"If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game." Really?

[lacktheknack]

Here's a main issue for me: I go onto the "Street Fighter IV" or "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light" servers, and there's no one there.

Well, thank goodness they have good single player campaigns.

 

[Netrigan]

Problem with multi-player games is that there's too many elements outside of your control.

A big one is will the multi-player portion of the game take off. For a handful of franchises, this isn't a concern, but with more and more games adding multi-player content, the odds are that most of them really won't. Especially if you pick it up fairly cheap a year on after the initial excitement wears off. Even with the big franchises, this can be an issue, since Call Of Duty treats the whole thing like it's Madden Football and you're expected to upgrade to a new game every year.

Secondly, there are a lot of trolls, griefers, and just plain dicks on-line. Any multi-player system that relies on any sort of co-operation is going to run into very obvious problems. Multi-player simply isn't very enjoyable for a lot of people.

Thirdly, there's time zone issues. Very large portion of on-line players are in North America or Europe, which isn't too great for Australians.

Fourth, on-line plays really stresses repetition. You're playing the same maps over and over and over and over again. This is cool if you really get into mastering something, but if you play games more for the novelty value, there's only so much of this you'll put up with. I spent a few days playing Red Dead Redemption on-line and had a fair amount of fun, but in that time I blew through all of the non co-op content. And all I was really doing was replaying the same areas over and over again to level up. I keep meaning to get back in there, but there's too many bright, shiny new games to play, so I never do.

Biggest one is that most players don't really get into multi-player. This flies in the face of all those people who believe that no one really buys Halo for the single player campaign, but just compare XBL Gold subscription holders to Halo purchases. If someone is doing a 5 minute video review of a game, I'd rather they focus on the single player campaign than spend half the time going through the laundry list of multi-player content that they really didn't have time to delve into properly. The multi-player community decides what is and isn't good, not video game critics who have less than a week to spend with a game, which tends to be before gamers get their hands on the game, so they're just playing on-line with game company employees and other critics... not the unwashed masses who will figure out how exploitable and broken multi-player is over the coming weeks.

Lastly, critics are not there to judge games by any other standard than their own personal tastes. It's their job to communicate their tastes, so you can make an informed decision to listen to them or not. If the guy who thinks Weekend At Bernie's is the greatest film ever made is telling you the new Michael Bey movie is a masterpiece, then you ask yourself, do I think Weekend At Bernie's is a great film? Yahtzee speaks to certain types of gamers, primarily the single player. As a critic, I think he does pretty good at communicating what he does and does not like, so the all important frame of reference is there.

 

[Rivers Wells]

Multiplayer didn't "suddenly" become an afterthought, it was one when it was first added in games YEARS ago, single player has always been the main part of a game, been like that since retro games.

I don't know, I hear Pong's single-player is kind of meh.

^_^

OP, I think one of the biggest problems in looking at a game and judging based on multiplayer is the need for many gamers to see the video game itself as a form of art and deciding that multiplayer is a "cheap thrill" in comparison. I support the idea that a single player focused game can be a thing of art, however, a multiplayer experience itself can be a work of art.

Consider an architect. He's not the designer, he's playing the numbers game. Working out all the angles (quite literally), considering the stress of weight distribution across the structure,integrity of the design from outside forces, managing the available space for optimal use once the final product is built, etc. The final result won't have the aesthetic appeal of the designer, but the end result, a carefully balanced and well thought out design, is in its own way a work of art.

That final sentence there could easily apply to many multiplayer games, specifically the ones the general public consider quite good. It's very hard, and maybe impossible, to render the same emotional response we can receive from a single player experience. Note that I'm saying it's unlikely we can get the "SAME emotional response". A well made multiplayer game can give us the visceral rush of living in the moment, poised against another living, thinking human being. It's the same reason well made action movies are works of art. Even though they are typically superficial, we can still take something away from them even if its that brief but thrilling experience. In truth, its often the loud, aggressive, immature minority of a community that pushes the online experience down a notch and makes it harder to appreciate good design, which is a real shame.



