The Day the Multiplayer Died
Where did all the cutting edge split screen games go?
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Where did all the cutting edge split screen games go?
Read Full Article
The Day the Multiplayer Died
- Thread starter Game People
- Start date
I'm glad that split screen coop still lives. Some developers keep it in for just that reason. (The reason being to keep it alive.) Such is the case with Borderlands.
As for bots:
Now, with the advent of online console gaming, and especially the rise of "ranking systems"...there's little call for bots now.
[sub]I like them, too.[/sub]
A New Super Mario Brothers Wii coop was terrible with more than two people. Well, the physics were. The idea was nice.
As for bots:
Now, with the advent of online console gaming, and especially the rise of "ranking systems"...there's little call for bots now.
[sub]I like them, too.[/sub]
A New Super Mario Brothers Wii coop was terrible with more than two people. Well, the physics were. The idea was nice.
That last phrase would be excellent if it were put to the Back to the Future theme. Although, I have just done a Back to the Future marathon-thing.
I suspect your future won't happen. Remember when PC releases often had some kind of splitscreen, now it seems even LAN support is asking too much.
Unless online subscriptions start declining they're going to kill split screen entirely, why have local multiplayer when you can have network gaming that means every player has to buy a copy of the game just to join in? Why support LAN when you can force every player through your pay to play or heavily advertised 'free' system?
I miss LAN gaming, marathon sessions of SWAT 4 were brilliant, not least to hear the anguished cries of your enemy as the zipcuffs were drawn. Like keyboard S&M it was...
Unless online subscriptions start declining they're going to kill split screen entirely, why have local multiplayer when you can have network gaming that means every player has to buy a copy of the game just to join in? Why support LAN when you can force every player through your pay to play or heavily advertised 'free' system?
I miss LAN gaming, marathon sessions of SWAT 4 were brilliant, not least to hear the anguished cries of your enemy as the zipcuffs were drawn. Like keyboard S&M it was...
I love bots. I might not even have multiplayer if there were bots in a game, but I think that's the point...
I went to a friends the other night after we went to the movies on his birthday to find the only games we could play? Tekken 6, Soul Calibur 4 and Blazblue:Calamity Trigger, all fighting games.
It's really depressing in a way because the best part of gaming is mixing with community and friends for playing.
PS3s support up to 6-8 controllers, but what's the fucking point?
It's really depressing in a way because the best part of gaming is mixing with community and friends for playing.
PS3s support up to 6-8 controllers, but what's the fucking point?
Game People, understand that this is fueled by money as much as any claims of innovation. The bottom line is that the games industry wants to force people online as much as possible. This allows them greater control over the product, fuels the development of online services run by each individual developer, and of course makes it easier to pimp microtransactions to those people while they are online.
I admit I'm not a big fan of split screen on the occasions when I do play multiplayer games, BUT I do understand the appeal and why it works. However from a game industry perspective they don't have much motivation for catering to your "on the couch" split screen or even LAN based gaming experience.
From their perspective if they force you online this means you need two people with compadible hardware, their own copies of the game, and of course them being signed up for your service so you can harass them with microtransactions, advertising, and of course have access to their personal information. Oh and yeah, there is the DRM aspect of the whole thing too, since it allows them to try and make multiplayer impossible without a real copy since your dependant on their online verification and such. I'd also argue (on an unrelated note) that I suspect part of the industry's obsession with multiplayer gaming, oftentimes at the expense of single player games/components is simply that it's relatively easy to force multiplayer online and try and verify it, while single player games are much easier to
steal and get the most out of by their very nature. To an extent I figure a lot of companies figure single player modes in shooters and such are amounting to a freebie for pirates.
Of course the central root of this problem is us gamers ourselves. In general we whine, we produce articles like this, and of course send in endless numbers of petitions. In the end though we still buy the products in a lemming-like fashion, and we don't even have any kind of organized consumer advocacy going. As a result we're pretty much an ideal group of sheeple primed for corperate exploitation. The whining and complaints effectively having simply turned into "buzz" for a game, since really they know no matter how much the community bleats, we're still going to generally line up to pay for our space in the trough line.
While a bit differant from "split screen", look at "Modern Warfare 2". MW2 is the best selling game ever. Yet the game sold like this despite multiplayer gamers being brutalized by the company cutting out features (dedicated servers) that they wanted. Basically people complained in massive numbers and went out and bought it anyway. Even worse, the first "Modern Warfare" title was frankly an unbalanced mess, people literally screamed about things like "Martyrdom" by the hundreds of thousands. Yet despite this, people decided to run right out and buy the sequel which they simply all hoped would actually be as well balanced as the first game was promised to be. Balacing games, whether computer games, or PnP RPGs is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do in game design. It shouldn't be any huge surprise that Infinity Ward really didn't bother to balance things any better than the first game. You even had Penny Arcade making jokes about how overpowered knives were, and calling people using certain weapon combinations "dog rapists". Not to mention the endless and ongoing complaints about Recons (and sniper classes in general in most games), and mortar strikes. Simply put, from a game balance perspective this is a poorly designed nightmare and everyone realizes it (despite staunch defenders)... yet there is no effort to fix this or balance the game via patches and such because simply put the company realizes it's not worth the time, they have their money, and frankly the bleating sheeple will run off to "Modern Warfare 3" when they decide to implement it and spend their money. They have no reason to think otherwise.
