It may just be that I’ve started noticing it more, but it seems like more games these days have an increasingly important multiplayer component. Phrases such as “it’s in the multiplayer portion that this game truly shines” or “the singleplayer is very short, but the great multiplayer offers endless hours of enjoyment” seem to appear more frequently in comments and reviews. As a devoted singleplayer, this is obviously cause for some concern.
Do I want to pay full price for a game where at least half the content seems to be found in the multiplayer that I will never play? If I do play multiplayer, it’s mostly out of a sense of obligation as an aspiring game designer, and once I have a grasp of how the MP component is designed, I’ll generally stop playing and move on to the next game. World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2 are the only recent MP games that’ve managed to hold my attention for any longer period of time (and that’s probably because they had co-op (team or party) aspects in them).
I don’t really mind games having MP components, it’s only when they seem to be more important than the SP that I pause when considering the purchase. I bought Call of Duty 4 because the SP had received good reviews, and I wasn’t disappointed, I just still feel that I’m missing most of the game because I haven’t played it online. The Halo games have never caught my fancy, but people keep telling me the MP is great. Now Turok… Kotaku seems to hold the MP in high regard, but criticizes the SP experience, so now I’m not sure if I want to get it.
Thankfully there are still uncompromisingly story-oriented SP games like Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed to keep me happy. I just don’t want to miss all these potentially amazing gameplay experiences, but on the other hand I don’t want to pay for a whole game when I know I’m only going to play half of it. To be honest, I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I guess I’m saying… don’t neglect your SP component in favour of the MP. Either you do it right, or you just release an MP game like Unreal Tournament 3.
We need more SP games, and REAL co-op (as in: 2 people playing through SP missions, not team deathmatch).
SP and co-op are always fun but I’ve never really minded games with a significant MP half. I definitely play more SP than MP but I have no aversion to competitive gameplay, personally, and I pop in for some CoD 4 or Halo 3 MP on my 360 every once and awhile and have fun. Having a neglected aspect of any game is always a shame, I don’t think SP warrants singling out much on a whole. Your position is understandable, of course.
To clarify, I think my opinion is more and more gravitating towards seperating the SP from the MP. In my experience, it is rare that really good singleplayer games come with really good multiplayer and vice versa. Take Halo 3 for an example, it’s ostensibly great in both MP and co-op, but the SP is generally really lacking (the Warthog was clearly never meant for singleplayer, you can’t drive and shoot at the same time!).
Looking at all the great games out this year, there are games that managed to have solid SP and solid MP, such as CoD4 and possibly Crysis, but a lot of games either had no MP, bad MP, or bad SP. The best multiplayer games had no SP or just failed miserably at the SP component, such as UT3, TF2, or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It just seems more and more like the best way to go is to sell the SP and the MP seperately, so people like me can only buy the SP portion and people who want MP can get that or both. Digital Distribution™ makes this a viable concept. And I would definitely pay good money to buy a co-op component in addition to the singleplayer campaign.
I think I’ll go write a follow-up entry to this, but I’ll be forward-dating it for Friday, because there’s already a post in the pipe for today.
I agree with what your saying in that most people bought Halo 2 for the single player aspect, when most of the budget and development time had been spent on the multiplayer. Furthermore games that concentrate on Single Player are much better SP games, and games that concentrate on MP… well visa versa. You’ve already mentioned Mass Effect and Assassins Creed as well as Unreal Tournament and Team Fortress.
However its all down to maximising the market potential (especially with games like Call of Duty and Halo where most people bought it for SP but some bought it just for MP). Its also about maximising the life of a game. Dare I mention the Deus Ex multiplayer, thrown out there just to extend the life of the game (which luckily already had a superb SP experiance).
I would suggest however the issue is not the cost of adding multiplayer, as Assassins Creed is no cheaper than UT3, but more to do with refinement. I would rather developers spend longer concentrating on polishing the single player than start working on a multiplayer element.
Conversely, if people only made single player or only made multiplayer, there would be no CoD or Halo. I think it just needs common sense.
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I agree, we need more co-op games, even if its just tacked on to the single player. I’d also like to see more asymmetrical team games, such as some of the maps in TF2.
You should try out ET: Quake Wars if you like asymmetrical team games, apparently that did it really well
And yeah I agree with you, Dan. You put it better than I, it’s not the development cost, it’s a question of polish.
One of the things I really liked about Bioshock was that they decided to develop it only for the singleplayer.
I agree that SP and MP should be seperated and I have lots of games with MP support that I’ve never tried online.
Bioshock was great. The more I think about it, the better I like that game. But I’m not gonna buy it (played it with a friend originally) and I’m never gonna play it again because it scares the crap out of me.
Personally I gave up with Bioshock on the second run through because I wasn’t comfortable killing the Little Sisters.
I had a quick play of the ET:QW demo which, amusingly enough I didn’t take online and was put off because the bots were too hard, but yes its completely asymmetrical. I should take another look at it.
Its strange that I tend to play games such as UT, ET, etc offline. If they hadn’t come with bots then I almost certainly would play online as with TF2. I’m not sure if its a fear of loosing (my bots are usually set to provide a challenge enough that I really have to fight to win) or that I’m not keen on socialising with generic online trigger happy idiots, because both points are put down by my MMO playing where I happily PvP and they certainly have their share of idiots.
Another point I’d quickly like to make is that with my own sort of ‘if I could develop a game this would be it’ idea, it works well with both SP and MP, but I’ve always thought I would likely make the games separately.
Actually I am playing Bioshock for the second time right now because I am a bit unmotivated to continue with The Witcher atm and there’s a shortage of interesting new games in the stores. My original Bioshock-experience got overshadowed by unfullfilled expectations, broken promises and anger about the things that happened around the game’s release day(s). Without all this issues in the way I must say that I immensly enjoy the game so far (Arcadia) and I am already excited about a BS2, although I don’t want to throw more money towards 2kGames (horrible copy protection, no SDK, bad communication, bad support). From my first runthrough I remember though that the game became less dense and a bit repetive towards the end, which I think is a shame because it wrecks the overall experience a bit. They sould have used the money for the copy protection to further polish and tighten it more.
Personally I don’t think it’s too scary (apart from 3 specific situations, like the dentist that suddenly stands directly behind you after you’ve picked up an plasmid…). I find SS2 way more scary, actually the scariest game ever.
The only online-shooter I’ve played for longer than just a month is Battlefield 2, which I still love but I don’t have the time and energy to do it on a regular basis.