Dear Rockstar. What the hell?

[Phlakes]

Alright, once again it's SUPER CRAZY MIND EXPLODING EPIPHANY TIME

You don't have to play the multiplayer.

Also, people enjoy so that alone makes it justified.

 

[crazyarms33]

You know, you don't HAVE to use the multiplayer.

WHOA NOW! You mean this optional feature is only that!? I use ALL of the features on any game I buy, and now they added MP which I didn't ask for so I have to use it even though I don't want to! All of my rage!

Sarcasm by the way. I agree with you. Sounds like he has his undies in a twist just because he wants something to ***** about.

 

[RagTagBand]

The single player is fucking excellent so they can jam in whatever features they like - The bit People cared about was equally cared about by rockstar.

OP - Don't be such a *****, *****.

 

[Kesimir]

Ah, and I suppose that other team of designers are working pro bono, are they? Not likely. They are being paid by Rockstar, they are staff of Rockstar. Again, I am offering an opinion not having played Max Payne 3, rather talking about game development in general, but there is nothing that goes into a game that doesn't cost money or man hours or both. If it's another studio, then it's just money, but don't underestimate what the loss of budget can mean for the final quality of a game. Finally, cudo's on the description of your Starbucks analogy, but it's not really applicable. A game has a budget. Money from that budget, if allocated to working on multiplayer, means less money is allocated to single player. This negatively affects single player. It's very, very simple. I speak as a student studying game development and design, so this isn't speculation.

I understand your point but I could just as easily argue that by adding a component almost guaranteed to improve the market potential of the product a project lead could have requested and been granted a larger budget than would have been given to a single player only title. Conceivably, this enhanced budget could then be used to improve the single player experience in addition to adding the multi-player capability. Like you, I have no magic 8-ball that grants me insight into the business practices of Rockstar, but assuming that adding multi-player is always detrimental to single-player is a false premise. If we can agree on that then we can still be friends.

EDIT: Ok ninjad and ninja responded to... but I think you are dismissing this point too quickly, but I lack the resolve or interest to delve deeper.

This next bit is more for the OP:
In fact, assuming multi-player was an initial design choice from the development team and not a mere commercial add-on we should really be looking at it more like any other feature in the game. You don't hear a lot of people arguing about how the designer that added the Speech skill tree in Skyrim wasted time and resources that could have been used making the Smithing tree better simply because they never use or intend to use the Speech skill tree do you? Isn't this pretty much a similar train of thought?

 

[nasteypenguin]

Sigh, I'm not really getting anywhere here, but I'll just say two things.

I'm not quite sure why your sighing, you said your studying this kind of thing; I don't know what you know. I just find it interesting and hoped you might be able to teach us less educated people a thing or two.

2. Games have a fixed budget decided on pre production.

Okay, but wouldn't the company have decided pre-production whether or not they would have wanted to include multiplayer and still expanded the budget to suit it? I wouldn't have thought additional funding is completely out of the picture either, even if it isn't official. If a company found a particular game is getting more publicity than they initially thought, and the developers are finding errors which cut away at the budget a bit too much, is there no way they could increase the budget to capitalise on this?

 

[Monsterfurby]

2. Games have a fixed budget decided on pre production. It doesn't matter how much the company has, it's how money that company says that any particular game can have at it's inception. Therefore, when you take away money to work on multiplayer, you have less money left to work on single player. In some companies that means you will have less people to work on it, in bigger companies, it just means you have to invest more man hours, but either way, the single player doesn't receive as much attention as it could have.

That's not how budgets work. At the point where a budget is decided you are likely to have a Game Design Document or at least a High Level Concept of sorts, and you will have a very clear plan set up detailing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and what it will cost in terms of man-hours and, ultimately, cold hard cash. They don't go "here's a million, make a game", but rather devise very specific budgeting for very specific purposes.
Your point is absolutely moot as the funding made available to develop multiplayer is made available in the first place only because there are plans to implement multiplayer.

 

[Something Amyss]

I recall someone used an analogy with going to Starbucks and getting a coffee, than complaining that someone gave you a cookie that they didn't want. It would actually be more like either they gave you a cookie, but only 3/4 the coffee, or they took twice as long to get the coffee, but gave you a cookie. If you didn't want the cookie, then all they've done is worsen your coffee. Stop complaining about complainers with the use of bad analogies. I know it makes you feel like you can rage with slightly more legitimacy than direct raging, but doing so without thinking what you're saying through just makes you sound redundant.

