Greetings!
So where do things stand with Demigod as of mid June with our favorite action RTS/RPG game?
Let's dig into this with some frequent questions I get messaged.
Q: Who are you?
A: Frogboy = Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock
Q: Who makes Demigod?
A: The award-winning developer Gas Powered Games is the developer of Demigod. However, as some may have noticed from Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod, Stardock gets very involved in the games it publishes. The most recent example being when Demigod's MP connectivity was problematic during the initial launch, we assigned our own developers to fix it.
Q: What is the status of on-line connectivity.
A: Pretty much perfect now in custom games. I.e. as good or better than any RTS out there. That said, we can't control what happens in-game with people who disconnect or have shaky connections. We take the data and send it to Gas Powered Games to see if there's anything that can be improved.
Q: How good is the online experience now?
A: I'm highly biased but I would say it's generally pretty awesome IMO -- now. That said, I have a long list of complaints:
1. Rage quitting. v1.1 will let teams concede and we're going to start rating people based on the % of games they complete/concede ([good],[fair],[poor]) so other people can choose to play with them and in pantheon/skirmish games it will be biased towards those who complete a game (or at least concede as a team).
2. "Random" disconnects. These don't tend to be as random as they look. There are people who have, to be put mildly, non-ideal Internet connections. I had almost forgotten the term "ISDN" until playing online. This happens in every game but it is still something on our list to work with GPG in making better.
3. Pantheon / Skirmish quitters. Biggest problem here is where people quit pantheon games before they start. I mean literally quit. The solution I think here is to let people join as groups which is something we're talking to GPG about doing in a future update.
But as some have observed, I tend to be a glass is half empty guy. In all honesty, I'd say that Demigod is the funnest game I've played online in years - since Total Annihilation for me. YMMV.
Q: How are sales?
A: Mixed. Digital sales are great. Retail sales need work. We are hoping word of mouth on the game will encourage people to go to their local retailer and pick up the game.
Q: Where are the two new Demigods?
A: We're still working out the details with GPG. They're heavily into Supreme Commander 2 but they are working on more Demigods. We are leaning towards having both Demigods being assassins since they are, statistically, the most popular. One good, one evil.
Q: When is v1.1 due to be released.
A: Next week.
Q: What are the next updates beyond v1.1 going to focus on?
A: Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest.
Q:Why isn't Gas Powered Games on the forums?
A: They are reading the forums, I can assure you. They're just extremely busy working on the actual game. I don't code on Demigod so I have the luxury of being able to hang out with you guys and actually play on the game.
Q: I get confused over developers and publishers. Could you explain this more?
A: Sure. Stardock develops and publishes games. It developed, for example, Galactic Civilizations I/II and The Political Machine. It published Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod.
When we publish, we get heavily involved on the game design to a very large degree (in Sins we worked closely with Ironclad on everything from what each frigate and cruiser did as well as the economic system, in Demigod, we were heavily involved with the flags and citadel upgrade concepts) but we don't write any code for the game itself but ultimately (after the initial release) ended up writing a lot of the connectivity code to replace the licensed system we had used.
The next game we're developing ourselves is Elemental. That's one we're developing and publishing.
Q: When are you going to fix "the balance" in Demigod.
A: You losing a game to someone doesn't imply an imbalanced game. V1.1 will be tweaking things like Heart of Life and numerous other things but no, <Insert Demigod here that ticked you off in last night's game> is not over powered.
Q: How do you plan to keep the community growing?
A: We're now close enough that I can tell you have a new feature that will be going into beta. It's called ReadyToPlay(TM). It will help you get groups of people together for games.
We are also going to have official tournaments after v1.1. The rankings you see today are going to disappear after v1.1 now that the early cheese issues and data reporting is taken care of better.
Overall, the community seems to be growing pretty steadily in terms of # of games played per day.
But the main thing about the stats is that MY stats will get reset because I can assure you any time I lose it's due to the other guy's demigod being over powered, the other guy cheating somehow, or some bug. There is no other possible reason as I think you would all agree... 
