I'll try both, but so far I think Demigod will shape out to be a better game. We'll see though, no point in putting loyalty into something that hasn't proven itself yet. That just defies logic. And the older generation should never complain about graphics, we grew up on nes and sega and loved it; we know gameplay > graphics always and forever.

I also want to echo the worries about targeting "casual gamers". The foundation behind it is solid; there's simply more of them these days that are willing to pay the same as us for less of a game and are far easier to sell to. Typically from what I've seen though, it's harder to please them and us at the same time. Not that we're "hardcore" or anything crazy, the main problem comes from typically more challenging games not being popular to casual gamers. These games take time to become better at much like playing basketball is the best way to become better at it.

Few want to invest this time into a hobby and want to spend an hour or two a week and play at the same level as someone who plays a bit more. Dota and HOSK are examples of this, casual players always get torn up because they never become better (or become better too slowly).

The problem with targeting casual gamers is that by definition they don't stay with games for very long.  You can count on casuals to go out and buy a lot of games over the course of each year, but they'll only spend enough time with each game to have some fun a few hours a week and then eventually move on to the next thing that sounds interesting.

"Hardcore" players might make up a smaller portion of the playerbase, but they'll be sure to buy expansions and keep the game going.

Unless you have a subscription or other time-delayed model of income for your game, the "hardcore" are irrelevant to actual success. It looks good (to the small subset that even sees it) to have a few thousand people playing after a year, but when it comes to the money, it doesn't actually matter.

Well, in one sense, you're wrong, because the "hardcore" players who stick with the game will buy exansions that you release.  Casuals won't.

In another sense, you are right.  It's not necessarily in the developer's interest money-wise for the game to last any longer than the buying public will be interested in getting a copy of the game.  But I don't really care about how much money they make.  If I invest time into a game, I want there to be a community that develops around the game and lasts for a while (at least a couple years).  That means that the game will need to be enticing for the "hardcore" players that will actually play it for more than a couple weeks.

The target demographic for most games is going to be somewhere between casual and hardcore... It's really the modders that keep games going... Whether or not they are "hardcore" depends on the modder themselves I guess. Some may play hardcore, and others might just enjoy the modding and rarely play the game.

Why wouldn't they buy the expansions? They'll buy them and not play them for long (as they did with the original) - meaning we're at the same situation again. They paid, mission accomplished.

The new trend of standalone expansions makes this all the more pronounced, because every expansion is also an original game - reaching a bigger crowd by having less prerequisites.

I don't think so.  Casuals will usually have already moved on to another game by the time an expansion comes out.  They're much less likely to go out and buy them, especially after the first expansion.  Plus, once a game has released an expansion it's much more difficult to get anybody with only "casual" interest in the game to buy it because they're likely to feel like it's a larger investment (need to buy original + expansion[s]).

In any case, I'm not really concerned with what kind of game proves to be the best business model.  When I talk about what I want from the game, and what makes a good game, I'm not talking about what will sell.  To be honest, if the devs wanted to make a game that would fly off the shelves they could have made a WWII shooter, since people never seem to get tired of those.

The best games are the ones that cater to hardcore players while still offering an approachable and fun experience for casuals with the hope of drawing casuals in beyond mere casual play.

That's actually not true.  One of the reasons for expansion packs is that it brings the casual players back to playing the game.

With Demigod, the objective is to have the game evolve so that it supports both casual players and competitive players. So more and more of the updates as we go along will allow casual players to get what they want out of the game while also catering to the competitive players. I wouldn't be surprised to see distinct communities emerge from that.

The pantheon in Demigod at release is really just a test bed.  In the long-run, we would love to support things like custom mod versions of Demigod where people can create and set up their own teams and their own tournaments.  Meanwhile, casual players will be able to easily get together with friends or just join games where it will find suitable matches based on a number of criteria.

It'll be awhile before all that sort of thing goes in but at least there you have a road map of what we'd like to do.