Why is multiplayer still being forced?

[bug_of_war]

The developer of Spec Ops: The Line said the multiplayer in his game was a cancerous growth that was shoehorned in by the publisher to increase sales. The multiplayer was developed by a less talented developer and in order to keep the game consistent, the single player developers had to adapt certain game mechanics from the single player game to fit the multiplayer mode, to its detriment. So yes, adding multiplayer just for the sake of it can in fact negatively affect the game as a whole. Given that 2k is also the publisher of Bioshock, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this was exactly what happened in Bioshock 2.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119332-Spec-Ops-Multiplayer-Is-a-Cancerous-Growth

Thank you for giving me an example. With that in mind however I think a majority of people would agree that Spec Ops: The Line is a very good game. I know there are people on this site hate it for the white phosphorus scene, but as far as I am aware most people really enjoyed the game. Now I'm not saying that excuses forcing the single player team to change mechanics to fit with multiplayer, but in the end I think the game came out pretty damn well. Just my opinion though...

Secondly, just because you're making a triple A game doesn't mean you aren't or can't make a game for a niche. Dead Space is generally agreed to have been at its best when it catered to its niche the most (the first game), whereas DS3 has been pretty poorly received (and has had poorer sales than the previous two). Furthermore, even if you're making a triple A game that is not catering to a niche, that still doesn't mean that multiplayer HAS to be included. Plenty of non-niche AAA games have been single player only and still sold really well (ex: Half-Life, Skyrim, Bioshock 1, Knights of the Old Republic 1, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc).

I'm not saying that multiplayer is bad, don't get me wrong I enjoy good multiplayer in games. But multiplayer usually is bad when it's included just to fill in a checkbox.

I agree that a tripple A game doesn't have to not be niche, and your example of Dead Space is a good one, but I wouldn't exactly classify Dead Space as entirely niche. Yes, today there seems to be very little survival horror, but Dead Space is a 3rd person shooter, and they're just about as well recieved as 1st person shooters and open world games, just look at Resident Evil, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto etc. I wouldn't classify Dead Space as catering entirely for a niche market as it was a well developed 3rd person shooter that those whom enjoy shooting things can see themseleves getting into. I also agree that there are many good total single player games such as the examples you have listed, I also believe that MP shouldn't just be a checkbox, but if a company is going to put it in there I don't see the problem with it, especially if it isn't intergrated into the single player like Resident Evil 5 and 6.

In the end I don't see why it's a big deal. If the multiplayer sucks, just play single player, vice versa, and if they're both bad trade the game in. We can't be against everything that game publishers/developers want to put into their games otherwise there would never be change, and change is good.

 

[Klagermeister]

Multiplayer takes a lot less work for way more hours of gameplay. Make a map (or in some cases reuse one), set the spawn points, presto.

And then you can tack on DLC and crap.

Personally I'd prefer a game to be either a good single player experience or a good multiplayer one, I hate how they always try to cram both into one game.

I dunno, man. Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect 3 handled it pretty well.
I guess it's all in the execution.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

Simple, its the easiest way to nickel and dime us, cause we let it happen!

Its also an easy way out. Why make a long single player game that offers amazing variety once in awhile to keep it from being repetitive, when you can make multiplayer, a purely repetitive feature with little to no imagination or effort.

Lets not forget the "Players ALWAYS want to be connected for more SOCIAL fun!" card devs throw out. Thats BS.
I can go play DMC4 for hours discovering new combos ALONE and still have fun.

I think that's a part of it. The DMC games were made to be mastered, whereas most of today's games are made to be experienced. Given how many are so tightly scripted with a bunch of flashy quick time events that always play out the same way, that experience is only interesting once, so they throw in a quickly put together multiplayer mode to keep peoples interest and prevent them from trading it in.

