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Gearbox Boss Bemoans Superfluous Multiplayer Modes
Speaking with Edge magazine, Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford lamented the tendency of game publishers to force multiplayer modes into games that don't need them. Quoting:
"Pitchford points to the likes of Dead Space 2 as evidence that decisions are often motivated by the desire to tick boxes on a feature list, rather than for the good of the game itself. 'Let’s forget about what the actual promise of a game is and whether it’s suited to a narrative or competitive experience,' he tells us. 'Take that off the table for a minute and just think about the concept-free feature list: campaign, co-op, how many players? How many guns? How long is the campaign? 'When you boil it down to that, you take the ability to make good decisions out of the picture. And the reason they do it is because they notice that the biggest blockbusters offer a little bit for every kind of consumer. You have people that want co-op and competitive, and players who want to immerse themselves in deep fiction. But the concept has to speak to that automatically; it can’t be forced. That’s the problem.'"
Oh god yes, I couldn't agree more. The real problem I have with multiplayer modes forced into games that don't need them is that they often end up forcing the game design down particular pathways, which don't always improve the experience.
Take weapon balance, for example. Multiplayer gamers these days being too lazy to actually find and pick up weapons like we had do back in the days of Doom and Quake (yes, yes, get off my lawn etc), the trend is for game designers to try to make sure that all of the weapons in first and third person shooters are "balanced". And yet for me, part of the appeal of a decent first person shooter is upgrading my arsenal as I go along; picking up better weapons and managing the limited ammo available for them. Remember the first time you found a BFG in Doom? You don't get feelings like that too often any more, as there's an absolute terror of allowing one weapon to be "better" than any of the others. I suspect that similar considerations force the adoption of my least favorite trope of modern action gaming ever - the 2 weapons limit. This absolutely ruined the campaign in Resistance 2 (sequel to what I still maintain is the best console fps ever) by making it far riskier to actually experiment with all the weird and wacky weapons that are Insomniac's speciality - if you can only carry two weapons at a time, you're going to stick with the rifle+shotgun combo 95% of the time and trust the game to put a sniper rifle in your path if you come up on one of the obligatory sniping sections.
Then there's the ridiculously short campaigns that are often justified on the basis of multiplayer. Look at something like Homefront; a game which is ostensibly all about its plot and setting has a ludicrous campaign that I beat in less than 4 and a half hours, which doesn't do anything to actually delve into the world they've created. And the excuse - there's multiplayer. It's noticable that Bulletstorm, which de-emphasises multiplayer as far as a modern marketing department will allow, bucks this trend and actually has a pretty decent campaign length (I brought my first playthrough home in a little under 11 hours).
I know there are people out there who really dig multiplayer in these things. But there are a lot of us who don't; after being very, very heavily into the Counter-Strike scene 8-10 years ago, I have had enough experience of being sworn at in German by 14 year olds for this lifetime. Multiplayer these days is limited to occasional co-op with real-life friends - and that doesn't require absolutely every game to have a tagged on multiplayer modes. Besides - pick a random "yesterday's big thing" shooter - 6 months old or greater - that wasn't a massive multiplayer phenomenon like a CoD or Halo and then try to find a server with more than 2 people on it. I did this with a few games on my steam list and in most cases, it just wasn't happening.
and ship them both off to a desert island. Neither one of them should ever talk about computer games ever again.
Homefront is another bad example, because it was a shitty game with an amazingly terrible design philosophy, and focusing on single player or multiplayer would have been polishing one turd instead of squeezing out two.
For the philosophy that STYLE IS SUBSTANCE (300 not withstanding).
It's not just games. Everything is ruined by bullet-points; from software to politics to porn. I don't know how we can solve this problem as a society. People want quick summaries, sound bytes, standardized tests, but they never tell the whole story. It's easier to produce to the bullet points, just like it's easier to teach students to the test.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I don't care if it's balanced; it can be slapped together for all I care, just as long as I don't lose connection with the other player(s). That's a multiplayer mode that I can get into. Can't say I like all the weak competitive multiplayer in games that don't need it.
