I think that has more to do with it than anything else. Publishers tend to jump on bandwagons and latch onto whatever they think will sell games regardless of how little practical sense it makes.wombat_of_war said:
Why is multiplayer still being forced?
- Thread starter serious biscuit
- Start date
Recommended Videos
To be honest I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Multiplayer has been developed so heavily that it's relatively easy to churn out (though not nessicarily GOOD multiplayer). Multiplayer gives an excuse to sell minimal content, like a single map, for a premium price after the fact as an add on. What's more developing single player content and putting a single player in the center of the action as a hero, and having the developers build an entire world (characters, events, maps, quests, objectives) around them takes a lot of work and involves developing a lot of assets that might not even be used. With multi-player you can create the basic bones of something and then leave it entirely to the players to do their own thing and create the content themselves effectively. With single player you might have to create literally dozens of maps, models, voice sets, etc... for a single sale amounting to a few hours of content, where with multiplayer again, once the basics are in place, you might just need one map and you can get a payday, and sell differant models, features, voice sets, etc... seperatly.serious biscuit said:
Given the money to be made on it, and increasing ease of development, I think it's why we're seeing an increasing trend towards the development of games where it's the single player that's the tacked on aspect, and in games that are still at their core a single player experience there is a tendency to want to toss in a multiplayer mode for the potential sales if nothing else.
To be honest for a long time tacked on multiplayer modes were generally terrible, but as companies have gotten better at them, we've started to see some fairly decent ones, "Mass Effect 3" having a surprisingly solid Multiplayer attached to it for example appear, and the success has doubtlessly done nothing but inspire companies to continue doing more of the same.
My thoughts? In addition to stuff like online passes, I think it's mainly because...games are "supposed to have them". You want to make a game, here's a standard list of features you need to include. Internet is popular so we have to include some sort of feature that implements it. Socialness is popular so if we can include that, more people will like it. And multiplayer just so happens to have all of those! Plus Call of Duty and Halo are super popular because they have multiplayer. So if we include all those features, the game will be super popular! I'm super duper serial.
I think it's less for nefarious reasons, and more that a lot of people consider those features to be standard features all games should have (although I totally get seeing it as nefarious). It's misguided sure (the standard I mean), but there you have it.
Ironically, all that bullshit about games becoming more and more expensive? I'd be willing to bet that a huge part of the reason they're becoming more and more expensive is because of forced online interaction.
You want to add online features to an otherwise offline game, that can be a boatload of work. Let alone having stuff like a proper lobby/matchmaking service, designing good maps, balancing the game regularly, fixing bugs, lots of playtesting, and on top of all that, somehow making it fun and unique. Then you probably also have to hire additional staff, networking programmers and whatnot. If the game wasn't designed with a good multiplayer experience in mind and instead its simply being included to meet the requirements or because it's the standard, then of course it's going to be crappy.
I imagine that's part of the reason so many games just default to Call of Duty competitive type multiplayer--it's the most popular multiplayer and the developers don't care for it or didn't give it much thought, so they figure they may as well just do that. The problem with including Call of Duty/Halo type multiplayer in a game that doesn't need it is that CoD multiplayer is tailored for a specific type of audience and experience(extreme competition), which might not necessarily mesh well with the audience of the actual game itself, along with the fact that in CoD and Halo, multiplayer was designed to be an ongoing thing and one of the core features. So when a game includes that type of multiplayer and the developers aren't prepared for it being an ongoing thing, it dies off after a really short time. Of course if the multiplayer doesn't mesh well with the game because it's a different style of game they could always...tweak...the design to make it work better for that type of multiplayer *cough* Dead Space 3
Essentially it's an on-going money sink that the budget has to take into account, therefore the budget goes up. But they have to include it because it's "standard". Some developer, I don't remember which, said something about the multiplayer in his game being a cancerous growth and that they had to include it for the only reason that the publisher said so.
I think it's less for nefarious reasons, and more that a lot of people consider those features to be standard features all games should have (although I totally get seeing it as nefarious). It's misguided sure (the standard I mean), but there you have it.
Ironically, all that bullshit about games becoming more and more expensive? I'd be willing to bet that a huge part of the reason they're becoming more and more expensive is because of forced online interaction.
You want to add online features to an otherwise offline game, that can be a boatload of work. Let alone having stuff like a proper lobby/matchmaking service, designing good maps, balancing the game regularly, fixing bugs, lots of playtesting, and on top of all that, somehow making it fun and unique. Then you probably also have to hire additional staff, networking programmers and whatnot. If the game wasn't designed with a good multiplayer experience in mind and instead its simply being included to meet the requirements or because it's the standard, then of course it's going to be crappy.
