EA Consigns Offline Gaming to the History Books

[Andronicus]

Multiplayer. Replay value. Yeahhhhhh...

"Wow. Looks like I've shot these people. Oh, now there's more people to shoot. Whoops, they have shot me. Now I have been reincarnated. With a gun. I suppose I should shoot these people. Again."

Screw that. I'd rather start playing Morrowind, and I literally can't count the amount of hours I've clocked on that, due to the fact that I've started with a new character so many times.

 

[Estocavio]

Am I the only one who disconnects themselves from the internet so they can play a single player game without anyone bothering them? I don't believe this should be the future for all games (but probably will be). I dislike the whole leaderboard idea as it seems like a bit of a cop-out by the developer to keep people playing, rather than adding unlockable content (not the DLC type).

It wont be - Remember, EA is a mostly console demograph, who claims to speak for all.
This wont last long, as theyre confusing genre with category. EA makes sports games, Sports games are better online according to most. If you see where im going with this.

 

[Delock]

Strangely enough, one of EA's better titles this year was Mass Effect 2, where it was for me 30 hours, and then repeat again and again.

Anyways, I disagree with him as single player is the reason I buy games, not multiplayer. Hell, if learn an FPS has a brilliant muliplayer but a lousy single player, I don't get it (hence why I don't own modern war games). And hell, I don't even connect to the internet all the time when I start up my console.

HOWEVER, if a game reasonably uses a multiplayer element while at the same time offering offline gameplay to those who want it (with no disadvantage, only that the online people get some small benefits), then I will somewhat agree with him here. In other words, the option to play offline is always something that should stay, but the option for an online single player isn't a bad thing. (Yes Demon's Souls is the example for all this)

So long as I'm not forced to be connected to play the game at all, and the online provides benefits (fun multiplayer, FREE extras, connectivity), he's not wrong (except that Offline is history, that's a bit extreme for his point).

In other news, this is the first time in awhile that EA has done something like this again, despite being on an exceptionally good streak this year, so can we cut them some slack rather than declaring them "going back to their evil ways?"

 

[DTWolfwood]

Surprise they didn't just straight up said, "O yeah this is so we can charge you $10 extra for every game you buy used to unlock the other half of the game and you won't be able to play your game without constant online authentication/verification from our game servers."

Yeh Fuck you too EA.

 

[RollForInitiative]

I don't want to be forced to have a permanent internet connection all the time when I play my games. What if there's a case where I don't have an internet connection? What games can I play if all my games are internet dependent and I suddenly lost my connection for a month?

I don't believe they mean that you will be required to be online at all times. As an example, Mass Effect 2 falls into the grounds that they're aiming for with a single player game. It's an RPG for one player in which additional content is available through online avenues.

 

[Fumbleumble]

Well it's final then.

EA can suck my sack, I'll never buy another EA game again. I always swore that when single player gaming went fully online I'd just stop buying them.

I buy games so that I have the option to play those same games whenever I want, sometime in the future, EA's full movement to neccessary net connection, even for single player games is a Tool move.. Companies have been shoving random useless achievements into games to justify their requirement of a net connection (and temporary authentication servers) for a while now and I've just gone along with it, NOT ANYMORE! (EA anyway)

I won't be 'forced' down any path just so I can play a game. I have games that are 12 and 13 years old that I still get enjoyment out of... how many of my current batch will be playable after a similar amount of time?

So EA and ALL of their studios just permanantly lost a customer,, they can keep the overly restrictive garbage, I'm not paying for it any longer.

 

[Piction Froject]

I just dont want the potency and appeal of the single player campaign, to suffer, when multiplayer rises in popularity.

 

[Vor@Tan]

I don't want to be forced to have a permanent internet connection all the time when I play my games. What if there's a case where I don't have an internet connection? What games can I play if all my games are internet dependent and I suddenly lost my connection for a month?

you hit the nail on the head there
i have Fire Warrior and that has internet connectivity - but i never use it a) because i'm not intrested in online gaming and being annoyed by jerks B) because i couldn't afford the expansion for the PS2 to connect to the net.

what's going to happen to story-based games? they don't work well with multi-player/online.
it's okay for games like shooters/racers/sandboxes/sports/MMOs etc.
but to just completely drop the ability to play games on your own is a big mistake i think
and not all of us can afford to keep connected 24/7, have a game subscription every month
...i don't think they've actually thought this through...then again, considering the same bloody titles they keep pumping out a month/year - i'm not surprised...

 

[Fr]anc[is]

From what was quoted, Mr. EA didn't say anything. "Games need to make money" is what I took from it. Who wouldn't buy a game just because it doesn't have leaderboards? Nobody. World of Goo would be exactly the same game without other peoples towers in the background (if anyone knows how to turn that back off, I will give you a cookie) And judging by how many people killed GFWL for FO3, achievements don't matter either.

 

[zidine100]

Gibeau stressed that adding online functionality to a game didn't mean that every game had to have a multiplayer. Rather, it meant that all games would have some level of connectivity, of which multiplayer was just one type.