 

[Username Redacted]

I fucking hate crowbarred in multiplayer. I just don't see the point. I'm very much of the philosophy that a game, if it's going to bother with a single player campaign, should be able to stand up on that alone otherwise why bother. It annoys me to no end the the publisher of 'Spec Ops: the Line' insisted on multiplayer and then outsourced that when Yaeger balked at doing it. Since many/most of the complaints about that game center on the controls I can't help but wonder how much tighter they could have made the gameplay if resources hadn't been wasted on a half-assed multiplayer that wasn't ever going to get played. Lastly I hate crowbarred in multiplayer because the one game where I thought there might be something interesting going for it in Bioshock 2 the actual multiplayer didn't fucking work.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

It is because publishers see multiplayer as a selling point. Publishers want every game to be as profitable as possible. If they thought including an exploding case of anthrax in each game case would sell more copies, they would do it without thinking twice.

 

[bug_of_war]

I actually write and draw things as a hobby so I agree with you on people not having the right to change a story or art because they did'nt like it however I'm not selling my sketches or my stories so that may be different.Anyway I think both the games industry and gamers in general are at fault for the problems in the industry because gamers let developers/publishers get away with so much bullshit and then complain afterward when they let them do it.Developers/publishers continue to pull stunts like lying about their product because they know people let them do it and generally acting like a bunch of children throwing a temper tantrum when people call them out on it.Also there is to much pressure placed on developers where if they screw up their projects may be cancelled and several of them could lose their jobs which I think is unfair especially if they were given goals they just could not meet.

Yeah, seems we both agree the problems with gaming are a 50/50 split. I don't agree though with the idea that gamers let companies get away with things, if anything I feel they put tight nooses around the devs necks. For example, with Dead Space 3 when the micro-transactions were announced people immedietly jumped up and down angrily writing pure theories as truths and condemmed EA for ever possibly thinking of incorporating it. I think gamers really can be an entitled bunch of children, and the fact that many times I see people attacking EA for anything they do and praising Valve for anything they do is infuriating. EA is not a bad company, I actually own many of their games because I enjoy them, sure they make mistakes but so does Valve, another good company that make games that require multiplayer to be fun and refuse to allow for competition. Seriously, Valve is just as bad as EA, which is to say that EA and Valve are both fine companies that have their pros and cons.

I should probably clarify what I mean when I say that fans have no right what-so-ever to change a games story before someone gets all miffy at me. Fan fiction is fine, if you want to make up your own little stories based on a game than I totally agree that people should do that, what I think shouldn't happen is someone demanding that the story be changed to make them happy. I'm pretty sure Yahtzee or Jim Sterling said at the Escapist expo "Don't ever let fans dictate the story", which I believe is quite true. As a fan it is quite easy to miss something, not understand entirely where something is going, or even not fully understand a character. I remember being told about the 'Dark Energy Ending' last year after ME3 had been released, and I had no idea what they were talking about. This was because I completely forgot about Tali's trust mission and all the other minor hints in it. So yeah, fan fiction is fine, but doing what the Bioware community did is not.

 

[lostlevel]

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.

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.

See this is my problem with most of the gaming community right now, they can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that big triple A game devs aren't making a game for the niche. The niche market is mainly supplied to by indie developers or Valve because they can afford to only have 1000 people play their game. I also keep hearing about games single player lacking polish so that the multiplayer could be added, yet nobody has posted an example of such a thing occurring. Triple A games can still hold their artistic vision, it can be argued that Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect have held true to their artistic vision, so I really don't see why MP is so bad.

Well if all games had multiplayer like Assassin's Creed or Mass Effect 3 then most people wouldn't have a problem. But the thing is that some multiplayer modes are added in because it's expected and therefore don't have as much effort put into them as the single player game,I actually think all games who have a multiplayer model should be fun enough to keep people coming back for more instead of an afterthought that slowly dies off as people get bored and move on to something else.

