Stardock on multiplayer numbers (short article)

[doctorfrog]

Stardock recently generated a report on their customer base. This is a pretty remarkably open thing to do, if I understand it correctly. At any rate, here's a small excerpt highlighted by FlashOfSteel.com:

"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."

http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2009/11/19/stardocks-customer-report-2009/

Further, Wardell states: "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." Cool, I say.

(Wardell has also written an article some time ago, something like "The case for no multiplayer" for their 4X hit Galactic Civilizations II.)

This is relevant to my interests, because, for the most part, I'm a mainly a singleplayer myself. With AI War especially, I don't see it being convenient or practical to form long-lasting games with strangers online, and my small circle of friends are mainly into FPS and flight sim games. AI War will most likely remain a single player experience for me.

In reading Chris Park's other articles, I do see that he's kept focus on both the co-op and singleplayer play experience, and I hope he keeps this balance. As these numbers may indicate, it's the single-player people, moreso than multiplayers, that form a customer base.

[x4000]

I'm quite in alignment with the thinking that most games should be singleplayer-focused rather than pvp.  I saw the Stardock article as well, and I'm much in agreement with what their findings were on that front.

However, that said, I also strongly believe that every game should have co-op, if possible.  Most gamers play singleplayer right now, but with more and more gamers getting married and having kids, etc, that sort of solo activity is going to get increasingly marginalized.  The idea is not to compete with your family, or to go out and dominate others or play with strangers, which is what a lot of current multiplayer offerings seem to be about.  The idea is that when you want to spend time with your family, but you also are itching to play a game, you shouldn't have to choose between those two activities -- you should be able to sit down and play together, and not just in that "pass the controller" style of play, which makes for everyone but one person just sitting there semi-bored the whole time.

But by the exact same token, if I'm all by myself and want to play something, I should be able to do so and have a good time without having to resort to playing with Internet strangers.  This is why I believe that both solo play and co-op are equally important, and both should be in pretty much every game.

Of course, there are some games that are online pvp only, and those are fine -- I just won't buy those, in the main.  They have their target audience and I am not in it, and that's perfectly okay.  There's room for lots of different kinds of games.  But when a game purports to be single-player focused, it should do a good job at that, and ideally it would also include co-op for the reasons I've outlined above.

For the record, I hated the implementation of co-op in Resistance 2, because that was more focused on play with Internet strangers, amongst other things.  The original Resistance had it right, just adding in a second player to play along with the first player in the "singleplayer" content.  Comparably easy in my opinion, and much more fun.

[eRe4s3r]

Is this a surprise? 

I am hardcore pc-gamer and i do not play online - i am guessing that this is a lot of people who like me, simply don't have the time or patience for online games anymore. As much as COOP in Ai-War would fancy me, i have a reason i want AI-Allies - i simply can not plan my time for games with humans anymore. Even if i wanted.

Think of this - people in the 25's now grew up with Half-life DM, CS, CSS, BF1942, BF2, WoW - These are all super-high profile (at least hl dm was back in the day ,p) online games - nowadays its all about reflexes and knowing the tricks in a game, that is work not game. I still remember the times when i played descent 1 in LAN at school. 8 People, that was absolutely revolutionary all in the same map. It was a blast. Ever since then the experience went downhill. Nowadays MP is more like a RPG (see Cod6 - Modern Warfare 2) and not about having a blast. Its about tactics, not about having a blast.

And RTS gamers are by definition people who do NOT want to play against other people. The idea is that a game challenges you, if i wanted challenge by a non-ai I would join a competitive archery club (which besides being less imbalanced than a pvp game, also enhances your actual real-life abilities). 

[acantoni]

I have mixed feeling about this.

First lets start by saying that i am a TBS entusiast that in the last 5 years or so have become enjoying RTS more and more.

Now considering my background (around 15 years in gaming, around 5 of so in competitive gaming) i strongly disagree with this:

And RTS gamers are by definition people who do NOT want to play against other people

What??? By definition standard "rts" games are competitive games that shine in multiplayer *ONLY*.
Pick Starcraft, Warcraft, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Dawn of War 2 or whatever other popular RTS and you'll see there are the singleplayer guys and the competitive guys.
The singleplayers can claim to be expert, to have passed hundreds of hour playing but are -no matter what- complete newbie to the game till they can compete and win vs other players.
That is simply because there is not yet a noncheating ai capable of challeinging/beating a veteran player in any of those games.
Singpleplayer people can have beaten all the campaigns and won all the skirmishes but when they go online they are kicked in the ass. Period.
Now every people have fun in different ways and its perfectly fine to enjoy a game in singleplayer only either for lack of time, lack of skill, lack of patience, poor design, whatever but imho rts till arent played online arent really enjoyed at their fullest.

Now after this disgression i fully agree that growing up the major problem is the time needed to dedicate to a real multiplayer experience.
For instance i was once in the top10 ladder of Supreme Commander by playing dozens of game every day. Now i have time to play a couple a month and i'm nowhere near the skill level required to be in the top100 anymore.. it was basically a work to remain competitive and i cant afford it anymore so i just play for "fun" still knowing i'm not mastering the game anymore.

