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The Most Important Multiplayer Games Ever
Gamasutra's 'Quantum Leap' awards roll on, with game developers voting in the titles they see as the most important multiplayer titles ever made. These are non-massive multiplayer games that significantly advanced the pastime of playing videogames with other people. Some of the listed games are gimmes (Goldeneye, Tribes), but I thought an Anonymous submitter's comment about humble Pokémon was interesting: "Tajiri-san's introduction of the collect and trade concept opened the eyes of every developer, all of whom previously believed multiplayer was either head-to-head or cooperative. What Pokémon created with this breakthrough concept was a true sense of community centered about a game - a kinship among people which transcended the immediate game environment. With the inclusion of real-world Pokémon merchandise, and a constant flow of new, wicked-cute characters, it was easy for anyone to embrace the Pokémon lifestyle...not that I would ever admit to it." Any multiplayer classics you'd add to the list?
Maybe not the first multiplayer game, but viewed as the first multiplayer game saw by the masses.
God spoke to me.
Whatever you can say about "firsts" and "blood vs none" that happened in those days, SF2 was "the" game that popularized the fighting genre like no other. I'm not qualified to say what was "new" or "different" about it, but let's just say that in ONE SITTING with my friends and I, I MORE than covered the cost of the cartridge in games played vs quarters at the arcade. And to think the cartridge was around $80 in early-90s money, think of how many games we played. And that was HARDLY one session.
The original Gauntlet arcade game?
Or the simpsons/xmen-style arcade game? You get four people going at it...oohhhhhhh man, good times good times.
Living With a Nerd
I somehow expected Unreal Tournament to be listed. End of 1999 was a big deal for FPS MultiPlayer, there was Quake3 and Unreal Tournament. Both served a very important part in the future of multiplayer FPS games.
And if it was up to me I would say Unreal Tournament was the more important one of the two.
Cue the swarms of "butbutbut their miserably tiny list didn't have my games! WTF???"
Here's a starter.. they mention two Quake games, but no Doom. WTF???
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Total Annihilation, the first 3D multiplayer strategy game.
Although there are some old school throwbacks, the majority of games on this list are first person shooters. What about other genres? I would think there should at least be a spot on there for an RTS like Warcraft 2 or Command & Conquer. Also, the article specifically does not include MMO's. Why? It hardly seems relevant to make a list of ground breaking multi-player games without at least mentioning Everquest or WOW. And of course there's the glaringly obvious omission of Counterstrike. I like Gamasutra, but this is a pretty poor list.
a little game called Counter-Strike?
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Numerous MUDs for introducing the basic concept. Numerous Arcade / Home Console Classics for further introducing the GUI version of cooperative and adversarial interaction (e.g. Mortal Combat, Pong, Mario Brothers, Gauntlet...) If I had to choose one, I guess it would be Wizard of Wor, both cooperative and adversarial, and one of the first. I really would select Ultima Online except for the fact that it is an MMORPG and that is against the article's stated goal. I would not choose it for its MMORPG state, but for the way groups had to work together and the fact that it was the first of that nature that went big. Even if it hadn't been an MMORPG, the basic concepts were there similar to games like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Etc. that required teamwork beyond you and one other person. Sharing supplies, using skills that augmented and/or supplemented your ally's skills, etc.
for the readers the article was intended for that is generally a single player game
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
And get off my lawn, you damn kids!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I have a few that I don't see on the list...
But that's just my opinions. Not like I'm pulling down that high "games journalist"kind of scratch here...
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They're different animals, to be sure. I started out on consoles and had a heck of a time getting used to NOT being able to keep tabs. Certainly, it's a less realistic mode of play... I just viewed it as a particular gameplay element within the game. My friends and I actually rigged up four TVs, all running the same av feed from an N64, facing away from one another and each 3/4s covered with cardboard (it was the trashiest setup in video game history) so that we could play with 'solo' screens. I'm a big fan of Halo, Half-Life and Gears of War today, but I still say Goldeneye plays better when you can see your opponents' screens. I generally dislike radar in FPS's, too. I just think splitscreen in Goldeneye works for some reason. Nathan
Wikipedia says it all:
M.U.L.E. is a seminal multiplayer video game written in 1983 by Dan Bunten of Ozark Softscape. It was published by Electronic Arts. It was originally written for the Atari 400/800 and then was ported to the Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System and to the IBM PC Jr.. While it played like a game, it was actually an economic simulation taking place on a small colony planet.