I've tried very hard not to veer too far off topic here, but I really felt strongly about this point. As for my own opinion: I disagree. The attitude that a single player game is the only "true" way to view a game is wrong as it implies that all other design work such as combat balancing, environment design, atmosphere building (which involves all that was mentioned here and far more) and all the other creative aspects that go into multiplayer design is in itself not valid when considering the strength of the game as a whole. That viewpoint is, in my opinion, very narrow minded and one of my biggest problems with the Zero Punctuation reviews.

 

[Battenbergcake]

Yahtzee said Team Fortress was OK, and so are Multiplayer exclusive games (Unless they suck at multiplayer, too), but if a game has a good Multiplayer and a bad Story, is it not just as bad as the F.E.A.R and Bioshock 2 examples you gave?

*points*
I'm basically re telling this.

TF2 is an exclusively multiplayer experience tailored to provide a multiplayer experience.

Yahtzee's mainly bitching about the lack of attention paid to the single player. It's not necessarily quantity but quality.
It?s the fact the single player has suffered in quality DUE to the focus on multiplayer, if that?s your focus, then dump the single player and focus solely on the multiplayer, the money used to go toward all the bullshit fun robbing cinematics could be used to make the multiplayer even more expansive.
The fact that they pump out a weak single player is something of an insult.
It doesn?t need to go on for hours and hours either;
The poorer Final Fantasy games for example (in my opinion), crushingly dull but drag it out over 30 hours.
But Mass effect, doable in 8 hours but far more interesting, streamlined and thoughtful. (again in my opinion)


On a side note, i miss the increasing lack of couch co-op and couch multiplayer, that used to be the more social aspect of multiplayer for me, now it's going into repose and probably extinction soon enough.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I played Team Fortress 2 on PS3, and I fucking LOVED it.

Oh jeez, don't play it on the PC or you might jizz your pants.

OT: The way I feel about this is I agree with Yahtzee's very incomplete thought. A game is crap if it can't stand on its own as a single player game. BUT if that game is centered around a multiplayer experience, then there is nothing to complain about. TF2 is possibly the best Multiplayer game I've played, and yet playing by yourself only recently became an option.

Then you have games like UT3 where the game is meant to be a multiplayer game, but they tacked on a cheesy but challenging campaign mode. I didn't buy UT3 for it's campaign, but I did play the hell out of it.

THEN you have games like Halo 3 and MW2 (I'm pretty sure the quote everyone is getting from Yahtzee came from one of these games). I've not played either because of the warnings of a poor single player experience, but had I bought either, it would have been based on the expectations of CoD 4 and Halo 1/2. Both games had a great single player with multiplayer as an added bonus. It was only after those games became a mad success in multiplayer that the companies that made them decided to ditch a worthy single player experience and just give people more multiplayer. This is where the problem lies because it has nothing to do with making a game good and everything with making a game fun.

Fun games are plaguing the industry right now because everyone can make a game fun, but no effort has to go into making a game good. Compare the effort that has to go into making the games Bioshock and Team Fortress 2. I love both games to death, but Bioshock has a great story and well written characters. TF2 just has some well drawn characters, but we are left to fill in the blanks ourselves (TF2 may be a bad example here because I enjoy this about TF2, but I'm trying to highlight the lack of writing. Other MP games aren't so attractive or deeper than "shoot other team"). If all games go the TF2 route, we might have some fun games for a while, but as others pointed out, gaming communities move on to the next hottest thing, and then this "fun" game is left in the dust. Nothing about these MP only games are good, just fun. Giving game makers a pass based solely on great MP and shallow SP is poor judgment because they are going to just keep doing it. If they want to make MP games, go ahead, but then they need to spawn a different "Deathmatch" series instead of bastardizing the Single Player line (Which is something I give Quake 3 crap about to this day. What the hell was wrong with calling it Quake Online?).

Are you seriously arguing that a fun game is not, by definition, a good one? Or for that matter, that it's possible for a game to be good, but not fun? Because that's a load of hogwash. As for people moving on quickly, you do realize that that doesn't happen on the PC unless the multiplayer isn't very good to begin with, right? I'll never understand why it happens that way on consoles, but it's rare for a PC game to completely lose its user base before the 10 year mark.

