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Too Much Multiplayer In Today's Games?
hornedrat writes "Gamepro discusses the idea that modern games put too much emphasis on multiplayer, and that players aren't as concerned about it as developers think. 'The current environment encourages developers to unnecessarily toss multiplayer into their games without caring about it — or even considering whether anyone will bother playing it. It’s like they're checking an invisible quota box that demands multiplayer's inclusion.' Personally I agree that too much emphasis is placed on competitive multiplayer. I play online, but only with my brother in games that allow co-operative modes, like Rainbow Six: Vegas and ARMA 2. 'My point isn't that developers shouldn't try and conquer Halo or Call of Duty. We'd never have any progress in this industry if developers didn't compete. Game companies, however, should think carefully about what they want their games to be, and more important, gamers should consider what they want. If a developer wants to eclipse Halo, then by all means, pour that effort into a multiplayer mode that's different.' I would be interested to know how many gamers really care about the multiplayer components of the games they buy."
I rarely ever use the multiplayer parts of the games that I own. I don't like griefers and the such. I just want to play the game and complete the quests and such. I don't need the harassment and bother that these jerks bring to the games. I buy games to have fun, not be frustrated.
Well... I never play multiplayer, so I've just stopped playing all together!
This is blinging
But you also rely on other people playing those games as well. What if I find a niche game now that allows players to run dedicated servers, but at the game's peak there are only 150 people playing online at any given time? You can bet that no matter how much I love the multiplayer, I just won't be able to get the same satisfying experience five years down the line when most of the playerbase has moved on. I could either spend a good deal of time and effort trying to keep a multiplayer community alive or I could just accept that all multiplayer games have a lifespan limited by player interest. There is no similar limit to the lifespan of a single-player game.
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Making a big part of the game online is the only way publishers (developers tend not to care as much) can ensure they can have some sort of effective copy protection (since DRMs don't work because they don't control the client...but they sure as hell can control the servers).
Obviously that doesn't apply to peer-to-peer multiplayers that don't require any interaction with a central server. Sure, you can have an independent server to bypass the need of the main one, but then you lose a big chunk of the community. Not 100% effective, but sure as hell more effective than 99.9999% of DRM out there, so publishers go that route.
How many time do you hear hardcore pirates going "Bah, im gonna buy this game, I want to play online". I know I do almost daily... (yes, daily)
The problem with multi-player is that it depends on an online server today which will shut down in time.
Not if it's local multiplayer with one machine and two to four gamepads, like Bomberman series or Smash Bros. series or Tetris Party. Not all multiplayer games have to be FPS or RTS. With the rise of HDTV, it's even practical for PC games to get in on this act.
Devs need to have multiplayer be an afterthought after designing a core, solid single player experience. Either that or have an established user base or famous IP behind the multiplayer.
Take Halo for example, it started as a great single player story with a great combat system (and a second buddy allowed to bum around with you but not shown on cutscenes), and local multiplayer that became extremely popular.
Halo 2 followed the story (but was considered a story flop compared to the first) but turned the multiplayer into quite possibly one of the most thriving multiplayer systems in at least console history. Halo 3 comes around and incorporates even more multiplayer into the campaign, and again continues the multiplayer. It all started with a core single player experience.
COD4, that started the whole FPS as RPG experience, had a comparatively short story mode, but, what a surprise, they started the franchise with COD that was primarily a top notch single player experience. So again, they built upon a successful single player franchise to create a very popular multiplayer experience.
Starcraft, just to point out this isn't limited to FPS, built upon a solid single player experience and was also the first of the craft games to have multiplayer, unsurprisingly it became a crazy hit. Everyone who is interested in Dragon Age has probably mused about how fun multiplayer could be if it was done right. GTA followed this to the T as well, and unsurprisingly most fans liked the multiplayer. Portal was a primarily single player experience that was lauded like crazy. If they come out with a great multiplayer mode in part deux it will possibly be the next big thing. Plan multiplayer for the sequel seems to be the most direct way to make cash moneys. Or at least focus on the single player first.
The only thing is, there do seem to be some exceptions. Counter Strike, Team Fortress 1+2 for example, but those could be attributed as the "real" multiplayer modes of half life and HL2. Shadowrun was completely multiplayer and was a hilarious flop (even though the gameplay wasn't bad).
