still wasn’t a very good game. Gameplay-wise, this is what Darwinia should have been, and I’d recommend buying it, but on the other hand they’ve gone and sucked all the atmosphere out of it. Also, it was a bit buggy on release but I expect that’s been fixed now; my game-capable machine is in for repairs so I can’t really check right now.
The thing which sits really oddly with me about this whole thing is that sitting here as an indie dev and someone who promotes a subset of indie games… we’re seeing more column inches than ever before.
Edge review Noitu Love 2 alongside mainstream releases, I can’t think of a print mag that doesn’t have an indie segment off the top of my head. I’ve been(personally) in two magazines over the past two months. Possibly more but I’ve only actually bought two. There’s an indie stand at the EG expo this month.
Never have indie devs had this many column inches across the mainstream.
No sir, something isn’t right here.
It really is 100% worth getting, no matter what games you like
I got the demo and bought the full game straight away because it was so good GET IT GET IT GET IT!!!
One of the problems I see with Multiwinia is that it’s not Darwinia. Admittedly that’s an obvious statement, but for those that enjoyed the quite pace and arcadey nature of the ‘digital dreamscape’ Multiwinia’s competitive nature and completely different gameplay will be alienating.
I really enjoyed Darwinia, played it through twice with slightly different approaches each time, but … I have no interest in playing Darwinia against other humans. The whole point of the game was rescuing this little incipient AI civilization from the dire threat posed by computer viruses. That’s quite a decent, self-contained concept which could easily lend itself to further installments, so I just don’t get how we end up with PvP warfare using Darwinians as footsoldiers. And I’ve never been interested in multiplayer RTS in any case.
But I’ll download the demo on steam and give it a go, I guess.
I wonder how many people actually play the multiplayer component of, say, command and conquer 3 as a percentage of the people who bought the game? You’re locking out a large number of people by making an RTS effectively ‘multiplayer-only’ i suspect. I for one, have never had any desire to play random people over the internets at an RTS (mostly cos i am rubbish at them) and as others have mentioned it would have to have a superb skill-matching system to be any fun at all…
I’ve got the game, and i’ve yet to play online.
The AI satisfies hits my skill level just right, allowing me to win most times, but still offering a challenge (on normal).
It’s loads of fun, although i think it is a little too pricey.
I’d been enjoying Multiwinia greatly by using it to kill downtime, playing against the AI. Today was my first game against other folks, and first game of Capture the Statue.
I got destroyed.
BUT, it was proof that portforwarding works.
I’m not sure why the rage about portforwarding. I mean, it’s absolutely not *ideal* to need to futz with things to make the game go, but anyone used to networking shouldn’t have a problem with this.
I mean, I’m a technological cretin and I made it go…
I liked Darwinia. Not as much as I was hoping to like it — frankly the gameplay was shallow — but the atmosphere was magical.
I’m now pretty confused about this new game. I had understood it was a multiplayer-only game (which incidentally means that I have virtually no interest in it whatsoever). Now it appears that while it is multiplayer-focused, not only is there is a single-player component, but bizarrely the demo version of this multiplayer-focused game is only single-player.
That’s retarded, Introversion. Seriously, what were you thinking?
Shadowcat: It’s a skirmish-mode game with bots and/or online play, the demo only lets you play with bots. It’s not the best way to show off the game but I don’t think you could cite it as evidence of developmental disability.
I own Darwinia, Defcon, and Multiwinia. When I first played Darwinia I found the second level (Containment). I posted about my problems and experiences in the official forums, and was attacked and trolled by fans for daring to question Darwinia’s perfection.
I will probably continue buying Introversion games if they look interesting, but I certainly won’t go out of my way to advertise for them for free.
“…found the second level (Containment) [confusing].”
This is more a steam rant, but anyway. I went to look for Multiwinia in the steam store, I click on strategy (it’s an RTStrategy game, right?), click on multiplayer, but it’s not there. I check the category listing again, and see there’s also an entirely useless “Indie” category, and sure enough that’s where it’s located. OK, I can see why they have an Indie category (try categorising AudioSurf), but why can’t it also be in the obvious place, that is Strategy/Multiplayer as well?
This is the 2nd game I’m considering buying at the moment simply to support the developer and not because I seriously consider I’ll enjoy it (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky being the other).
While a good thing, perhaps I should be spending my money on other deserving gaming causes. Other than World of Goo and donating to Tarn Adams, does anyone have any suggestions?
After seeing the post on introversion blog and playing the demo I can agree, he’s right the game play hook is more than expressed in the demo, and I realized right away why I enjoyed the unusual play style of their other games. I wasn’t going to pick it up and didn’t even know it had come out, but after the demo It’s almost a certainty that I’ll get it.
I only buy RTSes with single player campaigns combined with MP as well. I don’t play MP against randoms on the internet and i don’t currently have any friends who play RTS, not even over a LAN… (not that i have the space to fire up a LAN event)
So maybe one other reason why no one is playing multiwinia is that the people who the game appeals to already had their fill with Darwinia?
@Duoae: Well, that, and three other issues: Firstly, multiplayer internet games need a certain critical mass to actually have enough available games for people – Multiwinia doesn’t have this yet, so the “Join Game” display shows a disappointing array of less than 10 games at any point in time (most of which are already full). Secondly, the Join Game interface itself is disappointingly simplistic compared to most games of this type (very limited filter options, no password protection I can see, no lobby chat etc) – this is coming in the next patch.