.. wow.... do you really think achievements sell a game? (i havent met one person who wont buy a game due to achievements) or the promise of dlc? or auto updating? or leaderboards filled with fake or impossibly stupid scores? (does score really count all that much outside of a arcade) Because that's the only other things, you can really call a feature other than multiplayer ea....

come on at least be honest and say that we want to control all your games, we want to be able to remove them from use as we see fit (without doing anything illegal).

and then we get to the people with limits on there internet usage, come on now ea, sure to most people this doesnt sound like a problem, but look at it this way when your forced to update, forced to connect to there servers, forced to load up the leaderboards, forced to load up the inevitable adds from ea and there inevitable news page, were talking about alot to someone whos on a 10-20 gb a month connection here.

also this is going to be a pain for alot of people, come on if your in another country, bleh heres an example to make it easy to understand, if your in the uk and you have to connect to a server in the us it will be slow... very slow.... and chances are you will be disconnected from time to time, and then you have the problem off what type of connection they try to make you use and how you get updates, look at it this way, if you use some sort of torrent mechanism for updates alot of people will be skrewed over, some isps employ throttling and the like and well, it would make you wait for a long long time and just cause needless hastle, and then theres seeding.... Look at my bandwidth rant earlier and add on the size of file you will be forced to upload, and weather or not you will be allowed to stop seeding a file. Now then lets take that one step further what if the only server is in America, and you have to connect from half way across the world to use it.... YOU ARE SKREWED that's what.

theres so much wrong here and so much more i can say that will screw us over via this.... i dont know where to start.

note this is a rant, if some of the things are exagerated, well i appologise.

 

[Asdalan08]

A game that depends entirely on Multiplayer shows that they just completely game up half-way through a game, decided to end the story and hope that everyone just forgets about the single-player. When CoD:BOps came out in Scotland almost everyone got the game and INSTANTLY went into Multiplayer, which I think is wrong. Remember when games had replay value without the multi-player, most of which fall into the RPG catagory (which I wouldn't mind a little multiplayer in tbh.) But it's those sort of games that are being bought over and over, X-Box live Arcade, PS1 Classics, Virtual Console. All these games stood up on their single-player and are still being sold today, Multiplayer isn't a bad thing but it certaintly shouldn't be the ENTIRE focus of the game, unless it's LoZ: The Four Swords but it's not is it?

Great games stand the test of time when the novelty of being able to shoot exploding crossbow bolts at people wears off. EA can go f*** themselves, the only good game to come out of them was The Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers and that was solely a single-player game so yeah. A game with only multi-player shows that the game-team were too lazy to bother making a story and just took some well-known guns and weapons and perhaps put in a new idea just so they can drain more money with their new TOTALLY ORIGINAL FPS idea which will be forgotten in a few years when the next one comes along while companies like Square-Enix are still able to make money out of non-multiplayer games from 30 years ago.

 

[AKissAndAGunshot]

I do not have an Xbox, but I have a PS3. The ONLY multiplayer game that I play on my ps3 is team fortress 2, and that because it's goofy and while many players are dicks, the playing field is fairly level, so you can dick right back at them.

The only mmo's that I play are Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord Of The Rings Online, and the reason I play THOSE is because if you don't feel like it, you don't have to play with other people; you can play alone, with friends or with strangers. I usually play alone.

so I guess EA can go jack off while I have my fun playing Half-Life 2, Minecraft and Fallout 3. I hate online gaming.

 

[Fumbleumble]

They have a reasonable way to punish second-hand buyers ....

Why the hell should second hand buyers be PUNISHED... are you insane, or is it that you just blindly accept that the suits throw at you?

YOU are the problem here.. suits will do anything to make money, but when 'customers' like you have no intention of trying to support and maintain a decent set of consumer rights in matters like this, you RUIN it for the rest of us.

People like you don't deserve an opinion in cases like this.

 

[Beryl77]

In times where EA says something like this, I'm happy we still have companies like Bioware and Valve(though most of Valves games seem to have some sort of multiplayer now, even Portal 2 ... where the hell is my ep3).

 

[koroem]

Is there some kind of unwritten/unspoken job requirement of excutives, presidents, and chief officers in gaming corporations that you must be an absolute moron and spew baffling stupidity constantly to hold on to your job?

They never cease to amaze me with how out of touch they are with the gaming community. Businessmen do not make good leaders for gaming companies. They are stagnating growth and innovation with garbage like this.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Interactivity and innovation are in online gaming? How the fuck so? All you are doing is replacing a preordained decision making program ("AI") with a human mind. You are, effectively, having the PLAYERS do your work for you by integrating the human element into traditionally single player niches.

That's not innovation, that's cutting corners.

I really don't need some rich man using "online content" as an excuse to keep tabs on me.
They already logged my choices, gender, and computer specs from Mass Effect 2, why not let them log my web-browsing history and tastes so they can spam me in-game in the future too.

After all, if they throw this shit into a shrink-wrap license, they can get away with anything, right? [/sarcasm] (and I know this is not true).

This process already chokes balls when I have to do it for Starcraft 2 (and yes, I am going for achievements), I really REALLY don't want it in all future games.

Look forward to Mass Effect 3 having online-only DRM, PC gamers. EA wants assurance that you're being a good, loyal cash cow. And they might even let you out of your stall to mingle with all the other cattle!

Finally, I don't want interaction with the crude backwards fuckheads that comprise most of online gaming today. The primary motivator of non-personal human-human gaming interaction is grief-play. Always has been, always will be.

If you set up a play ground, there will be bullies. Or in this case, idiots.
12 years of online gaming has proven this beyond question. I don't want it ruining my fun.