I imagine that's part of the reason so many games just default to Call of Duty competitive type multiplayer--it's the most popular multiplayer and the developers don't care for it or didn't give it much thought, so they figure they may as well just do that. The problem with including Call of Duty/Halo type multiplayer in a game that doesn't need it is that CoD multiplayer is tailored for a specific type of audience and experience(extreme competition), which might not necessarily mesh well with the audience of the actual game itself, along with the fact that in CoD and Halo, multiplayer was designed to be an ongoing thing and one of the core features. So when a game includes that type of multiplayer and the developers aren't prepared for it being an ongoing thing, it dies off after a really short time. Of course if the multiplayer doesn't mesh well with the game because it's a different style of game they could always...tweak...the design to make it work better for that type of multiplayer *cough* Dead Space 3
Essentially it's an on-going money sink that the budget has to take into account, therefore the budget goes up. But they have to include it because it's "standard". Some developer, I don't remember which, said something about the multiplayer in his game being a cancerous growth and that they had to include it for the only reason that the publisher said so.
Let's make a short list!
Publisher required it (and will cut funding if you don't do what they want)
It looked better in planning then it turned out (Hey sometimes things just wind up not working out so good when actually finished and scrapping it all together would suck more then including a bad multiplayer)
The developer thinks it's good (People have opinions afterall and internal opinion may not reflect public opinion)
It is fun and you just don't like it (sometimes people declare something bad when actually they just don't like it)
God help them all, they actually listened to the fans indiscriminately, one of the worse things you could possible do most of the time since fans suggest the stupidest ideas. Sometimes they come up with a good one, 99% of the time its face-palm worthy.
Publisher required it (and will cut funding if you don't do what they want)
It looked better in planning then it turned out (Hey sometimes things just wind up not working out so good when actually finished and scrapping it all together would suck more then including a bad multiplayer)
The developer thinks it's good (People have opinions afterall and internal opinion may not reflect public opinion)
It is fun and you just don't like it (sometimes people declare something bad when actually they just don't like it)
God help them all, they actually listened to the fans indiscriminately, one of the worse things you could possible do most of the time since fans suggest the stupidest ideas. Sometimes they come up with a good one, 99% of the time its face-palm worthy.
I am unable to think of any games (other than The Darkness II) that fit that description. I understand there are games that are short and have multiplayer, but I don't see the problem with that. I also play games entirely for single player, but I have yet to feel cheated out of my money. I understand that other people react differently, we're all different and I'm not trying to say you're wrong or anything like that, but my advice to you is just to be more careful with your purchase. I remember when Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood came out I was unsure of whether to play it because I thought it was just there for multiplayer. It wasn't until I actually rented the game that I found myself enjoying it and decided that it was worth the 60 dollar price tag.lithium.jelly said:
While I agree with what you're saying I just wanted to point out that Assassin's Creed had a different section do the multiplayer while one part solely focused on the single player for this reason ^^lithium.jelly said:
Some other studios does this aswell but I can't remember which ones at the moment
You are joking, right?CrossLOPER said:
a) Unique? It couldn't be more generic, bland and boring if they sent you a UE3 tech demo. It might have been in the first game, where you actually had to aim for limbs, but 3 was the same as every other shooter, and not as good or interesting as them either.shrekfan246 said:
b) DS2 had online passes and vs. multiplayer.
They won't ever say '10 hours of solid gameplay' in marketing though. So to the majority, the 30 hours sounds more appealing. And yes I agree, because of this some games implement really terrible multiplayer. Like Mass Effect. It was entertaining for about 2 hours for me, then it got boring and repetitive.Vault101 said:
I'm talking about marketing here. They would never put in '10 hours of great replayability' in their trailers and such. They're marketing to the majority. And the majority will prefer the sound of '30 or more hours of gameplay' over '10 hours of gameplay.' They don't care about you as an individual. They care about the general market.the hidden eagle said:
Well as far as I'm aware there are really very few games that are like that. I also doubt that a company puts it's faith entirely in multiplayer, especially when the only succesful MPs seem to be COD and TF2. I still don't see how multiplayer is the devil, I have never heard of a games single player being cut back for multiplayer and as far as I'm aware most of the community seems to enjoy the games as is.Vault101 said:
its somthing that you can;t really measure....and granted alot of games like Assasins creed or Mass Effect 3 don't seem to suffer because of itbug_of_war said:
but part of it is also general perception..I get the impression that theres this Idea that a game cannot stand up on single player alone...no matter how good the single player is or how tacked on the multipalyer "its there because it needs to be" is a poisonous Idea, is there any reason Tomb Raider needed multiplayer? or Dead Space co-op?
again not every game needs it..and its absence essentially says "this is what you are paying for"
also my main problem is "multiplayer creep" as peopel have said there are reasons for devs to shoe horn in online/multiplayer....you might get games like borderlands 1 that is pretty weak on its own, or a game that "can" be played alone but is utterly shite if you do (like playing co-op stuck with retarded AI bots)
I think it's because EA/Activision wants to show the anti-gaming crowd, that gaming sure as hell is a social experience. As everyone knows, only introvert freaks without any friends plays single-player mode. Also, everyone who masturbates are pathetic people with no hopes in succeeding in life.
