Stardock are an unusual company in a whole load of ways. One of them is that despite being a privately hold company, they do a report to the public. No financials, but there’s a mass of transparency here. The full document is worth at least a skim read, but there’s plenty of information worth picking over for industry watchers. The details on Impulse’s success are fascinating, but the fact which most immediately screamed out was that only 23% of the people who actually bought Demigod even tried to play online multiplayer. I stress tried. If you attempted to log onto the server, you’re part of the 23%, not matter whether you succeeded in actually playing a game or not. I’ve quoted the section below in full…
For Stardock, the more significant shock of Demigod has been the discovery of the low number of PC gamers who play strategy games online. Demigod’s single player experience, while decent, did not get anywhere near the care that the Internet multiplayer experience did. Despite this, only 23% of people who have purchased Demigod have ever even attempted to logon to play Internet multiplayer.
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.
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.
Developer Gas Powered Games has continued to update and provide support to Demigod despite its work on Supreme Commander 2. At the time of writing, two new demigods are nearly completed along with a couple of significant updates.
Let’s repeat the key point again: 23%.
Now, the debate over the importance of the multiplayer community to games in general and strategy games in particular has always gone back and forth. It’s certainly true that the most actual outspoken strategy gamers – both critics and general fans – are devotees of the multiplayer experience, up to the point of totally dismissing any form of single player campaign. They’ll perhaps forgive Skirmish mode, but the vast majority of those who are serious about strategy game looks down on Campaign players.
The debate normally turns up the fact that the majority of players actually only play the single-player stuff at all, but it’s rare there’s actually any hard numbers to back it up. This is about as hard a number as you can get. In a game whose single-player was absolutely vestigial, over three-quarters of players didn’t even log into the server, let alone play a game, let alone partake in what’s apparently the only thing worth talking about in online discourse.
It’s an interesting one. The counter argument is easy – that the biggest RTS games have enormous communities, and it’s those communities that have kept the game successful. But let’s say… well, maybe they’re freaks. South Korea, bless it, isn’t normal. You can’t plan a game making business on assuming you’re going to be one of two games. You have to assume you’re one of the majority. And, of course, it’s worth noting: for the period they were released in, both Starcraft and Warcraft III had splendid campaign modes. And… well, I wonder if Blizzard would ever give out the lifetime stats on Blizznet. As in, what percentage of those sales (outside of Korea) actually have a Blizznet account that’s ever played a game. There’s a number I’d like to hear. But for now, the DemiGod 23% is a statistic which I’ll keep in mind when thinking about RTS games.
Any other interesting numbers? Well, last year 42% of Stardock’s consumers bought digitally. This year, 61%. That’s a hefty rise.
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See, if people were adaptive it would be fun. But since half the time they’re using something they’ve found on gamefaqs or the like they’re not, they’re more predictable than the AI. The point of multiplayer is to move away from playing against a script, when people start running through pre-determined strategies then what precisely is the difference between playing against them and a pre-written AI script, the chat?
In no competitive games are people who play by predetermined strategies on the top. At the most they beat newbies.
In StarCraft the evolution of gameplay has gone through so many phases I’m not surprised it’s invisible to casual observers.
New<–slow strategy<–repetition<–fast repetition<–fast strategy<–fast adaptation<–mind games
Being fast is just a natural evolution of gameplay trying to elevate itself in order to become better. So far the opinions here are just based on the "repetition" stage. The reason is simple – people have been playing SC for 10 years now, there's no reason that'd happen if the gameplay is stagnant and stays the same. And because it has evolved in that 10 years, the average battle.net player can seem like a pro to the first time player.
You’re not listening are you? Read thru this whole thread again and pay attention to what the vast majority of people are saying and then tell me again how Diablo II is primarily a multi-player game. Most people play games as single-player games, Diablo II included.
What you’re basically saying is in order to have a decent multiplayer experience, you need to go through all the crap until you’re somewhere in the top set of competitive play. In other words, if I were to pick up SC today, I could choose to play against the bots and have a fun game, or I could put up with months, perhaps years, of sub-par gaming in order to finally reach a point where I can have a game with one or more human opponents and still have fun.
Dunno about you, but I’m still not seeing any particular draw to multiplayer here.
I’ve never, ever, ever played any strategy game online. The only games I’ve ever played online were the first two Diablos, and Vietcong.
no, you can play against the vast majority of the players who aren’t very good, but some will appear like superhuman to you simply cus it’s just that deep
or you can aspire to get better, benefiting from the knowledge of just how far you can develop your play, and learn as you play.
if you just want to “ave some fun” as in waste some time then you can do just about anything.
Why yes, I can do just about anything. Other than play multiplayer.