Except Max Payne 3 offers more coffee than the previous games, and the cookie was prepared by a different team who didn't cross over and handle the coffee. One might complain about the flavour, but that seems to have less to do with the cookie than it does the way the wind is blowing these days. All...Errr...Starbucks seem to be changing the flavour of their coffee, even if they don't participate in the free cookie promotion.

Dropping the analogy, I'm not sure what the problem here is. I dislike "tacked on multiplayer," but this doesn't look like it was merely tacked on. From the few reviews I've seen, it looks like MP's multiplayer element was well-received. AND it doesn't seem to detract from the story mode. So the analogy doesn't seem bad. It's a good cookie that's optional and the coffee is still the same coffee as before. A lot of games do have compulsory multiplayer, and that is bad. This doesn't appear to be one of them.

 

[Razoack]

2. Games have a fixed budget decided on pre production. It doesn't matter how much the company has, it's how money that company says that any particular game can have at it's inception. Therefore, when you take away money to work on multiplayer, you have less money left to work on single player. In some companies that means you will have less people to work on it, in bigger companies, it just means you have to invest more man hours, but either way, the single player doesn't receive as much attention as it could have.

That's not how budgets work. At the point where a budget is decided you are likely to have a Game Design Document or at least a High Level Concept of sorts, and you will have a very clear plan set up detailing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and what it will cost in terms of man-hours and, ultimately, cold hard cash. They don't go "here's a million, make a game", but rather very specific budgeting for very specific purposes.
Your point is absolutely moot as the funding made available to develop multiplayer is made available in the first place only because there are plans to implement multiplayer.

Pretty much agreed. After doing a games course (which rather tediously involved making a 150 page design doc) Funding is only found for the game after Design Document is created. It's actually the main purpose of the document. Multiplayer was not a last minute addition as this would have set back the time of the game by at least 4-6 months (the closer to the end you change the requirements or specifications, the longer it takes the rectify and the more expensive the error is). With regards to attention, the team of programmers will work closely on each section, tying it together. They don't split off, making one group work on singleplayer and one work on multiplayer as that would be extremely detrimental. The team works together on specific sections at the same time, progressing together.

Captcha: kill time - yes this certainly has.

 

[TheRussian]

You should have gotten it on Steam. Sure it takes 30 hours to install, but you get a solid gold game with a brilliant Multiplayer to boot.

 

[synulia]

Do you see anyone complaining that Rockstar skimped on the singleplayer in Max Payne 3? No, because it's length is just right and it's paced pretty well. If the game were 4 hours long you would have reason to complain. As it really isn't, especially on harder difficulties, you're complaining about the wrong things here.

 

[Xanadu84]

Why waste man-hours ADDING A PART TO YOUR PRODUCT THAT NO ONE FUCKING ASKED FOR?

It's just you. Multiplayer in Max Payne 3 is strangely awesome. And the game needs 4 DVD's because of HD pre-rendered cutscenes and audio mostly. Especially on PC. Max Payne 3 looks and sounds incredible on PC.

It's actually a shame you disagree, because the joke potential from your end here is magnificent.

 

[TheCommanders]

Sigh, I'm not really getting anywhere here, but I'll just say two things.

I'm not quite sure why your sighing, you said your studying this kind of thing; I don't know what you know. I just find it interesting and hoped you might be able to teach us less educated people a thing or two.

2. Games have a fixed budget decided on pre production.

Okay, but wouldn't the company have decided pre-production whether or not they would have wanted to include multiplayer and still expanded the budget to suit it? I wouldn't have thought additional funding is completely out of the picture either, even if it isn't official. If a company found a particular game is getting more publicity than they initially thought, is there no way they could increase the budget to capitalise on this?

It doesn't necessarily increase the budget, but it can mean a publisher would be more likely to fund your project at all. With a big company like Rockstar, the simplified version of how their budgeting works is they decide how many studios (they have about a dozen or so) will work on a game, and each of those studio's have established funding. It's slightly more complicated, but that's the basic idea. Also, the more studios the company invests in a project, the more returns it will expect. With sequels, it works a little differently, as they usually have some guaranteed profits from the returning crowd, so the main goal becomes to attract new fans, and one of the ways they do that is to add multiplayer. I will say that the people who talk about taked on multiplayer being lazy don't really know what they are talking about, and I will defend the fact that developers do put a lot of time and effort into what might seem to be trivial multiplayer, but I will not necessarily defend its right to exist.

