Not Enough Online Console Games?

Thanks to GameSpot for their 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing the relative lack of certain online console games. The author focuses on "the fighting genre [as] the most blatant example" of this dearth, with only Capcom Vs. Snk 2 EO for Xbox currently playable online. He also mentions the PS2 as lacking depth of online titles, claiming "A steady flow of online PS2 games would have been nice. But the last one released was... wait for it... Chessmaster." Were you also expecting to be "seeing almost every game coming out with some kind of online support" by now, or are current online titles enough for you?

Comments

And how do you have a fighting game online?

[Radix37]

Fighting games require fast reflexes to win against good players. If you'd have lag more than 25-50 milliseconds the game would not play right at all. That means the game would be limited to LAN play pretty much.

Racing games could probably deal with more lag, but after 150 ms probably not since when you get cars close together you need the fast reflexes again.

Strangely, chessmaster may just be the best console game you can have online for now :-\ Oh and rpgs and mmorpgs too.

Re:And how do you have a fighting game online?

[wynterwynd]

Friends of mine who have Capcom vs SNK 2 EO have complained of some lag problems at times, but from what they say it's not as bad as you would think. There's a relatively small amount of information being passed by a 2D fighting game so unless you hit a hard lag spike or just have a really bad connection to your opponent, the game plays smoothly.

Re:And how do you have a fighting game online?

[cyranose]

I realize it may be heretical to say this, but lag isn't the heart of the problem IMO -- it's a convenient whipping boy, but for most games, lag can generally be overcome with predictability of motion, rollback, and good spatial reasoning to keep the circuits optimized.

The thing with twitch games is that there's almost no predictability for when a player will trigger a move, but there's full predictability of motion once the moves are triggered. A well-designed animation system should be able to take advantage of that to make up for late triggers. For example, a non-networked game may be designed to know the outcome of any given pair of player moves as soon as the button is pressed. Design it instead to resolve the move-pair based on late input and you're halfway there. The main artifact of latency, then, is that moves may seem to start late (as late as the late-ncy), but their ends and their results are still synchronized and well-behaved.

Just some thoughts.

Re:And how do you have a fighting game online?

[Babbster]

If high pings (greater than 50 ms) are so crippling, then how does anyone playing a first-person shooter ever hit anyone else since they're often require reflexes just as twitchy as a fighting game? You are aware, aren't you, that a millisecond is one-thousandth of a second? That means that in order for lag to really be noticeable, the ping has to [at LEAST] go pretty darn high (probably quite a bit higher than 200 ms).

I think you're overestimating gamer reflexes just a bit. If you're reacting to things displayed on screen in less than 50 ms then you're probably a computer yourself. Don't forget, too, that with broadband connections pings of less than 100 ms between two computers are not at all uncommon. Not to mention the fact that in a fighting game, the two consoles are ONLY communicating with each other - unlike an FPS where a lot more connections may have to be maintained.

In short, I'm afraid you're just plain mistaken. Smart programming and broadband internet connections can easily make online fighting games not only playable but fun.

Re:And how do you have a fighting game online?

[JavaLord]

Fighting games require fast reflexes to win against good players. If you'd have lag more than 25-50 milliseconds the game would not play right at all. That means the game would be limited to LAN play pretty much.

Having played just about every fighting game online that has been available, I can tell you that the lag isn't always an issue. I played MK2 and SF2 on XBand for the SNES (which was a 28.8 modem IIRC) and the lag wasn't too bad. Capcom vs SNK2 on Xbox does feel like it has lag problems at times (I've played over 1000 games on there), which is a joke because there is a free add on for MAME called kaillera which I was playing on a few years ago and handled lag better than the X-Box.

The point is, it can be done and there is a market just WAITING for it to be done right. Capcom vs SNK2 EO was a below average game by capcom standards and included a new cheezy fighting system which turned off long time players (EO). Still I went out and bought an X-box just for the chance to play a capcom game online against a bigger audence than kaillera had. I'm sure plenty of other people are just waiting too.

Re:And how do you have a fighting game online?

[edwdig]

I can tell you right now from my game programming experience that 100ms is a very significant amount of time.

About 6 years ago or so I was writing a Pacman game that was based off a timer going off 10 times per second. I checked the keyboard status every time the timer went off. I found out that that approach would miss about 50% of all keystrokes. I had to modify the code to track keypresses via interrupts, and keep track of keys that were pressed and released between frames.

FPS's can get away with it because the exact time you're holding the button down usually doesn't make a difference. Prediction errors can be hidden very easily. Something like Smash Bros. or F-Zero would be a very different story.

Re:And how do you have a fighting game online?

[*BBC*PipTigger]

I'm no expert... hope to become one someday... but I've worked on a console fighting game (Celebrity Deathmatch which should be available in two weeks... it's always two weeks away ;P ) && I am a fighting-game afficionado.

I disagree with you. Animation systems are not the heart of the problem when developing online twitch games. It may seem like a good answer to cut animation duration in the name of synchronization but this is infuriating to experience. You grow accustomed to precisely how long it takes to perform animations, jumps, movements... && disturbing these to compensate for lag would only appease button-mashers who don't even notice 56k lag anyway.