Well first of all games need to tell a story, we need to feel like we´re doing something epic and meaningful to the game world and multiplayer can´t do that right now, even in mag where winning or losing affects the game world I bet most people just see that as a framing rather than an actual part of the game. Without that drive, without that feeling of advancing through a story, beating the bad guys and saving that world I usually can´t be bothered to play a game´s multiplayer. Single player is still seen as the main function of a game as well, take brotherhood, it has an absolutely fantastic, innovative and new multiplayer, but because of the terrible single player (in comparison to the other games of the series) I remember brotherhood as a badly designed game with poor design decisions and a god-awful story. However, since MAG is a multiplayer centric game, the multiplayer is immediatly thrust forward as the main part, I remember MAG as a pretty fun, innovative game, so obviously it depends on what the game is marketed as. Most of all though I think it comes down to reliability, if a single player game lags and glitches, or if people could hack into it and mess things up, it would be seen as a bad, broken game, multiplayer games are allowed a pass on this because they´re multiplayer games. Oh and, a person can always play on the single-player, but not always the multiplayer.

Since when do games need a story to be entertaining? You may prefer it that way, but pretty much every game made before about 1995 would like a word with you.

To both of you: The story is and always has been optional. The fun is not.

 

[Lt. Vinciti]

I think if a game is Multiplayer alone then fine. BF1942 is still one of my favourite games as is TF2. However if a game includes a Single Player campaign there's nothing worse than it being half-arsed. Franchises that know the replayability lies in Multiplayer don't tend to create good Single Player games and opt for passable. I hate "passable", it's why I don't bother with CoD any more.

See Single Player campaigns have to be made with a bit more thought that Multiplayer games, that's a given. If a game advertises having both Single Player and Multiplayer and delivers a shit Single Player game with a decent Multiplayer one it's obvious that the entire game is half-arsed. Multiplayer's easy, Single Player, not so much. Therefore, in my opinion, if a game's Single Player doesn't stand up on it's own then the game overall will get a "meh" from me.

I love you.

I prefer to do the SP before I do MP kinda deal....test the waters see the weapons and know a little bit of background.... The stories for MOST FPS games is pretty simple...Save World Play MP...and Why I Hated Modern Warfare 2 and Why World at War was pretty decent in story telling!

 

[ExileNZ]

I personally find tacked-on single-player more offensive than tacked-on multiplayer, but then I do tend to prefer solo to multi anyway.

I'm glad Shogo, with its huge solo campaign, gave you the chance to run around some arenas and blow shit up once you'd finished, just as I appreciated FEAR's multiplayer, though I didn't feel Shogo's was particularly 'tacked on' (nor FEAR's, really, but FEAR's main focus was always on the story). I even regretted that games like FAKK2 and Alice didn't have multi. Oni's removal of multiplayer for release was, for me, a crime, even with such a huge focus on the story.

Quake 3 didn't hold my interest as long as, say, Unreal Tournament, or pretty much anything multiplayer-focused that I've played. Except maybe Counterstrike, because I played Quake 3 longer than 2 weeks (honestly, not that big a fan). Quake 2 held me for ages, maybe even past the release of Quake 3. I've dabbled in the odd MMO, though I refuse to touch WoW since I have other things I need to do.

As for tacked-on single-player... I can really only think of Gore that was particularly offensive in that regard, and if you've never heard of it then all the better.

I guess as a bottom line, I prefer for both to be done well, but if I have to choose between good solo and good multi, I'll go for good solo.

 

[Something Amyss]

This is inspired by some of the responses to the "Do you still play a shooter's campaign?" topic. Specifically, a lot of people are spouting Yahtzee's famous line about how a game needs to be able to stand on its single player alone, with multiplayer as a tacked on bonus. Personally, I couldn't disagree more with that statement; tacked on multiplayer, to me, is just as bad as tacked on singleplayer. I'd rather see an excellent game with no campaign at all, ala TF2 or Quake III, than a mediocre game that tried to do both singleplayer and multiplayer.

From what I understand, Yahtzee simply doesn't like multiplayer games -- for that matter, I get the impression that he doesn't especially care for people in general. There's nothing wrong with disliking multiplayer, but there's enough of us out there who do that would like to keep getting our multiplayer focused games that it would be unfair for us if multiplayer suddenly became an afterthought, just as much as it would be unfair to you guys if the campaign were an afterthought in absolutely every game. The fact is, there is plenty of room in the market for examples of both type to get released, and indeed they do -- or is anybody out there who has access to a multiplayer focused game seriously playing the multiplayer for the likes of F.E.A.R. or Bioshock 2, to say nothing of games like Half Life 2, which has an excellent campaign but only decent multiplayer, or the first Bioshock, which doesn't have multiplayer at all?

