Part 2 of Pete's interview with Tom "Zileas" Cadwell of Ethermoon Entertainment continues the behind-the-scenes scoop on the upcoming multiplayer-only "Strifeshadow: Tournament Edition" real-time strategy game.

See Part 1 of the interview here.

Check out Pete's preview of Strifeshadow here.

Sharky Extreme: Are you worried about the game's potential appeal at all? Traditionally, only a small percentage of people actually play multiplayer parts of full games such as Quake.

Zileas: Why should I be? There's no RTS targeting multiplayer very much coming out any time soon, and the last game to really capture the multiplayer market much came out about 3 years ago. Also, 5 years ago, not so many people had an internet connection, and net gaming was laggy at best. Now it's much different. Chances are, if you have a computer, you have a net connection. That alone makes multiplayer much more useful. Also, 5 years ago there weren't very good matchmakers; things all required browser access or a client program, and none were "inside-out" like Starcraft or Dark Reign 2 are (where you can connect from in the game directly to won.net or battle.net or something similar). Now that's no longer the case. The very fact that Starcraft, which is popular as a multiplayer RTS, has around 30 or 40k people at any given time playing online is a staggering statistic. That's just the people playing it on battle.net AND at that particular moment and doesn't include all the people that quit playing. I think the demographic for multiplayer RTS is a lot larger than anyone realizes, and I don't think any big company is willing to take the risk and "test the waters" again. But the evidence is right there - just ask around at a college campus and you'll find that a large percentage of people with computers engage in net gaming. Or look at Korea, where literately 5-10% of the population consists of regular internet gamers. So yes 5 years ago, we'd be nuts to do this, but I think the time is right. The internet is much more accessible, the demand is obviously there, and there have already been "big" multiplayer-only titles. Pretty soon there will be huge multiplayer titles.