The problem with “aspir(ing) to get better” at something like MP StarCraft is that the skills necessary to become competitive at the game are not in fact FUN (and certainly not skills that are going to have any application in the real world). It is not FUN to play the game the way you need to play it to have a chance. It is boring beyond belief. You have to learn to find a whole other set of things enjoyable — convincing yourself that, no, there really IS some deep satisfaction to be found by playing on this “other level” — before you can appreciate the experience again. And until that happens, what’s your motivation? Only the desire to WIN — which is, as I’ve said before, not why I play games.
Again, it’s like those non-English-speaking Scrabble players who are playing to maximize points, having memorized board positions and letter combinations to make that possible. They aren’t even playing the same game as people who started playing Scrabble for the simple joy of constructing elaborate words — and if that latter group wants to compete, they’re going to have to leave behind the thing they loved about Scrabble in the first place.
These numbers are skewed.
See, the thing is, that Demigod multiplayer sucks.
So people told their multiplayer gamer friends “OMG DONT BUY IT.”
But you see, single player gamers don’t have the same community.
They don’t have IRC channels of hundreds of active people talking about games.
It’s multiplayer gamers that have vent, AIM, MSN, IRC that they influince each other with.
Now here is the important thing, Demigod multiplayer SUCKED. So people warned their MP playing friends about it. But singleplayer gamers were ignorant to this and fell into the trap to buy it.
I’ve never, ever, ever played any strategy game offline. I do 3-4 missions and in go to online, but I am not a pro, I just like to play online strategy games. For me IA is not interesting.I prefer lossing 10 times streak against humans than winning 10 times streak against IA.
You just said you never ever ever played any strategy game offline then went on to say in the exact next sentence that you do 3 -4 mission offline :P How can someone that contradicts himself/herself be a reliable source of information about anything? Also what is IA? Do you mean AI or is IA a game I’m not aware of?
Oh, be nice.
Who was the mod that censored me? That’s some crappy moderating.
Why did my last response get censored?
I can say I generally don’t play RTS online because I get my ass kicked. I do play online with friends against bots almost exclusively. The one thing they never considered is LAN play. I often use hamachi or something to play among friends because I don’t want to have to deal with the BS of the actual multiplayer system.
90% of gamers play solo.
Well… umm…
Maybe…
99%.
Casual games, Minesweeper, Freecell included? 99.9%?
Stupid argument anyway.
Make a compelling SP game for sales, add compelling MP content for repeat sales.
Honestly though, MP gaming on a PC is virtually non-existent, even allowing for WOW. WOW wishes it had a fraction of Solitaire’s numbers.
Or we can pretend that playing card games on a computer isn’t PC gaming. But…. I’ll just pretend that assholes on COD aren’t gamers either and… well… my gamers are still 100 times more than your gamers.
And yet 23% of people who bought a primarily MP game ever tried to play it online. What makes pirates such MP fiends that they are willing to jump through hoops to play MP by faking LAN connections, when most people who actually bought the game didn’t care enough to try.
Pirates are collectors. Always have been since the floppy days. The same percentage of games would rise or fall, regardless of piracy. Pirates PLAY fewer game hours than someone who PAID for a game. They may play more games but it’s mainly sampling. If you buy a game you tend to play it, if you steal a game you play until you get pissed off and drop it.
Put even the simplest of barriers in the face of game crooks and they baulk. Faking IPs and conning your LAN is easy if you’re a hardened pirate. But it’s a major turn off for most pirates, who just want the SP experience anyway.
Unsurprisingly, most people who can pay for games want to pay for games.
I can steal milk from a doorstep or I can buy it. Which do you think I do?
Here’s the thing: unless I’m really really in the mood for it, I find playing against other human players simply annoying. When I spend my precious free time on a game I want to be entertained, I want a story, I want to pause and take a piss whenever I like and I certainly don’t want to deal with the bitching of someone else. Which is my even in MMOs I mostly play solo (like I’d say probably 75% of all players do). I’m not in the least bit surprised by the Stardock results. It’s just that there is usually a crosssection between hardcore players and multiplayers and those tend to be, let’s say, very outspoken. See all the fuzz about left 4 dead 2 or MW2. Because they are so outspoken it may appear to some that multiplayer is all there is and is all that it’s about. Unfortunately, no, the silent majority still prefers their single player, story driven campaign setting.
There’s also the thing that unless you play from the very first day of release, it is next to impossible to keep up with the skill level to still have fun, unless you have a regular group of friends on your level to play with.
As an example, I have gone online exactly once with Dawn of War 2, just to see what it’s like. Other than that I only played the campaign and loved it. Same for Torchlight, Diablo….
If a game has no decent single player content, chances are I will _not_ buy it at all. I bought the Orange Box for Half Life, the fact that TF2 is so much fun (although I stopped after a few weeks) was a lucky coincidence. I’d not have bought it for that.