as you've got the numbers, how does this compare to other online games you sell? e.g. sins

So this begs the question... why bother supporting it?

Hmmm.....do I trust CEO of Stardock or brjoha?

Ill go with CEO of Stardock.

I expect strategy games to have multiplayer. Period. Having the option available is a big difference than not having it period.

It's way way higher than Sins still.  

There's still something like 5X more people playing Demigod online than Sins.  A bad day for Demigod is still a high day for Sins because Sins is almost completely played single player. 

But Sins has a great single player experience. Demigod is more geared towards MP.  

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.  The games I design are single player centric.  

But I think most gamers do expect support for MP.  

Another way to look at it is that a lot of people who do play online want to play with people they know.

What I meant by the question is that if only a small percentage of consumers actually go online (some here have asserted it's as little as 5-10%), is it worth the investment in functionality and infrastructure to support online play?

That's a question I can't really answer.

In the games I design or develop on, I am very biased towards single player.  As a gamer, I prefer to play online. As a greedy capitalist dog making games, I prefer to focus on single player.

The Reticule has a nice interview with dev Chris Park that deals in large part with the trend of a vast silent majority of RTS gamers who never touch the multiplayer component.  He doesn't go into percentages but it seemed topical. 

http://thereticule.com/2009/10/chris-park-ai-war-interview-part-one/

Custom Content is where MP lies in games like this. Look at WC3, people will buy 7 copies of the Battlechest if need be to have everyone play (done it myself). When/if the custom content creation is any good in this game then you can bet that the multiplayer will explode, making it all worthwile.

I'm one of the "complete casual noobs" that DalzK talks about.  I bought the game because I love Stardock and I thought the game was pretty good... I don't know how many would play it offline singleplayer regularly other than me.  I can say that Rostrom is correct about custom content being vital to multiplayer.  WC3 was one of the few multiplayer games that I enjoyed because of all the different custom maps you pretty much get for free.

I think MP is entertaining and engaging whereas SP is more relaxing and has opportunities to be fufilling in other ways e.g. from a storytelling perspective. The AI can never entertain me for more than a few skirmish matches except in turn based games which is possibly the one instance where the single player side is superior to multiplayer - and thats just a matter of convenience, if I can organise it I like to play civ4 with a couple of friends.

Its just a matter of personality I guess, I don't enjoy winning or acheivements unless I feel they were hard earned

Those who stay in single player (the 90-95%, and I'm pretty trusting of that figure as well) are also far less likely to participate in the community by modding and talking on the forums. In this sense, I feel a significant part of creating a good experience is to foster a good online community, because even if the 90% don't participate actively in it, many will reap the rewards of custom content that the online community will generate.

You will also never get a game as big as something like Starcraft or CounterStrike if you neglect multi player. Blizzard put in the hard yards with SC improving it for 7ish years before it became what it is today, but if there hadn't been an online community to build around I doubt they could have patched in multiplayer 1 year on and still had a playerbase to talk to.

As for why so many don't go online, I think DG actually does a good job of being noob friendly, which is exactly what traditional RTS isn't. A noob can jump into a DG game and have a rough game, but I wouldn't describe it as "heart crushing" or stressful when losing a game of DG. Playing ranked 1v1 DoW2 for example is the complete opposite, I focus 100% on what I'm doing, I don't listen to music, I lock my room so people can't distract me, I turn off IM, and I'm frequently mentally and physically exhausted at the end of a tight game. This doesn't appeal to a lot of people, they try their first RTS online (pick any of them) and come up against someone who plays to win and lose ALL their their stuff and are steamrolled for their first 10-20 games.

It takes time and effort to get good enough to compete and this just isn't what most gamers want. I think DG does a great job at lowering the entrance bar enough that you can jump into a game and within maybe 2-3 games you would be proficient enough to contribute, which is a far cry from losing 500 - 0 for your first 20 games of DoW/CoH.

Then there's the fact that all the RTS junkies move from game to game (except the SC/War3 crowds) so everytime you start playing a new game, you're are going to be coming up against the same people with the same micro skills to kick your ass from day 1.

Basically if you like the idea of online RTS go play Starcraft for 6 months so you are pushed to get good at controlling units, critical thinking, proper strategising, macro/micro etc. and then you'll be able to jump into any game and be moderately/very good at it. 90-95% of people don't want to do this, and so they stay in SP, and who can blame them really...online RTS is about 100x less forgiving than online FPS where everyone can contribute a bit (CS/TF2) within a few hours of play.