Thirdly, the tone is off from Darwinia significantly, as others have mentioned. If you liked Darwinia for the tone, you may find Multiwinia much too chaotic (and the setting much too bleak). I admit I teeter on the edge of disliking the bleakness of the setting myself (and cheer on Futurewinians when they appear and try assimilating people…).
Introversion games are too awkward. Every game they’ve released seems to fall somewhere on the autistic spectrum.
If Introversion want to have more commercial success, they’re going to have to look beyond themselves, and beyond their like-minded fanbase.
I so very much want Introversion to do well. I want them to create best-selling titles. I want them to craft unique and interesting games. I want to love these games and tell my friends to go out and buy them.
But I just can’t.
I thoroughly enjoyed Uplink and Defcon, but Darwinia didn’t really do much for me. I do enjoy RTS games and had no particular expectations of Darwinia, but for some reason it just didn’t really connect with me. Nice presentation, but the gameplay mechanics just gave me a big sense of deja vu. I can’t see multiplayer enhancing that experience, especially when you consider that in every multiplayer RTS players invariably find the metaphorical equivalent of a nuclear missile that disrupts the rock, paper, scissors mechanic, thus rendering the game obsolete.
By the look of all these negative comments, it really looks like the Young Indie British Developer tag has lost its appeal to the hardcore. Sad to see, as they’re nice enough guys but if the game ain’t jazzy we ain’t going to play. For my two pennorth, I’ve stopped playing it already. :-(
Played it, and enjoyed it for two hours, but I really can’t see myself ever returning to it as it got a bit boring and monotone.
“By the look of all these negative comments, it really looks like the Young Indie British Developer tag has lost its appeal to the hardcore”
Nah, we’re doing alright all told :-D
I personally have heard this game (thanks to one of the Introversion’s developers talking about it at PCGamer Showdown. Nice chap as well :) ) and will be buying it as soon Steam makes weekend deal.
Yeah. Sorry Introversion but the whole Darwinia/Multiwinia theme does diddly squat for me. I’m not so old a gamer that the glowing neon dream of 80s gaming appeals to my nostalgia-lobes. I began gaming properly in the 90s, so I have little connection to all that.
I’m 24. I’d put the main demographic for ‘Winia at about 30? That’s over on the right-hand side of the bell curve for gamers in general. This is a problem. I dearly love Introversion and am absolutely straining at the leash for more info on Subversion, but I still can’t persuade myself to care for ‘Winia.
I may get Uplink though.
“I really enjoyed Darwinia, played it through twice with slightly different approaches each time, but … I have no interest in playing Darwinia against other humans. The whole point of the game was rescuing this little incipient AI civilization from the dire threat posed by computer viruses. That’s quite a decent, self-contained concept which could easily lend itself to further installments, so I just don’t get how we end up with PvP warfare using Darwinians as footsoldiers.”
That’s how I felt about Multiwinia before release, but I was willing to give Introversion the benefit of the doubt as I’ve loved every single one of their games. And I was right to. It really does work in ways I never anticipated. Of course, I hope they make single-player sequels to Darwinia as well.
I’ll be giving IV some money once I have some, but that’s more because I’ve always bought their games. As far as the demo goes though:
Multiwinia: 50Mb, install time: so quick I didn’t notice, play time on demo ~2 hours for me.
Quantum of Solace: 700Mb, install time, about 10 mins, play time on demo, 3 mins
My suggestion, if you’re only going to play one of the demos on RPS recently, and the only two you’re noticed are QoS and Multiwinia, do yourself (and IV, and your bandwidth) a favour and play with the little pixely dudes.
Is it _seriously_ £16.99 for Multiwinia on PC? Without Darwinia thrown in? When the two will be bundled together and shoved onto XBox Live Arcade, and the most expensive games currently on there cost around £10?
Between this, and the “is/isn’t it just Darwinia in multiplayer” confusion that’s leading many to not bother downloading the demo for a game they think they’ve played, I think I can see the problem…
I decided to give Multiwinia a miss because I prefer single-player games. That being said, it seems as though a lot of recent indie or near-indie games (Defcon and Sins of a Solar Empire, for instance) have a tendency to throw a multiplicity of options at the player immediately, instead of leaving them to tease things out over a period. Most of these, not coincidentally, are designed as pure multiplayer games with a skirmish mode as an afterthought.
It’s coming to a point where I think it negatively impacts the play experience: you drop in, you experience all the features, very quickly, at a superficial level, and then you get bored before you even start to see the hidden depths beneath the surface. Even Team Fortress 2 suffers from this to a certain extent. If you contrast against Starcraft way back in the day, the single-player campaign let the player slowly uncover new concepts and features. They let things have time to sink in, and IMO that’s part of what made multiplayer Starcraft so special. For modern indie games that do it right… Battleships Forever is one, Braid is another.
Or maybe it’s just because I don’t prefer multiplayer games. But I don’t think that really makes sense, because multiplayer Starcraft remains one of the most amazing gaming experiences I have ever had.
(I love commenting on dead threads, me)
I consider Darwinia to be one of the most imaginative and splendidly executed games ever devised. The concept had me hooked from the very first screenshots, and playing the game was a magical experience. God, even the alternative retro-style intros spoke volumes about the game’s sheer class.
Mulitwinia…? Just another brainless wargame.