How many games these days really do offer co-op gaming? I mean, so far I haven't seen a SINGLE game in years that offers the ability for you to play through the story mode with a friend/spouse/etc. No, they're all just rehashes of CTF or deathmatch, and those are stuffed in every single god damn game, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. But why, oh, why no co-op, ever?
Some of us aren't interested in competitive gaming against random *sshats, instead some of us wish to be able to share the story campaing with a close person. There's plenty of games that actually would offer huge amounts of fun if there was co-op included. A great, deep and insightful story is all the more worth it if you can share the tale with someone, but you don't always even need that; I remember back in the days when Unreal 1 was still new. The story was nothing too fancy or epic, it was mostly just a straight-forward FPS game. But when you set the difficulty level up a notch and joined in a co-op game it felt like a totally new experience compared to single-player. I think we eventually played it through something like 5 or 6 times, simply because it was fun every time.
Or am I just the odd one in the bunch again for wishing for good ol' co-op mode in games?
* Teach critical thinking, starting at a young age.
* Actively promote deep and creative behaviors.
* Promote your ideas through subtle irony.
Back in the VGA gaming days, games were all single-player. We had modems that could talk to other players, and if you had access to an office you could use a network to play. That is, if any dang games ever had multiplayer capability. Game designers didn't like the idea of multiplayer and said it would never sell. One famous game designer stated, quite bluntly, that his customers didn't have friends. Now, the idea that gamers would play alone is heresy and gamers are complaining about the lack of good single-player games. One thing hasn't changed: game companies are usually moronic and 95% of games are still crap.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The entire software industry suffers from box-checking syndrome.
It's a bit rich this coming from Gearbox, who are themselves guilty of designing games such as Call of Duty's United Offensive that contain infinite enemies as a way of making up for half-assed level design.
Restate summary and apply its concerns more broadly to either maximize impact or water down the concern.... CHECK!
(Note to self: Fix comment.load() AJAX protocol in Slashdot bingo browser plugin -- slash.parse.js:227 )
Waiting for Thi4f...
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Yeah, I mean, come on, we could like, have one player controlling one block falling, and another controlling the other block.
That would be insaaaaaaaaaaane.
What do you mean we can't do that? Why not?
Fine, screw it, put two Tetris grids down on screen.
Dunno if it's just the summaries a bullet points, as just the idea that the more stuff there is in, the better. That if a game/car/phone/product has X and Y, it's obviously worse than one which has X, Y and Z. Something with just two bullet points is worse than something with three bullet points, and both are worse than something with four bullet points. You're getting less for your money, right?
Basically the difference I'm getting at is that people often don't even as much care what those bullet points are and what's the implication, as basically are just acting like hoarders. The more the better, no matter what they say.
E.g., I remember in ye olde days, when MS Office hadn't quite won yet and there still was some choice, I was trying to tell someone that he doesn't really need to ditch their old editor and buy the whole MS packet for what that small company does. There were far cheaper alternatives, not the least being to just keep what they already had. His answer, and nothing would move him, was "but it has more features!" He wasn't going to use something with less features.
Now I'll be the first to admit that some of the features there would actually be useful... if anyone there were actually using them. The thing is, they weren't using even what they already had. I actually watched him and a few others write stuff, and really there was nothing they did that required more than WordPad. They didn't even use styles, or even any formatting above the bare basics, much less stuff like macros or whatever. All they did was type some text, select and bold or underline such parts, and at most copy and paste. That's it. If they even wanted some paragraph indented, they'd actually hit tab.
But God forbid doing the same in a program which has less features.
I think many people do the same with games. Even if they don't play much multiplayer, it has to be there on the box, because otherwise they're getting less bullet points for their money.