In 1996 Computer Gaming World named M.U.L.E. as #3 on its Best Games of All Time list on the PC.
Essentially, the game is an exercise in supply and demand economics that is set in space on the planet Irata (which is Atari backwards) and involves competition among four players. To win the game, the players not only must compete against each other, but they need to cooperate with each other for the survival of the colony. Central to the game is the acquisition and use of "M.U.L.E."s (Multiple Use Labor Element) to develop and harvest the player's real estate which can consist of: Energy, Food, Smithore (from which M.U.L.E.s are constructed), and Crystite. Players must balance supply and demand of these four elements (Crystite is available as an option during Tournament play only) as well as other events such as fires, theft, etc.
M.U.L.E. was revolutionary in the ease with which it allowed multiplayer interaction through a single game/computer console. (Its development came years before the advent of multiplayer Internet connectivity.) Though this failed as a trend setter at the time, the game is still heralded as the first game to make effective use of the multiplayer game concept.
The game was very popular in its day among certain groups. It did not become a bestselling title, but it has more recently become a favorite of retrogaming enthusiasts. Various clones for modern computers exist, the most recent commercial clone published in 2002. The original's addictive theme song by Roy Glover has been widely covered by remix groups.
Dani Bunten (previously Dan Bunten) was working on an Internet version of the game until her death in 1998.
Many game designers cite the game as one of the most revolutionary ever and an inspiration for many of their games. Will Wright dedicated his game The Sims, the greatest selling computer game of all time, to the memory of Bunten.
A modern version of the game entitled Space HoRSE was developed in 2004 by Gilligames and is distributed by Shrapnel Games.
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Having lots of people play it doesn't make it revolutionary. Fact is that WoW is simply an upgrade/clone of EQ, which was an upgrade/clone of UO, which was....
They're just remaking the same game over and over again. If you're going to talk about MMORPGs, then I can really only endorse Ultima Online which started the whole genre, or GuildWars which did away with subscription fees. Neither was particularly revolutionary, though.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
The first multiplayer game I ever really got addicted to was Descent II over a serial link (this predated the time when computers typically had built-in NICs). My dad and I would sometimes fight each other and sometimes play co-op. I remember dialing in and using Kali to emulate a local IPX network so I could play Descent II with people from who-knows-where.
I never got tired of people's responses when they found out that I wasn't using anything but a keyboard while keeping up with the top players in each game B-)
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
While not as much of a contributor to "social multiplayer gaming" as Wii Sports might be, the Super Smash Bros. series definately started the whole "party game" trend that Wii Sports continued.
:)
During my junior and senior year of college, many of my friends were of the opinion that for the most part, one should not watch TV or play video games at a party. Super Smash Brothers was the one exception - It got played at quite a few parties, especially my senior year. Like a previous poster's comments about Goldeneye for N64, it was able to keep a large number of people amused (not just the four actually playing the game) for rather extended periods of time. In fact, I recall one night when our neighbors (who were all close friends of ours, we intentionally got two four-bedroom apartments across the hall from each other) were hosting a party. Prior to attending, many of my apartmentmates decided to play SSB for a bit. Within an hour or so, most of the guests of the neighbor's party were either watching or playing the game in our apartment.
Of course, the fact that we were playing on my LCD projector probably had something to do with it. SSB is amazing on a ten-foot screen.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If you really want to mention the games that paved the way for Everquest (and every other MMO that's ever existed, for that matter), you'll need to look further back than a simple hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler like Diablo. What you're looking for is Ultima Online and just MUDs in general.
Now, to give Diablo credit, it did lead to a bunch of great games in the hack 'n' slash genre, notably the woefully under-appreciated Nox, the console-bound Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series, and the Champions of Norrath series (perhaps that's what you were referring to with Diablo leading to EQ?
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
This is a true groundbreaker. It is still alive here. Developed at Essex University in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle.