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?

Comments

How about Pong?

[CrazyJim1]

Maybe not the first multiplayer game, but viewed as the first multiplayer game saw by the masses.

Re:How about Pong?

[WhodoVoodoo]

I tend to agree, though the difference is that the original Quake spawned a huge online, multiplayer, and modding community by virtue of being timely, expandable, and versatile as hell as well as eventually giving to the greater community through the release of the source code. Also 3 years before Unreal. The article is referring to that aspect of the game. CTF, and RA are the big ones, but even a veeeery early Counterstrike relative was created on Quake, called Gooseman's Guns/Navy Seals. Refer to this interview here

Quake definitely ignited the online FPS phenomenon, even though UT certainly refined it quite significantly, quake is responsible for countless mods, still played in some form to this day, the half-life franchise was built on the engine (as well as countless other games on Id engines) and who can forget The Adventures of Dank and Scud?

I'm uncertain about this, but I believe Quake was also the first game able to take advantage of consumer video cards for hardware acceleration.

Street Fighter 2

[Erioll]

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.

Re:Street Fighter 2

[digidave]

I wasted way too much of my life back then on Street Fighter II.

From my perspective, what SFII did to revolutionize video games is create a massive social aspect to visiting an arcade. It was not at all uncommon to see twenty or more people gathered around one arcade machine trying to keep track of who had their quarter in next. You could play complete strangers and have long conversations about the merits of Ryu vs. Ken, if Vega was a "cheap" character and how last week you saw some asian dude beat everyone while using Chun-Li.

When Champion Edition came out my friends and I traveled to arcades all over the city where we heard they had the game. I got kicked out of my favorite pizza parlor for "stringing" the game (taping a thread to a quarter to get tons of games).

I made more friends playing SFII than I did doing any other activity in my youth, including playing sports and going to school.

I have fond memories of the game, but I have no desire to buy the XBLA version of it. I've long since grown beyond those kinds of games.

How about...

[Pojut]

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.

TA

[jcgam69]

Total Annihilation, the first 3D multiplayer strategy game.

How about some other genres

[Itchyeyes]

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.

UMMMM CS?

[otacon]

a little game called Counter-Strike?

Re:The classic multiplayer 'game'

[otacon]

for the readers the article was intended for that is generally a single player game

My own uninformed opinions

[ReverendLoki]

I have a few that I don't see on the list...

• StarCraft - Not much needs to be said here. It took a lot of what already existed in RTS gaming and gave it multiplayer. Also of note is the fact that it managed to decently balance non-identical sides. As for overall impact, just look at what it's added to the multiplayer lexicon. Paired with Battle.net gave it a distinct leg up for finding other players over C&C or AoE or the like.
• Team Fortress Classic - There are many many great HL mods out there, a number of which you could pick out for this list, including the infamous favorite Counter-Strike and one of my favorites, Natural Selection (balanced disparate teams, and probably the first to combine FPS and RTS wel). But I really like TFC, so I'm gonna talk about it instead. It had the kit system like Tribes, but without the learning curve. I could join a game of TFC for a quick half-hour of enjoyment - in some other games, a half hour is about what it takes to get to your enemy. It balanced simplicity and strategy well.
• Dungeons and Dragons - OK, not necessarily a computer game, but still. It's influence on computer games has been incredible. A major inspiration behind nethack, almost all of the MUDS in the world, and who knows how many other dungeon crawling games.

But that's just my opinions. Not like I'm pulling down that high "games journalist"kind of scratch here...

Re:Doom 2

[NathanRF]

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

Re:Joust, dammit

[Sponge Bath]

Megane: You see kids, you played a medieval knight flying around on an ostrich and avoiding pterodactyls.

Kids: Mom, grandpa is having acid flashbacks again.