{"id":962,"date":"2015-03-24T07:59:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T14:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/?p=962"},"modified":"2016-04-15T07:36:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T14:36:27","slug":"the-most-surprising-thing-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designer-notes.com\/the-most-surprising-thing-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Surprising Thing So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

Offworld Trading Company<\/em> has been out now for six weeks, and\u00a0it’s been a fun ride. We’ve seen some great<\/a> early<\/a> impressions<\/a>.\u00a0We spent three weeks in the top 25 of Steam<\/a>. We’ve seen popular Let’s Play videos from Northernlion<\/a>, quill18<\/a>, Ohmwrecker<\/a>, and Arumba<\/a>\u00a0(although apparently we have to\u00a0wait until after\u00a0Early Access\u00a0to see one from TotalBiscuit<\/a>). Day[9] spent an entire Friday streaming thirteen games<\/a> of\u00a0Offworld<\/em> to around\u00a0four thousand viewers. We’ve seen the fans compile extensive strategy guides<\/a>. We’ve seen players log well over 200 hours<\/a> of play. I was on the front page of Reddit with an AMA<\/a>. We’ve seen the metagame go from thinking that Offworld Markets are\u00a0overpowered, to that\u00a0Hacker Arrays are\u00a0overpowered, to them being fairly balanced (with the help of some game updates).<\/p>\n

However, the most surprising thing about Offworld<\/i> so far, at least to me, is how my wife<\/a> has taken to the game. My wife had, before last month, never played a real-time strategy game or even a tycoon game. Indeed, Leyla\u00a0had never played any PC games at all<\/em>\u00a0besides\u00a0Civ4<\/em>, which she obviously tried just because I made it.\u00a0Civ<\/em> is, of course, turn-based, so it’s the type of game that a non-gamer can enjoy easily.\u00a0Offworld<\/em>, on the other hand, is real-time, intensely competitive, fast-paced, and fairly intimidating for\u00a0new players. Nonetheless, after first seeing the game, she just kept playing and playing and playing. Soon, I would notice\u00a0that Leyla\u00a0was playing when I was away from the house. Then, she started asking each night if, you know, we could play some more\u00a0Offworld<\/em>. Furthermore, she got bored pretty quickly with single-player and even team-based comp stomps and began to play\u00a0online multiplayer. Even more amazing, she got pretty good at it! I’ve attached her multiplayer stats below, and she has been winning roughly 1-in-6 of her games, which means she is doing better than average considering we almost always play 6- or 8-player free-for-all games like this one<\/a>\u00a0or this one<\/a> (which have only one winner).<\/p>\n

\"leyla-mp\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I should also add that in most\u00a0of the\u00a0games Leyla\u00a0has won, she was\u00a0using a trackpad<\/em>;\u00a0because\u00a0she is not a PC gamer, she is usually playing the game from the couch without a mouse, which – needless to say – is not the typical setup for competitive RTS play! (I have begun\u00a0training her how to use a mouse and WASD.)\u00a0Also of note, we released\u00a0Offworld<\/em> 40 days ago today, which means that, with a total of 162 games played, she is averaging FOUR multiplayer games PER DAY. Here is one of the games she won that was saved on my Twitch channel<\/a>:<\/p>\n