Are there any extremely successful multiplayer games that either didn't have a extremely successful single player experience that preceded it, a strong pedigree or were popular PC mods?
I no longer enjoy playing against 1's and 0's once I've played against humans. It's much more challenging and satisfying as well. Nothing beats making a headshot across the map and just KNOWING that someone is pissed off. When hit by said shot, I'm both pissed and admiring the shot as well.
Starcraft, just to point out this isn't limited to FPS, built upon a solid single player experience and was also the first of the craft games to have multiplayer
Warcraft II had LAN play.
Are there any extremely successful multiplayer games that either didn't have a extremely successful single player experience that preceded it, a strong pedigree or were popular PC mods?
EverQuest. Unlike UO, FFXI, and WOW, it wasn't an extension of an existing single-player RPG franchise.
Nah, I bet your preferences are really common. I've also played all of half-life but never touched multiplayer. My guess is we're the silent majority that you never hear about because game reviewers necessarily like all or most game types, including multiplayer.
I'm not sure where you got any of those ideas actually.
1. While graphics are a big selling point and much talked about, if it were the only one, there'd be no need to get an RPG instead of, dunno, just about anything else. Like an old-school mindless FPS where the whole plot is "kill everyone on the map."
Even for non-RPGs, ever heard of a game called Half Life? Yeah, that's around where having a story started to matter even in FPS.
That the graphics get the most hype is also an issue of it being the easiest to talk about without playing for more than an hour or two, which is what the average reviewer seems to do. Plus you can put a lot of screenshots on a review site, while discussing plot elements is actually frowned upon.
2. Speaking of which: if the story didn't matter, then why are spoilers frowned upon?
3. I'm pretty sure that the expansion of the games market in the last two decades straight was mainly due to making games increasingly _less_ challenging. From such stuff as Max Payne's decreasing the difficulty ever more without even asking if you die too much, to WoW basically increasing the MMO market size by an order of magnitude by being less challenging than any other MMO out there, to RPGs with scaled enemies so you don't end up with challenges above your level, to racing games with rubberband mechanics where essentially everyone drives around your position so you can still win even if you bounce in all the walls, etc, the history of the last decade can be summed up as basically "how can we make our games accessible to everyone short of a paraplegic and not challenge them much?"
The age of the die-hard nerds playing just to prove they can win against stupid odds in a game, has come and gone. It was an age where markets were measured in thousands of units sold, and selling 10,000 copies would make you a cult classic. The mass market just isn't there and never was.
But, heck, even way back, Lucas Arts was more popular than Sierra because their adventures didn't kill your character and make you reload for every mistake, nor let you do something that will make it impossible to win the game later. Lucas adventures literally let you try everything everywhere, with _zero_ repercussions for doing something wrong. So, why did people buy those if everyone wants a challenge?
4. As someone who dabbled into modding, I'm pretty sure that there's a huge number of people out there who'll explicitly look for basically god-mode items. That's not people playing for a challenge, that's people who basically just want to bonk that big-ass dragon on the head _once_ and move on to the next bit of the story. Basically, yes, they just want a "Press A to continue" instead of the whole challenge.
Plus, in the same vein, there's the issue of the thousands of sites dedicated to cheats, or the fact that on consoles there's actually money to be made by selling cheat programs like GameShark, Exploder, and whatever it is they use these days. Or save games that include every item in the game and a hacked character with all skills and 1,000,000 health. Roll that around in your head. There are people willing to actually pay extra money to remove the challenge, and there always were enough to support several vendors on any given console.
5. But to get back to story, funnily enough, your argument sounds to me like a rehash of Nintendo's arguments back in the N64 vs Playstation days. Nintendo was still The Big N, and when everyone who wanted to pack elaborate stories and FMV scenes (not to mention Nintendo's asshole attitude and delusions of being some kind of dictator back in those days) fled to Playstation and it's cheap CDs, Nintendo basically went on to give lots of speeches saying the same: story doesn't matter, people don't want RPGs, some kind of platformer is what everyone plays because gameplay is the only thing that matters. It even went for insulting statements like that those who play RPGs are just a handful of depressed people playing in a dark basement. Yeah, ask them how
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