The first problem is that basically there's no such thing as a free meal. Especially for games, where budgets are finite and already spiraling out of control, and basically doing three things instead of two, is often still on the same budget as doing two. It's basically like getting the same builder team and for the same cost to build you house, a garage and a pool, instead of just a house. It may sound like you're getting more for your money, but in reality don't be surprised if it's a smaller house than if they were building just that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...but I hate the recent trend of having different game mechanics and controls for single player and multiplayer. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of Starcraft 2, Medal of Honor, and I know there's others.
All I can think when I play those kinds of games is that the game was cobbled together from a broken set of priorities. It ruins the experience for me, I expect the single player be training for multiplayer. I would never dream of playing the multiplayer first, even in a game series I was intimately familiar with.
And I definitely agree with Randy, games should be built with a purpose and intent. When you start tacking on features last minute, or adding game play mechanics that don't fit with the world of the game, you're telling your customers that you really don't care about them.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist" -I guess I should leave then
tick off boxes? noooope. its to combat piracy. piracy is amazing. we get things like itunes, netflix, steam, dlc and multiplayer from it. its awesome. but we do occasionally also get stupid things like ubisofts evil "always online" DRM, or *shudder* red faction guerrillas multiplayer LOLZ. gotta take the good with the bad. still, multiplayer is usually better than single player IMO. just finished dead rising 2. ya, late i know. playing it single player is basically a chore tho, whereas co-op is really fun :) i dunno if this guy needs to bemoan superfluous multiplayer tho, when shit like assassins creed brotherhoods multiplayer is basically DRM. multiplayer is good. DRM is bad. "always on" DRM disguised as 'multiplayer' is pure suck.
Purely conjecture, but I believe it's less to do with "checking off a feature" and more to do with the following:
- Save time & money on content generation, since people who play multiplayer will use the same map over and over.
- Form of DRM / Piracy Protection, if there is 'server validation' then there's an indirect 'purchase validation'
Personally, I don't buy a game for multiplayer unless it's split screen, and those are few and far between. I'd play an older game like Goldeneye 64 with 3 buds long before playing any shooter over xbox live.
And I find there aren't that many multiplayer only games... especially games designed specifically only for multiplayer; they tend to be mods & community driven
A blog I run for the wealth
Nearly every game for the Xbox 360 is single-player (or online frag fest).
Damn, where the hell are the Baldur's Gates, the Dungeon Heroes, the multi-player co-op dungeon crawlers. The platform has been out for years and there's practically nada for it.
Seriously, I am sick of single-player + fragfest. Why? Well, I'm married. I've got kids. I can't find the time to play through a super long campaign. And I sure as heck can't find the time to hone my death match skills. So not much fun there to be had.
I want a game I can play the campaign through in a a day or two of being sick. Better yet, I want a game with a good co-op campaign that my wife and I can play and that doesn't immediately become super-repetitive and boring.
When I look at the shelves....90% of the games on the shelf are single-player + online deathmatch or online co-op. Of the few remaining games with co-op, it's basically sports, racing, or crap.
I WANT BALDUR'S GATE III
I mean, so far I haven't seen a SINGLE game in years that offers the ability for you to play through the story mode with a friend/spouse/etc.
A quick look at my library of games in steam reveals the following games that allow co-op through the story line.
Alien Swarm (admittedly only one fairly short campaign by default, but there are community made maps).
Borderlands.
Left 4 Dead.
Left 4 Dead 2.
Magicka.
Serious Sam HD First and second encounter (Technically re-releases of games from 2000)
Sol Survivor.
I'm sure there are others out there.
I mean, so far I haven't seen a SINGLE game in years that offers the ability for you to play through the story mode with a friend/spouse/etc.
A quick look at my library of games in steam reveals the following games that allow co-op through the story line.
Alien Swarm (admittedly only one fairly short campaign by default, but there are community made maps).
Borderlands.
Left 4 Dead.
Left 4 Dead 2.
Magicka.
Serious Sam HD First and second encounter (Technically re-releases of games from 2000)
Sol Survivor.