Ai War offer a very different experience than most game, there is no equal start of the players and the other ai players [something that i really miss] but still is enjoyable.
Still for how the game is designed if there were a competitive option which imho could be added with just some minor work to the existing core mechanics it would lure a quite larger playerbase just by having the option there (even if not played by many people).
At this moment the lenght of the game is the main minus to have multiplayer. When and there is a fast option with some mechanic change to have a game over in 1 hour or less than we can talk about multiplayer, till then singleplayer is the only real choice.

[CPTKOOL]

Although a multiplayer option (pvp) in Ai War probably isn't out of the question; it would take away from the main selling point of the game. There are many competitive strategy games out there today, geared towards the multiplayer experience, a lot of which would be better than Ai War in that respect.
This is only because Ai War was designed solely for single player/ cooperative play and what sets it apart from these other games is its awesome Ai. If you took the Ai away, to create a pvp experience, Ai War just wouldn't stand up competitively to these other strategy titles.
On the other hand, as acantoni pointed out, a pvp option could increase the player base quite a bit, acting as the deciding factor for many consumers still deciding whether to fork out $20 or not. So it may not be such a bad idea, in the future.
But for now we must play to the games strengths and not spend too much time attempting to mould it into something it’s simply not designed for.

[eRe4s3r]

Mhh acantoni - I think someone who likes rts games has a fairly high chance of not wanting to play them online (unless its with friends or guys he knows).

All the games you mention have awesome SP campaigns (you forgot World in Conflict ,p) but its reality that competitive online rts players are a minority. 80% of all Demigod users NEVER clicked on online play. And that game was *made* for online. If we go to other games, ones with a decent campaign and casual appeal (WiC) i think this number is even worse.

Personally i am 100% SP player nowadays so if a game has a decent story or decent "hook" (AI,Gameplay) it can usually entice me for a bit ,) Then again i am 4X and RPG fan too and these games lend themselves to SP much more ..

[Delwack]

x4000, I love your concept.  I play a lot of these types of games in same player (as Stardock has noted), but in your model instead of my family I tend to play with a close-knit group of friends.  Competitive play is good and we do get the itch for that (Either against each other, or as a team against another human team), but we as a group prefer cooperative play.  It is exactly for that reason that we jump on such games as AI Wars, Left 4 dead (which we played to death, expert mode in every single-player cooperative campaign + gold medal on every survivor challenge without hiding in a 'special, half of the stuff don't spawn/can't reach us' corner).  We've also dabble in others like C&CRA3 (which had a somewhat not-so-well-thought out single player due to the competitive multiplayer design focus), Dawn of war II, and Gears of War among a few others.  I'm glad there's recognition that simple, friendly, challenging cooperative play is a good thing, though perhaps it is limited to a niche market right now.  

Being able to play and share a game with a friend (or 2 or 3) is invaluable, and seeing the emergence and development of this model has made me for one extremely happy.  

[x4000]

Thanks Delwack, I am completely the same way when it comes to co-op.  I also love L4D and L4D2, and play that with my wife.  Looking forward to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Borderlands this holiday season, too.  Co-op is definitely less popular now, but it is certainly on the rise.  If you haven't seen the site Co-Optimus, you might enjoy them in general because they have great listings up upcoming/current games that can be played in co-op, as well as co-op-specific reviews.  I've been using them to find co-op games since long before AI War was ever popular there, and still do.

[Echo35]

However, that said, I also strongly believe that every game should have co-op, if possible.  Most gamers play singleplayer right now, but with more and more gamers getting married and having kids, etc, that sort of solo activity is going to get increasingly marginalized.  The idea is not to compete with your family, or to go out and dominate others or play with strangers, which is what a lot of current multiplayer offerings seem to be about.  The idea is that when you want to spend time with your family, but you also are itching to play a game, you shouldn't have to choose between those two activities -- you should be able to sit down and play together, and not just in that "pass the controller" style of play, which makes for everyone but one person just sitting there semi-bored the whole time.

This. I play a lot of games offline (And usually only play them online with Friends) but I simply refuse to buy single player only games. There are a lot of good ones out there, I know, but throwing down $50 for 20 hours of game that I can't do jack with once I'm done seems unreal to me.

[eRe4s3r]

Coop has no place in many games and in most its just a superficial gimmick at best, or completely ruins the game (resident evil 5) it ain't survival horror with 2 people.

Risen, DD: Ego Draconis , Deadspace and Anno 1404 - all without coop 
When you don't design a game or a specific campaign around coop then just putting coop in is not going to make it a better game. And in exchange, a coop game needs to make sure it still has a decent SP campaign (which is why for example, Sins of a Solar Empire's / Demigods main critique point is "lack of campaign")

L4D2 is the prime example. Its a terrible SP game and hence I'd never buy it

Though the price point is a good one... The games above definitely are worth the money for the game experience - but L4D ain't worth a single cent for SP gamers.

I wish people would stop saying games need anything except to be fun. And when a feature (coop) makes a game not fun in (SP) then its fail. Sadly, most game designers don't understand that and just want to mark the feature list with +coop +sp.

Maybe i am just grumpy though.. 

[Baleur]

Stardock recently generated a report on their customer base. This is a pretty remarkably open thing to do, if I understand it correctly. At any rate, here's a small excerpt highlighted by FlashOfSteel.com:

"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."

lol, thats because Demigod sucked so bad that most of us uninstalled it after playing the first few missions/skirmishes.
If they'd include some actual GOOD games, it'd be a different story.