Basically, if the game is multiplayer focused and you don't like multiplayer, don't buy the game, because it's not aimed at you. I mean, I love 4X games and dislike RTS games, but you don't see me arguing that all strategy games should be turn based, I just ignore the subset of the genre that I don't care for. Can't the rest of you do the same, replacing "4X" with "single player focused shooters" and "RTS" with "multiplayer focused shooters"?

For discussion value, who all agrees with me, disagrees with me, or has something related but not directly answering that question to say?

i'm just going to break this down into a few brief points:

1. Read what Yahtzee says on the subject of Multiplayer. There are a few flaws based on your comprehension of what he's said. One of which is you took his pithy comment without any context of him actually talking about multiplayer.

2. There is plenty of room, but that does not mean they get released in equal numbers. If you like MP, that's fine. But it's just plain dickish to tell people to not complain about the majority when the alternative is rather anemic. "Just ignore it" is a shitty solution in this case.

3. Multiplayer is a rather large cop-out for developers. Try getting people to play the same level ten times. It's hard. Throw in multiplayer, and people will happily select Nuke Town 50 times in a row if possible. they'll even play it with the same people doing the same things 50 times in a row.

4. I hope you've never complained about casual games. Not much to say here, but as party games rise, the number of "core" gamers complaining is rising, too.

 

[Blind Sight]

If it is designed primarily as a multiplayer game, with no single player, then I consider this comment null and void, but if there is a single player, it damn well better be decent and able to stand on its own. People have probably already said this, but meh.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I personally find tacked-on single-player more offensive than tacked-on multiplayer, but then I do tend to prefer solo to multi anyway.

I'm glad Shogo, with its huge solo campaign, gave you the chance to run around some arenas and blow shit up once you'd finished, just as I appreciated FEAR's multiplayer, though I didn't feel Shogo's was particularly 'tacked on' (nor FEAR's, really, but FEAR's main focus was always on the story). I even regretted that games like FAKK2 and Alice didn't have multi. Oni's removal of multiplayer for release was, for me, a crime, even with such a huge focus on the story.

Quake 3 didn't hold my interest as long as, say, Unreal Tournament, or pretty much anything multiplayer-focused that I've played. Except maybe Counterstrike, because I played Quake 3 longer than 2 weeks (honestly, not that big a fan). Quake 2 held me for ages, maybe even past the release of Quake 3. I've dabbled in the odd MMO, though I refuse to touch WoW since I have other things I need to do.

As for tacked-on single-player... I can really only think of Gore that was particularly offensive in that regard, and if you've never heard of it then all the better.

I guess as a bottom line, I prefer for both to be done well, but if I have to choose between good solo and good multi, I'll go for good solo.

Holy cow, another person that played Shogo. That was the first FPS I ever took online, and to this day I haven't found a game that comes close to matching the frantic action found in that game. The fact that the campaign was excellent as well easily catapults it onto my short list of favorite games of all time.

 

[Ocoton]

So... basically, you're upset that someone doesn't agree with your opinion on multi-player and wanted to ***** about it on a website full of his fans? Also, Yahtzee enjoyed team fortress 2, his only problem with it being a lack of variety in the maps that were out at that time.

Did you read his extra punctuation thing? He said that he never played. He only really looked at it for the review.

I typically read the extra punctuation and I have never seen that.

 

[Dorian6]

Multiplayer is fun, but you can't justify charging $50+ for it.
Yes, TF2 is an awesome game despite having no singleplayer campaign. It also costs $20.

Even when you got it for $50 in the orange box, it came bundled with Half life 2 episodes 1 & 2 and Portal (one of the greatest games ever made.)

 

[Megacherv]

It's not a bad game, it's just not as worth it if it's the price of a full retail game (i.e. MW2 was £40, and the campaign was awful. TF2 has no campaign, but only sells for £14)

 

[ultimateownage]

Anything can be fun when played with friends. What he means is that if the multiplayer is fun because you play it with friends that doesn't mean that it the gameplay and mechanics are necessarily good.

