Okay, I've been reading a lot of different interpretations of forum comments that I or mods have made on the release of Oculus (which officially was announced today).
First, I want to give a big hand to Gas Powered Games who did an incredible job on Oculus. He is amazing! Make sure you read up on his story which you can view by clicking on the arrow button in the Demigod selection screen by his portrait.
As was the case with Demon Assassin, Gas Powered Games didn't take the easy way out. They could probably have gotten away with just reskinning existing Demigods with a mix of powers and called it a day. But they didn't. In both cases, they made sure they got new and interesting abilities that add strategic depth to the game.
The Demon Assassin's swap ability is just killer (often literally). Oculus's chain lightning is extremely fun.
Second, I want to address some of the flame wars that came up on the forum. As some of you know, in order to release Oculus we had to release an update to Demigod. That update included directions on how to add him to your account manually. In hindsight, that shouldn't have been put in the release notes but rather simply waited until he was officially announced.
The confusion some users had in trying to add him to their account prior to the web page being updated created considerable angst on all sides. The original idea was to have a store page where users would "buy" him for $0 in order to determine the level of interest in DLC content that may not always be free.
However, it was decided that we would just let users add him to their Demigod account by logging into multiplayer (after that, they can play him SP as well). We can, with that, still determine the number of active users there are to determine what opportunities there may be in the future.
Third, with regards to future DLC, as I said previously, these two Demigods are the two promised free demigods. They represent the last two free ones Stardock will be paying to have developed. Future content in the form of maps or demigods would have to be paid for. On in other words, we ponied up to have GPG make these two, but future ones have to be paid for by players if it is determined there's a sufficient market for them. I realize some people are upset and clearly the easier path is to just not say anything but part of what makes Stardock what it is is that we try to be transparent on such things.
Fourth, As the North American publisher of Demigod (Atari is the worldwide retail publisher of Demigod other than NA), we will continue to forward to GPG all player requests, problem reports, etc.
Fifth, It is our intention to lobby to have player created mods integrated into the game for future updates to choose from. There have been some outstanding tweaks and changes made to the game by players that we would really like to see in the game but the ultimate decision goes with the owner of the game -- Gas Powered Games. But having worked with them for over a year now, I can say that GPG is very customer focused and so I don't foresee any issues there.
So go have fun! I'll see you online.