I would say the heart of the problem goes up the design chain of responsibility. Online play must be designed in! This may seem obvious but think of how many games are in development right now && are going to have online play bolted on midway (or 11th hour) into development. Designers, producers, publishers, && the platform company (Sony,Nin,MS) must agree on this issue early while the game design is being formulated. Sony came back to Celebrity Deathmatch as we were supposed to be entering beta saying they wouldn't approve it unless we incorporated online multiplayer. I understand why they wanted that && would try to require it (hell, I would have loved good online options too)... but adding something fundamental to the core of a game engine which is over 2 years into development as it readies for release is evil && cruel. So the heart of the problem is the decision makers who are not forthcoming about including online play (or any other fundamental feature) into the early design phases of development.

The next problem is most definitely lag! Lag is not a whipping boy or scapegoat for no reason. Competitive (primarily head-to-head) games have been enjoyed in arcades && living rooms for over a decade with sub-frame (less than 1/60th-of-a-second) latency. Predictability works in FPS && RTS because there can be momentum, trajectory, fudge-factor in the game model... but games which depend on exacting execution where animation activation begins the same frame of the input cannot be easily messed with. The game would feel squishy to discerning players if single-player animations shrank or stretched for lag compensation. This would give hiccups in latency the power to permit crazy bogus things to happen.

Is there hope? Yes. Uncongested internet routes can support sub-frame latency. As latency (ping times are what matter... how long it takes any data to get to the server && back... as opposed to throughput which is how much data can be sent continuously) improves through adoption of better connections, equipment, protocols, etc., sub-frame latency will become reliably available at least between a time zone or two (although the requirements to cross oceans approaches light speed which may never be feasible).

Lag is a real problem which can be solved over time (at least within your own country). I can't imagine future games needing to be more accurate time-wise than a frame to be fun but it is possible. Nearly every modern fighting game has JustFrames (JF) which require frame precision on input. Soul Calibur II, Guilty Gear XX, Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, Tekken 4, etc. all do. With practice, people can press the right buttons on exact 60ths. These abilities can be integral to fighting strategy so fudging animations would disturb this performance precision && would be unacceptable at high levels of serious play (ie. competitions). Online gaming likely has a bright future but I find the social atmosphere && camaraderie of an arcade or even competitive living room more fun. In my opinion, either hanging out && playing casually

Yeah..

[ziggles]

I was hoping more online games had come out. Not because I want to play more online games. I just want this "ONLINE IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING!!!" thing to die.. which it will once the console gamers realize online gaming really isn't all that exciting.

Fun, important part of gaming? Yes. The future of gaming? No.

Re:Yeah..

[Cap-America]

The people saying "ONLINE IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING!!!" are like the people in the 80's saying "VIDEO IS THE FUTURE OF THE PHONE!!!"

It maybe some day, we just not ready as of now.

This isn't the Generation for Online Games

[Cap-America]

Truthfully I could care less about Online games on a console. And I feel Nintendo is taking the right stand with Online games with this gen of Consoles.

Only 9% of Internet traffic is due to Online gaming, that includes Console and Computers and out of that 9% only 8% is Console games the other 92% is Computer.
So You only have a really small group of people who want online games that make allot of noise about it.
MS Loses 100s of Millions of dollars on Xbox Line each quarter. Online gaming makes 0 money back. And out of all the Xbox owners out there only 10% actually have Xbox Live. Kind of sad when you think about it, especially when this is suppose to be your selling feature.

Online games just isn't a money makeing factor in this generation, maybe next gen when more users have Cable or better.

oh and just another tidbit to toss in less the 24% of people online actually have cable or better. So 76% has AOL, Earthlink, NetZero, MSN or any other 56K phone-line provider.

Re:This isn't the Generation for Online Games

[Babbster]

1. Where do you get your data that Microsoft is losing "100s of Millions of dollars" on Xbox "Line" (I assume you meant "Live") every quarter? That has the smell of hyperbole.

2. Online gaming makes "0 back" for Sierra/Valve/Id (before Steam, anyway) too. Should they have dropped online support?

3. You ARE aware that Sony has online console gaming, too, right (and are, in fact, stepping up their online plans)? Or is this just another opportunity to bash Microsoft and the Xbox for being stupid?

As for your overall point, that "This isn't the Generation for Online Games," I would only say this: I play online console games and I enjoy them quite a bit. Many others do, too. I say if Microsoft and Sony are going to provide the option, why not take advantage of it? I couldn't really care less what kind of profit is in online play for the console manufacturers and software developers. If it's that horrible for them, they won't provide the capability. While they do provide it, however, I'll just keep on using it.

fps&rts

[Dreadlord]

checking gamespy stats shows that the most popular online games are FPS and RTS games, and both genres can't be played very well with consoles, due to the nature of console gamers and the console controls.
I guess these are some reasons why online console gaming isn't that popular.
just my $0.02

Chessmaster?

[paulychamp]

I hardly believe Chessmaster was the last online game to come out. In fact, yesterday, I picked up ESPN Football and it is chock full of online features (downloadable rosters, online leagues, etc). I'd say every major (EA, Sega, Microsoft) sports game that comes out for 2004 will have online features.