That's assuming you actually play with friends. I don't know how it works on the Xbox, but PC gamers generally spend little to no time playing with people they know in real life.

Well firstly friendship is not something strictly confined to real life, there's plenty of people I'd call my friend who I've never met before or even seen what they look like.
Secondly, playing with friends is just one example of how playing with certain people will alter your opinion of a game. Take TF2 for example, when I play with friends I find the game a hell of a lot of fun, when observing the game without playing it I find the game extremely well made, and when I play it with people I hate I think the game's terrible. How much I like a multiplayer game is entirely situational, as it is with a lot of people.

So for an unbiased view of a game, you shouldn't play it with other people.

 

[Aurgelmir]

Quake III[/I], than a mediocre game that tried to do both singleplayer and multiplayer.

And yet there is StarCraft2...

Sure you don't like RTS, so you probably don't care about this gem of a game.

The issue with "tacked on" games are that they are one game with something added on top of that. Where as games which are build from the ground up as BOTH a single and multi player game, will work a lot better.

Personally I care little for multiplayer in Console games, mostly because they are tack ons and are very seldom patched. This leads to very unbalanced and boring games.
That said, a lot of newer FPS games get more atention in the multiplayer department, but I don't care much for 'Gray On Brown 2: Modern "I played this crap last year"'

So to sum up:

Multiplayer: Hardly ever play it, other than WoW and SC2
Tack Ons: Usually not as good as ground up made multi/single games
Stand on its own merits: Well I sort of think so, unless you market the game as Multiplayer with a single player tack on.

 

[Ophiuchus]

To shamelessly Ctrl+V what I said in the PubClub forum a while back, in response to someone saying they don't do multiplayer because they never had anyone to play with:

=====================================================================
I had people to play games with, I just never bothered. Multiplayer games back when I was a kid were... lacking, to say the least, if they even had multiplayer at all. By the time the N64/PS1/PS2 came along with worthwhile multiplayer games, my brother and I were both moody teenagers and couldn't be in the same room long enough to play a game before a fight broke out, while my friends were almost entirely uninterested in gaming. So, here I am at the end of my 20s having never really developed any competitive streak.

Not only did I never develop the competitive streak as a kid, Xbox Live has made absolutely bloody certain I've never developed it as an adult. To put it charitably, that service is full of the sort of people I'd rather not play with. Glitchers, quitters, tiresome obsessives, idiots of all kinds. When entering a game lobby on XBL, I get feelings of anxiety and dread. Exactly the same feelings I get when, for example, I'm out with a friend for their birthday and I have to endure an evening in a bar or club full of chavs. In fact, I tend to deal with both situations the same way - have a few beers beforehand. Bad plan in both cases, I suspect.

I will occasionally play a bit of multiplayer, almost exclusively co-op, if it's with someone in the same room, or over XBL if it's with someone I know and trust to not be a dickhead. Long story short: I play Rock Band with my brother. Maybe once or twice a month. For about three or four songs before one of us gets bored and wanders off to do something else. Or, in my case with what I assume is a faulty copy of RB3, until it crashes.
=====================================================================

Long story short: if a game has a single-player campaign, it'd better be good. I have no objection to multiplayer per se but I do object when including it leads to the single-player being below standard. Because, yes, I'm afraid multiplayer was an tagged-on extra when it first started, so I'm never going to accept it as the main thing in a game that also has a solo campaign. Also, it's virtually impossible to find anyone to play with on any game more than a month old that isn't a shooter.

Oh, and before anyone comes with the "you don't get douchebags in online PC games" spiel: I don't believe you and I don't care. I don't have a gaming PC, can't afford one and wouldn't want to deal with the hassle of building and maintaining one even if I could afford it.

 

[TheNewDemoman]

See Assassins Creed Brotherhood is a good example of this. It blends MP, and SP together. Unlike COD, which there is no context.