I'm sure there are others out there.
^you know you want it.
This means one thing. Duke Nukem Forever Multiplayer is going to be absolutely kickass.
There was a period, in the late nineties and most of the 2000s that every game had to have multiplayer to be cool. You would be hard-pressed to find a game from that era that didn't have a multiplayer mode, even if it was just tacked on, buggy as hell and unbalanced. Even Myst had a multiplayer spin-off! That was a time when we started seeing multiplayer-only games, like Quake III and Unreal Tournament.
These days I think it has become acceptable to release games without multiplayer. Games have become more cinematic (whether you think that's a good thing is debatable) and I think it's now okay to say "this is a cinematic game; you play it for the single player." Possibly credit goes to Valve, for releasing the Orange Box which interestingly had both single and multiplayer components, but they were entirely separate. It featured two massively acclaimed single-player only games, and one massively acclaimed multiplayer only game. Couple that with all the new indie games like Braid which wouldn't make sense in multiplayer.
That nobody reads your crazy rants, yes? I mean posting as AC, linking to your own AC posts, it is just a big giant waste of fail. hell even I don't read your horseshit Petey, I just like laughing at you and bitchslapping you around. Just watching you follow me around like my personal bitch, crying and moaning about getting beat down like a whore who didn't have the money, I find that...scrumptious.So keep kissing my ass Petey, and dance monkey boy! Enjoy some of your failures "greatest hits"...
I have also shown repeatedly that at the absolute reported minimum number of new pieces of malweare and infections, which you are free to pick whichever reputable website you like Securina, MSFT's malware reports, AVG, which ever, that at an absolute minimum we are talking about 1.2 million sites PER DAY with that number changing by 15,000+ PER HOUR which means even if you typed at 1 IP address PER SECOND, and never slept, and had a perfect list (which doesn't exist) you would be 14 days behind by the very first day with that number growing linearly every single day, making Petey farther and farther behind.
But if you weren't completely batshit insane Petey I wouldn't have to explain this, because this is why everyone makes fun of you. It is so obvious it is like someone arguing gravity is actually invisible pants gnomes trying to steal your underwear. It is the classic "default allow" which has NEVER EVER worked. Because if a piece of malware isn't in magical HOPES file Petey you are royally fucked, and yet again I have shown that it is simply a roll of the dice whether you get creamed or not, simply because you will always be behind. So it is all on you Petey and your magical HOPES woobie now. You made the extravagant claims, back them up with the math. If you can't? Well then you are full of shit, case closed. Notice how ALL YOU CAN DO PETEY is throw insults and trollbomb? Why is that? I'll tell you why, because math doesn't lie and you just can't show the math You just can't, it would be like trying to mathematically prove you are not an idiot. It just can't be done.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Call of Duty World at War.
Rainbow Six Vegas
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Resident Evil 5
And then there's other games which offer non-campaign co-op modes like Splinter Cell: Conviction, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 etc.
There's surprisingly numerous co-op games out there if one bothers to look.
I count 11 games between your list and the one above it there. Really? That's like 1% (less actually) of all the games out for XBox.
Surprisingly numerous my ass.
In my view, I can't think of any party based game that would not benefit from having co-op included. That is, any game where your 'main character' is followed by a group of AI controlled characters could benefit from Co-Op through that campaign.
Having the ability for a human player to jump in is fun. I've heard developers say that the second player feels left out, because the main character makes all the decisions...but that was never my experience. In all these games, there is the quest story..and then the combat. Yes, there may be some feeling of being left out of the story, but normally players communicate about the choices, and come to a compromise. The idea is that with Co-Op play you will most probably be playing with a friend. You just need a few nods to the fact that there could be co-op, to get the thing integrated. We have never seen a game like Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2 since those titles hit the market. And afaik they both sold fairly well. NWN 2 would still be on the radar if ATARI had not apparently decided to kill it off (Now they are going with Cryptic for NWN 3 as a MMORPG model with a "foundry" style mission builder like STO and City of Heroes...which I fear will tank).