At times it is shoe-horned in to games taking away from the budget that could have been used for making the game itself better but often I guess that somewhere someone has calculated the potential loss of making multiplayer against how many extra copies it will sell and I expect they make a profit. Triple A games aren't necessarily about holding true to an artistic vision but more often about how many games can you sell, so it could be said a game just has to be adequate enough to draw enough people in rather than be niche.bug_of_war said:
There are however some games with bad story modes but good multiplayer so I guess most discerning gamers know which aspect the games they buy will lean toward. Of course well implemented multiplayer is preferred but for the most part it still seems optional, it's that bit you do after you've completed story mode if you want.
A phrase you'll hear a lot in modern game development is "make sure they keep the disc in the tray". That way the consumer won't immediately trade it in to gamestop, and they'll be an available customer for the DLC, map packs, microtransactions, and avatar shirts. That's also why this "level-up/prestige" multiplayer system has become so popular, as there's a meta-game to grind for outside of playing the same matches over and over again. For some speculation, I have a feeling that publishers see multiplayer as forward thinking. The consoles have broadband internet, so not using it for the game is probably seen as being archaic, like using a PS2 graphics engine would be. Everyone's facing books and twattering everywhere so you gotta keep up with the times and appear to be forward thinking. Of course there's the online pass/DRM business that others have mentioned.
For an example of multiplayer fucking up the single player experience, Spec Ops: The Line. The multiplayer was made by a different studio against Yager's wishes, and the mechanics of the single player gameplay had to be butchered in order to better gel with a multiplayer experience that was designed by a less talented developer. According to Yager, the campaign was originally meant to control and feel better than the end product did, but I have not seen this "pre-butchered" gameplay.
Regarding Tomb Raider, its multiplayer was done by the Deus Ex: Human Revolution guys. That gives me a strong feeling that it's anything but "tacked-on/unnecessary", but I haven't played it yet.
For an example of multiplayer fucking up the single player experience, Spec Ops: The Line. The multiplayer was made by a different studio against Yager's wishes, and the mechanics of the single player gameplay had to be butchered in order to better gel with a multiplayer experience that was designed by a less talented developer. According to Yager, the campaign was originally meant to control and feel better than the end product did, but I have not seen this "pre-butchered" gameplay.
Regarding Tomb Raider, its multiplayer was done by the Deus Ex: Human Revolution guys. That gives me a strong feeling that it's anything but "tacked-on/unnecessary", but I haven't played it yet.
Som companies certainly are trying to force multipalyer into everything (Hi there Crytech!) and K2 even shoved MP into Bioshock 2 for soem reason. They tried to make a decent MP but it ended up stinking badly. With some games MP works, other games MP is the worst idea in the world. Fortunatly Bioshock Infinte will not have it. So there is still hope for the SP experience.
And as soon as used game sales die, people like me and I'm willing to suspect a good 30% (or likely higher) of the gaming populace will be forced to stop buying games, or at least limited to maybe 2 a year. Why? Because without Used Games, we aren't buying games at all.BanicRhys said:
There is no way in hell I'm paying $60 for a single player game that only ends up being 10 hours long. There's no justification besides "but the game took millions to make!" which really is too expensive. The games sure don't show any improvement despite it all.
Anyways, as someone who can't stand multiplayer, I'm really sick of seeing it shoehorned into a lot of games. No, I don't give a fuck if people have been "clamouring" for it, because in the end it's only going to hurt US who don't want it. Portal 2 had forced multiplayer to see the epilogue, for instance - and I hear they wanna do more of that shit. Remember Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer? Yeah, neither does anyone else. Hunters was a complete joke and the singleplayer campaign featured nothing but the same 2 bosses 4 times each for most of the game. Oh, and don't forget about Dead Space 3's little "what, you're not playing with someone? No area for you!" schtick.
Really, it just screws things up for those of us who play games for single player. And like it or not, there's a LOT of us, and we're pretty damn vocal, too. You think single player games don't sell to well? Tell that to fucking Mass Effect, the original Bioshock, LA Noire, Skyrim, and many other games.
Because they want to transition to writing no AI at all?
Captcha: Of course
See? Even the captcha agrees.
Captcha: Of course
See? Even the captcha agrees.
It's not being forced, it's an option. You don't have to play it if you don't want to, I have not gotten to the multiplayer portion of the game yet, I have heard from some people that it's nothing special, I have also heard from some other people that it's pretty fun. I will judge for myself when I get around to playing the multiplayer.
I do agree that a lot of multiplayer components feel "tacked on", like they're just there for the sake of having multiplayer, but remember what I said above. It's an option, if you don't like it then don't play it, no one is forcing you to do so.
I do agree that a lot of multiplayer components feel "tacked on", like they're just there for the sake of having multiplayer, but remember what I said above. It's an option, if you don't like it then don't play it, no one is forcing you to do so.