I think most gamers know that triple A games are not trying to cater for the niche, they understand that they can elsewhere but I think that it is when a game they previously enjoyed is seen to be selling out on its original values to widen its appeal that annoys them. Of course triple A game can hold to an artist vision but like a James Cameron movie it doesn't mean it's good.
Bad jokes aside, something like adding multiplayer to survival horror games that didn't have it before could be seen as compromising the game, I can see why people get annoyed by that but forced multiplayer isn't always bad.
In truth I struggled to think of many games I actually own that could be seen to be damaged by the addition of multiplayer. I've not played most of the ones that get brought up in this sort of debate. So out of the ones I own off the top of my head the only examples that stick in my mind are Special Ops and The Darkness (I know pretty old).

The other games I own with short or lacking story modes are really geared towards multiplayer over anything else and are made by companies who aren't short of money, so they presumably did it by choice.
Again, I don't think multiplayer is a bad thing if done well, it gives me something to do if I want to enjoy a game's world for longer. If done badly I choose to see it as just an optional extra to widen appeal and could mean I'm more likely to get a sequel to a game I like, so if I'm honest I'll accept that.

 

[Dr. Dice Lord]

Basically everything I have to add has been said already, mostly creating a need for online passes. Not to mention "THE KIDS LOVE CO-OP, IF IT DOESN'T HAVE CO-OP NO ONE WILL PLAY IT!" Action games like Dead Space 3 (because it's clearly not horror anymore) are a perfect example of how this kind of attitude hamstrings formally single-player games. A great way to turn something interesting into a bland mash of unrelated genres for "mass appeal."

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The best tacked-on multiplayer I've seen was the ME3 multiplayer, which retained my interest far longer than the actual game did. The free DLC doesn't hurt it. They could conceivably release it as a F2P standalone. A close second would be the Assassin's Creed multiplayer, which was creative and incredibly engaging.

The worst was easily the Spec Ops multiplayer. I played one match out of curiosity. It was like a shitty, laggy Gears of War with godawful Call of Duty XP mechanics forced into it. After playing the game itself, it just...it's insane that it even existed. The cognitive dissonance between the singleplayer and the multiplayer was excruciating. It would be as if Martin Luther King gave a speech on racial equality, walked down the street and through a loading screen, then put on a KKK hood and started burning crosses.

The missed-opportunity would be the Space Marine multiplayer. It was actually pretty good, but it suffered from an over-reliance on said Call of Duty XP mechanics and a health bar that was waaay to fragile given how clumsy the movement scheme was. You would die in two shots from a Stalker boltgun while lazily strolling to the left towards cover, it was ridiculous. It was like fistfighting while submersed in honey. Considering how awesome a Space Marine multiplayer could have been, I was really upset that I got the bastard love-child of Gears of War and Call of Duty.

The other ones I've played - Max Payne 3 comes to mind - were boring as all get-out.

Basically, it all depends on how good the multiplayer is. Because it's tacked-on, it tends to be crap, so good tacked-on multiplayer is the exception rather than the rule.

 

[BBboy20]

Nobody has garnered enough brains to realize multiplayer works in COD because multiplayer works in COD.

My experience playing BO2's MP says otherwise.

Heard the MP for Tomb Raider though is fantastic.

 

[rob_simple]

I played the Resident Evil 5 demo and was immediately put off by the laughably bad real-time inventory system ripped right from Dead Space (but only implemented half as well,) although I could have coped with that if the partner AI wasn't tit-crushingly useless. Long story short, despite Resident Evil 4 being one of my favourite games, I couldn't buy RE5 because it was literally unplayable, for me.

Recently, though, I've seen co-op Let's Plays of the game and I immediately understood what I was missing because it looks like a ridiculous amount of fun; more than enough to outweigh the mild racism and shitty inventory system. One problem though: I literally have no one to play co-op with.

That's what pisses me off so much about forced multiplayer: these are games that I actually want to buy, but I can't because they are designed to be played with two or more people and the partner AI simply doesn't cut it. And I'd be fine with that if RE had always been a co-op series, because I'd never have gotten into it in the first place, but when your series has always revolved around the single player experience, you shouldn't suddenly force multiplayer on people or else slam the door in their face.