I think a game can stand on one alone, it just has to be good.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

This is inspired by some of the responses to the "Do you still play a shooter's campaign?" topic. Specifically, a lot of people are spouting Yahtzee's famous line about how a game needs to be able to stand on its single player alone, with multiplayer as a tacked on bonus. Personally, I couldn't disagree more with that statement; tacked on multiplayer, to me, is just as bad as tacked on singleplayer. I'd rather see an excellent game with no campaign at all, ala TF2 or Quake III, than a mediocre game that tried to do both singleplayer and multiplayer.

From what I understand, Yahtzee simply doesn't like multiplayer games -- for that matter, I get the impression that he doesn't especially care for people in general. There's nothing wrong with disliking multiplayer, but there's enough of us out there who do that would like to keep getting our multiplayer focused games that it would be unfair for us if multiplayer suddenly became an afterthought, just as much as it would be unfair to you guys if the campaign were an afterthought in absolutely every game. The fact is, there is plenty of room in the market for examples of both type to get released, and indeed they do -- or is anybody out there who has access to a multiplayer focused game seriously playing the multiplayer for the likes of F.E.A.R. or Bioshock 2, to say nothing of games like Half Life 2, which has an excellent campaign but only decent multiplayer, or the first Bioshock, which doesn't have multiplayer at all?

Basically, if the game is multiplayer focused and you don't like multiplayer, don't buy the game, because it's not aimed at you. I mean, I love 4X games and dislike RTS games, but you don't see me arguing that all strategy games should be turn based, I just ignore the subset of the genre that I don't care for. Can't the rest of you do the same, replacing "4X" with "single player focused shooters" and "RTS" with "multiplayer focused shooters"?

For discussion value, who all agrees with me, disagrees with me, or has something related but not directly answering that question to say?

i'm just going to break this down into a few brief points:

1. Read what Yahtzee says on the subject of Multiplayer. There are a few flaws based on your comprehension of what he's said. One of which is you took his pithy comment without any context of him actually talking about multiplayer.

2. There is plenty of room, but that does not mean they get released in equal numbers. If you like MP, that's fine. But it's just plain dickish to tell people to not complain about the majority when the alternative is rather anemic. "Just ignore it" is a shitty solution in this case.

3. Multiplayer is a rather large cop-out for developers. Try getting people to play the same level ten times. It's hard. Throw in multiplayer, and people will happily select Nuke Town 50 times in a row if possible. they'll even play it with the same people doing the same things 50 times in a row.

4. I hope you've never complained about casual games. Not much to say here, but as party games rise, the number of "core" gamers complaining is rising, too.

On your first point, I'm misquoting Yahtzee because I'm actually quoting some of his more vocal fans, not him personally. This thread was inspired by some of the responses to the "do you still play the campaign?" thread from a few days back.

As for the second point, how so? FPS games that are designed for the single player still get made, they just aren't as popular as the ones that are focused on multiplayer. Besides that, a short campaign doesn't have to be a bad one. Matter of fact, it's really difficult for an FPS with a campaign that lasts more than 10 hours to avoid becoming boring and repetitive. Better to have a short but sweet campaign than one that overstays its welcome -- and if you're going to complain that $60 for a 7 hour campaign is overpriced, well duh, $60 is overpriced for any game short of a collector's edition, and I mean one with some seriously cool pack-ins.

On the third point, that's the beauty of playing with actual people; even on the same map, it's different every time. That's why humans are always going to be better than bots, at least until we can get truly sentient AI, because the humans are so unpredictable by comparison.

As for the fourth one, nope, I can't say as I ever have complained about casual games. Again, there's plenty of room in the market for both kinds of gamers, and some of those casual games can be entertaining. Tetris, anyone?

 

[9Darksoul6]

Yahtzee's opinion in that matter is obviously a consequence of either:
a) having an anti-social personality;
b) using mostly pirates games for his reviews (yes, I really think he'd be capable of that);
c) both a) and b);

But he's right about something: you don't need to work half as hard to make a online/multiplayed game as you'd work on a single-player one.
Think about the hours people put into CoD's multiplayer, for instance, and the number of maps that game has.
I believe, from what I've seen recently, that with the right social-oriented elements, any mind-numbing piece of trash becomes addictive - Farmville would fit as a perfect example - and that's the main reason you're seeing more and more of those games nowadays; even simply adding a leaderboard to a game makes it more addictive.