What I'm getting at here is that if gamers aren't going to turn on something like "Modern Warfare", the odds of seeing any kind of community rallying for split screen is more or less non-existant.
I admit I'm not a big fan of split screen on the occasions when I do play multiplayer games, BUT I do understand the appeal and why it works. However from a game industry perspective they don't have much motivation for catering to your "on the couch" split screen or even LAN based gaming experience.
From their perspective if they force you online this means you need two people with compadible hardware, their own copies of the game, and of course them being signed up for your service so you can harass them with microtransactions, advertising, and of course have access to their personal information. Oh and yeah, there is the DRM aspect of the whole thing too, since it allows them to try and make multiplayer impossible without a real copy since your dependant on their online verification and such. I'd also argue (on an unrelated note) that I suspect part of the industry's obsession with multiplayer gaming, oftentimes at the expense of single player games/components is simply that it's relatively easy to force multiplayer online and try and verify it, while single player games are much easier to
steal and get the most out of by their very nature. To an extent I figure a lot of companies figure single player modes in shooters and such are amounting to a freebie for pirates.
Of course the central root of this problem is us gamers ourselves. In general we whine, we produce articles like this, and of course send in endless numbers of petitions. In the end though we still buy the products in a lemming-like fashion, and we don't even have any kind of organized consumer advocacy going. As a result we're pretty much an ideal group of sheeple primed for corperate exploitation. The whining and complaints effectively having simply turned into "buzz" for a game, since really they know no matter how much the community bleats, we're still going to generally line up to pay for our space in the trough line.
While a bit differant from "split screen", look at "Modern Warfare 2". MW2 is the best selling game ever. Yet the game sold like this despite multiplayer gamers being brutalized by the company cutting out features (dedicated servers) that they wanted. Basically people complained in massive numbers and went out and bought it anyway. Even worse, the first "Modern Warfare" title was frankly an unbalanced mess, people literally screamed about things like "Martyrdom" by the hundreds of thousands. Yet despite this, people decided to run right out and buy the sequel which they simply all hoped would actually be as well balanced as the first game was promised to be. Balacing games, whether computer games, or PnP RPGs is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do in game design. It shouldn't be any huge surprise that Infinity Ward really didn't bother to balance things any better than the first game. You even had Penny Arcade making jokes about how overpowered knives were, and calling people using certain weapon combinations "dog rapists". Not to mention the endless and ongoing complaints about Recons (and sniper classes in general in most games), and mortar strikes. Simply put, from a game balance perspective this is a poorly designed nightmare and everyone realizes it (despite staunch defenders)... yet there is no effort to fix this or balance the game via patches and such because simply put the company realizes it's not worth the time, they have their money, and frankly the bleating sheeple will run off to "Modern Warfare 3" when they decide to implement it and spend their money. They have no reason to think otherwise.
What I'm getting at here is that if gamers aren't going to turn on something like "Modern Warfare", the odds of seeing any kind of community rallying for split screen is more or less non-existant.
PC split screen/co-op has always been a rarity with the only games supporting it normally console ports. This was probably due to the fact setting up LAN games was easy (and a lot more fun!) Personally, I hate online multiplayer as its so impersonal. Its always a lot more fun playing against someone next too you and I have fond memories of 5 player roatational Halo at a mates house. I'm more likely to buy a game if it has local co-op/multiplayer even if I'm not a big fan of the genre (i.e Halo, Gears) because any game can become fun when you add a mate and alcohol into the mix.fix-the-spade said:
Oh, and screen watching is not cheating.
My housemate and I occasionally rent a game and play through it co-op in one sitting but our choices have been severely limited as of late; we've done Gears of War 1 + 2, Perfect Dark XBLA, Perfect Dark Zero and Army of Two 40 Days.
We nearly got the new Splinter Cell game out but the back said that it was a separate campaign for co-op although the back was quite ambiguous. Can anyone tell me if it is a co-op single player campaign plus an additional small campaign designed for co-op or if it is just a separate tagged on addition a la Modern Warfare 2 which, whilst fun, wasn't exactly the same because it was short 5-10 minute blasts rather than the actual game.
We nearly got the new Splinter Cell game out but the back said that it was a separate campaign for co-op although the back was quite ambiguous. Can anyone tell me if it is a co-op single player campaign plus an additional small campaign designed for co-op or if it is just a separate tagged on addition a la Modern Warfare 2 which, whilst fun, wasn't exactly the same because it was short 5-10 minute blasts rather than the actual game.