Bulletstorm is another title that I think could have benefited from a Co-Op mode, regardless of what the Developers said. Could you imagine teaming up to do kill combos etc. ? It could have been the next Borderlands.
No. The real reason this isn't included in more titles in my view is this: PROFIT.
That's all it is. It costs more to implement proper networking code, making the necessary commitments to UI etc. through the campaign, additional Q&A testing. Then there is the game length and difficulty. Many games boast 10 hours of play time, but this isn't actually 10 hours of pure content. This includes how many times the average person will need to REPEAT existing parts of the game to get past them (see Speed Runs). So having two capable Human players play a game, will cut that playtime in most cases (if the game isn't written to scale hit points, tactics, weapons etc. when it recognises two human players). So you actually need to have more GAME in there to support two human players increasing costs again. Then if your game is created for the Console (which most are these days) you need to also pass through an additional layer of QA testing, etc. to make sure it works seamlessly.
All this is why I think the biggest impediment is simply Profit., not about games needing co-op or not. Adding co-op doesn't remove market share, all it does is add to it.
Games I would have liked to play Co-Op : Dragon Age Series, Mass Effect Series, Bulletstorm Campaign, Crysis + Crysis 2 campaigns,Grand Theft Auto campaigns. Now did any of these *need* co-op? no. They would have just been far better for having it, in my view. But where Bioware is concerned, we have Knights of the Old Republic for that eh? :-) Comes right back to PROFIT.
-Gel214th
Too bad everyone sees your big FAILS, eh? LOL!
"That nobody reads your crazy rants, yes?" - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday April 06, @08:31PM (#35739846)
It's fair to say you're correct, that you're a NOBODY, and that yes, you are reading what I wrote:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070786&cid=35738166
The list of your "FAILS" vs. myself... lol!
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"I mean posting as AC, linking to your own AC posts, it is just a big giant waste of fail." - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday April 06, @08:31PM (#35739846)
LOL, you're the one showing doing the FAIL stuff, lol! See here again for YOUR reference:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070786&cid=35738166
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"hell even I don't read your horseshit Petey" - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday April 06, @08:31PM (#35739846)
Others here do, and THEY ARE LAUGHING @ YOU, Hairyfeet... that ITT Tech level of "education" only shows you FAIL here, and many times:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070786&cid=35738166
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"I just like laughing at you and bitchslapping you around. " - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday April 06, @08:31PM (#35739846)
LOL, who "bitch slapped" whom is in question here, & this puts THAT b.s. of yours to rest, easily... "too, Too, TOO EASILY" in fact:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070786&cid=35738166
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"Just watching you follow me around like my personal bitch, crying and moaning about getting beat down like a whore who didn't have the money, I find that...scrumptious. " - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday April 06, @08:31PM (#35739846)
Who got "beaten down" here, hairyfeet:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2070786&cid=35738166
Hmmm?? LMAO!
(Wasn't ME, that's certain!)
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"So keep kissing my ass Petey, and dance monkey boy! Enjoy some of your failures "greatest hits"..." - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday April 06, @08:31PM (#35739846)
LOL, look @ that "ReAcTiOn", lol... foaming @ the mouth, ITT Tech Boy? LMAO!
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Static vs. Dynamic Adbanner addressing (lol, "according to hairyfeet"):
(Which even BestBuy Techs know!)
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35681060
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DNS Client Cache turn off for HOSTS, a TECHNICAL Blunder by Hairyfeet:
(Which even BestBuy Techs know also (just like the one above!))
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35686054
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Hairyfeet's single solutions SECURITY FAILURES? See inside:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690260
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Your sources on "security" vs. mine (actual security people) (AND myself, a source on it):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2064694&cid=35690328
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AH, yes... the "old classics" never fail... @ least NOT LIKE HAIRYFEET & his "FAIL LIST" above, lol!
APK