Maybe not everyone *wants* online games?

[shish]

From Mr Biffo's column in edge ( http://www.edge-online.com/ )

Ahh... online gaming, how I've tried to love ye. Really tried. But you're just not doing it for me. It's not like I don't want to, I mean, those bigger boys said you would, you know, show me a good time. The sorry fact is, on the occasions when I have taken the plunge, and invited you to woo me, I've come away disappointed and flacid. No matter how hard I pump my enthusiasm gland, the most I can muster is a tiny dribble of interest from my curiosity duct. Meanwhile, my apathy anus is working overtime, pumping out a stream of rancid fumes, accompanied by an undulating, organic hiss.

Amen.

I love online games

[WildBeast]

I play MechAssault, RTCW, Midnight Club 2, Midtown Madness and soon I'll be playing ESPN's NHL online. I have yet to buy the PS2 online adapter though because I'm still waiting for them to come out with a good online game and the fact that the PS2 online games don't have voice chat is disappointing.

Apparently Mario Kart will be online enabled and if it gets good reviews then maybe I'll buy a GC just for it. Playing Mario Kart online will be great.

I'm still waiting for upgraded tech...

[Not_Wiggins]

What good's a fighting game across a network if you can't actually kill the person you're playing? ;)

Now *that* would be some real "Running Man"-level entertainment! ;)

Do we *need* online games?

[EvilOpie]

Now honestly, I do like online games for the fact that there is almost always someone willing to play you at any hour of the day, and they don't have to be in your living room to do it. But I swear that some games just weren't meant to be played online. After all, get some friends together and play console games. They're a lot of fun when you can yell at the person who's in the same room as you. :-)

And there are other reasons too that consoles are better without being online. Granted this comic talks about arcade games, but the concept is the same with console games too. If your opponent is being an ass, you can always hit them since they're most likely right next to you. A lot of the k1dd13z online are just a pain to deal with, and they do nothing but ruin the fun.

How to make fighting games work online.

[JavaLord]

Being a huge fan of fighting games, and having played in (and won) quite a few tournaments I am always trying out new fighting games when they come online. I've played everything from X-Band Mortal Kombat to net fighter(ugg) to Capcom vs SNK EO. Each game, or system had it's own unique problems that kept it from really catching on. Still, there is a huge market of people who would play fighting games online if they worked and were promoted correctly.

Take an old game like Mortal Kombat 2,add a few characters to it, some new moves and fatalities and re-release it as an online game. Since it's older it should have less data you have to push over the network in order to play, plus people know how to play already and will want to play again for the new features and to play other people.

On top of that, announce an online tournament with $10,000 in prizes to be held 1 year after the release of the game. You will probably hook everyone who played the game before plus some new players.

This would work even better for capcom. I would bet if capcom re-released their old games in online form they would get more sales than they did from capcom vs SNK EO. For capcom, they could release a collection of fighting games on one disk. "Capcom Olympics" or something like that. Put Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (for the really old school players), Street Fighter Alpha (the most popular tournament SF game), Marvel Super Heros (The most well balanced capcom fighting game), X-Men vs Streetfighter (for the scrubs) on there. Hell, even throw in puzzle fighter (for the chicks). Hold a tournament for each game, and keep track of the overall score of the players.

tried and true gameplay + online features = money

Bah, who needs online gaming?

[Man In Black]

Back in my days, we'd get our friends to simply come over to our house if we wanted to play a game with more than one player. We were content with only a quarter of the screen for Mario Kart 64, and dammit, we liked it that way!

I've never really been very impressed with online gaming. Unless you can actually interact with the person you're playing against, they might as well just be a computer controller opponent. And stupid add-ons like the Dreamcast microphone for Alien Front Online doesn't cut it (trust me, I have it, and it was never any good). I'm certainly not going to pay $10 a month to play against against some nerd who plays the game 25 hours a day.

The only way any console is going to succeed with online support is if the system comes with the hardware you need. PC's generally come with what they need (or you got it anyways because you wanted the internet), and online gaming seems pretty successful for computer. The Dreamcast came with a modem, and there were quite a few games that supported it (although some of the support was a little odd, like downloading ghost cars in racing games, or downloading "fighting data" in Street Fighter Alpha 3). If Sony and Microsoft want their new hardware to have big online followings, they have to include this stuff with the system, because 80% of the owners are casual and probably won't bother to buy any goofy accessories.

Midway

[butane_bob2003]

We were working on online gaming at Midway before my team was laid off. After killing off Wavenet (networked arcade games, I came on just as it died), the business heads put us to work on MTN (Midway Tournament Network). After they killed that too, we started working on XBOX and PS2 network stuff, but by then most of us had been laid off. Midway had decided that networking would not be a big thing in the game market for another 5-7 years. (this was in 2001) Maybe they were right? Lag is my biggest problem when playing online. Playing head to head twitch games is not so much fun when your commands preceed your character's actions by a noticeable interval. There is only so much you can do in software to make up for lag conditions, any game that has a critical timing element will suffer at some point. Some games are just not very networkable.