Also, sorry, I'm not really sighing at you, but I've been having the debate about whether including multiplayer into established single player franchises, or into new games that aren't really asking for it detracts from development of single player for a very long time, and I'm getting a little tired of people assuming that it doesn't take away from single player. That isn't to say the single player can't still be good, but being good doesn't mean it couldn't have been better.

Captcha - take potluck? um... what?

 

[RN7]

...I actually like the multiplayer in Max Payne 3 more than I do...pretty much every shooter that was intended to have multiplayer like CoD and Battlefield. It's more fun to play and funnier to watch, especially the amazing 1-hit KO pistol slaps

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Not sure if you've noticed this, but they've been putting multiplayer in since GTA4.

 

[TheCommanders]

-snip-
Pretty much agreed. After doing a games course (which rather tediously involved making a 150 page design doc) Funding is only found for the game after Design Document is created. It's actually the main purpose of the document. Multiplayer was not a last minute addition as this would have set back the time of the game by at least 4-6 months (the closer to the end you change the requirements or specifications, the longer it takes the rectify and the more expensive the error is). With regards to attention, the team of programmers will work closely on each section, tying it together. They don't split off, making one group work on singleplayer and one work on multiplayer as that would be extremely detrimental. The team works together on specific sections at the same time, progressing together.

Captcha: kill time - yes this certainly has.

Yes, the design doc is considered pre production work, and by the way, I feel your pain on those things. I at no point claimed that the multiplayer is shoved in sometime during the design process, only that it does take up resources. Also, regarding who works on the multiplayer, in smaller development teams, yes, everyone pretty much works on everything, but in larger studios, the work does often get divided up. In some games this can be extremely detrimental, which is why I'm such a fan of Valve's cabal process (look it up if you don't know what it is) which involves a lot of interdepartmental liaising, and makes sure all the different members of the development team are in touch with each other. It really varies from company to company, some handle it well, some do not. I'm not sure how Max Payne 3 specifically handled multiplayer development, but no matter how they did it, it costs more time and money to do so. It's difficult to claim that multiplayer didn't impact the single player just because the single player in a single game managed to be good. As Jim Sterling pointed out, just because things are good, doesn't mean they couldn't be better, and for every game that pulls off not being terrible with the addition of multiplayer there's another where it clearly had an impact.

Captcha -mend fences (I always feel like I do this whenever I make a post that doesn't detail 100% of my thought process)

 

[viranimus]

Hey I can honestly see a reason for resentment at an added feature that didnt detract from the single player game. Its a means of control and indoctrination. Basically the more online connectivity is involved with any game, the more control the developer has over the game.

I think if there never was a multiplayer mode in the previous games, and theres no logical reason for multiplayer to be present, regardless if its a bonus feature or not we SHOULD be upset over it. Because every time we get another game switching sides between offline and online we step an inch closer to a world where every game is ran like Diablo 3 and like it or not it IS coming and people are hastening its arrival by A: buying the product, and B: Not expressing resistance to the idea.

On that level, yes, I can see where anyone and everyone should be up in arms over this practice. Beyond that, If you look at its most glib perspective, An added feature that did not detract from the development of the primary features should not be looked on negatively, and rather ignored.

More often than not you have to look at a situation with the perspective of how it effects everyone and everything, instead of just relying on "it doesnt affect me personally why should I care?". This is one of those times.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Oh my god! Extra features!

The end times are upon us!

This bunker will keep you safe
http://www.perfectescapes.com/TheSuiteLife/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/bunker.jpg

 

[Dr Jones]

Everybody calm down! OP is a troll who skipped town after he left a few replies!

Seriously, he is just not responding at all, and of course he is dead wrong. The multiplayer actually made me play the arcade modes to get more characters, and now I love those modes too

 

[Bat Vader]

Everybody calm down! OP is a troll who skipped town after he left a few replies!

Seriously, he is just not responding at all, and of course he is dead wrong. The multiplayer actually made me play the arcade modes to get more characters, and now I love those modes too

Players seem to get a good amount of XP from getting the platinum ranks in arcade mode. I wonder how long it would take to get to rank 50 just by playing the different modes in arcade.

I have played a bit of the multiplayer and I have to admit I really liked it. I have not played much of it since I decided to beat MP3 on Hardcore and Old School.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Rockstar gave me something fun.

CURSE YOU, ROCKSTAR! CURSE YOOOOOOOOOOU!!!

-_-'