Brad Wardell talks Demigod launch

[bkd69]

http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/article/352561/Demigod_So_what_the_hell_happened

Yet another entry in the game developer lecture series that constitutes Brad Wardell's blog.

This time he talks about just what went wrong during the launch of Demigod, with lots of juicy techie tidbits regarding multiplayer networking architecture and design.

But the more interesting points to me, as a gamer, are these:

Q: How are Demigod?s sales?

A: They?re considerably better than Galactic Civilizations II?s but slightly less than Sins of a Solar Empire at the same time. However, there are a lot of variables.

and

Q: What is publisher Stardock planning to do for Demigod players?

A: The plan is to send out an email this week to users who purchased Demigod prior to today with a coupon for 50% off of Demigod that they can give to their friends.

That last item is similar to what I've long thought publishers and developers should reward launch day purchasers with, especially with multiplayer games.

 

[cainx10a]

I bought mine yesterday, does that mean I miss the chance to get a coupon? Damnit, it's Futureshop's fault, they didn't have it on the shelf last week!

I wonder though, if all game had to rely on the developer to make use of servers to host the actual game content (like guild wars and Stardock's upcoming Elemental), would this really hamper piracy? I mean, was Guild Wars ever pirated for example, maybe, some idiot downloaded the torrent, (in fact, the client can be downloaded free of charge), and installed it, only to find out, he/she/it needs a legit account to log-in.

 

[Rivana]

I really enjoy the game, it is quite fun. The multiplayer issues were really annoying but it has been a little better recently. I know that Stardock and GPG are definitely going to support the game so I don't have any regrets from buying the game.