Question of the Day, March 5, 2010

[TraumaHound]

I was thinking I'd eliminate "multiplayer" if I had to choose from that list, then I read this:

Multiplayer, then Developers would have to make large games that can stand alone on singleplayer content.

...which sold me on making that choice. Yahtzee's mentioned time and again that a game should stand on it's own and not rely on filling content gaps by inserting multiplayer gaming and I whole-heartedly agree. I rarely if ever play games with others, part by-choice part by the fact that I haven't many friends I would game with anyway (and I got my ass handed to me more often than not in various online shooters.) We got along just fine for many, many years and I think we'd be alright if it went away.

...though 4-player Gauntlet was fun to play in the arcades...we're not counting that, right?

 

[Kollega]

A strange poll this is.

I myself would remove Mahou Magic.
You can substitute technology in its place.
Lightning? Check.
Fire-Ball? Check.
Freeze? Check.
yeah, I think Magic could be removed/replaced easily.

Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke

So yeah. Magic it is. I can live without it - but i could not live without plasma rifles and rocket launchers. I honestly cannot imagine [footnote]Okay, i can, but it's definetly not easy to.[/footnote] Ratchet or Serious Sam or Master Chief using spells instead of outrageously powerful guns. And i like me some multiplayer every now and then.

 

[Artemus_Cain]

Multiplayer. Too many games focus too much time and too much man power on multiplayer that the overall story, single player, and overall gameplay is completly neglected to the pont of starvation and death (see MW2).

 

[oldmanwynter]

I myself would remove Mahou Magic.
You can substitute technology in its place.
Lightning? Check.
Fire-Ball? Check.
Freeze? Check.
yeah, I think Magic could be removed/replaced easily.

Agreed. At the same time, games should be longer in general

 

[azazellee]

I don't like humans. Remove them.

Remove the guns, and the humans will follow.

 

[thebackupfreak]

Really, it could only be guns because *soapbox time* they feature far too prominently in modern gaming. The last, no, every game I have played this year has involved me taking a huge chunk of military equipment and then shooting people, and quite apart from the conjecture that it's unoriginal (which is irrelevant as long as it's fun) I think that it is symptomatic of society's desensitisation to just what a gun does, and what it represents - if they were removed form games, they could only improve.

 

[Blimey]

Multiplayer. It makes devs lazy. They create a half-assed game, throw some multiplayer in and expect that to carry it the rest of the way. I miss the days when a game had to stand on its own 2 singleplayer feet. Now we have the crutch called multiplayer.

Also, until they invent a device that allows me to send electrical shocks to people online, I refuse to play multiplayer.

 

[johnman]

Easy to replace magic with any of the following: The Force, Adam, Biotics, nanosuits and anything else that falls under "Its magic not buts not so there"

Without multiplayer we wouldn't have Left 4 dead or counter strike, but then again we wouldn't have games like MW2 with 6 hour singleplayer.

 

[Latinidiot]

interesting question. I went for guns. I don't like guns that much.

 

[Alex The Rat]

I myself would remove Mahou Magic.
You can substitute technology in its place.
Lightning? Check.
Fire-Ball? Check.
Freeze? Check.
yeah, I think Magic could be removed/replaced easily.

That was my same reasoning for choosing guns Basically all they do is kill from a distance and make loud noises, both of which magic could do.
And since I play starcraft as zerg, it would make destroying the other two races WAY easier if they had no guns!!

 

[Koganesaga]

Get rid of guns, honestly there is only so much you can do witha gun, you can shoot a guy, you can shoot a guy in the head, you can shoot explosives at his head ect. Magic isn't even defined so it could do anything, thus having more FUN.

P.S. WHY THE FUCK IS MULTIPLAYER LEADING IN THE TO BE REMOMVED!?!?

Multiplayer is what gives a game longevity, to remove multiplayer is to remove a games lifespan, as no game would be played more than a year by even the most hardcore fans as something new would have been added to replace the old. Seriously I would like a god honest valid reason why multiplayer of all things should be removed.

That was my same reasoning for choosing guns Basically all they do is kill from a distance and make loud noises, both of which magic could do.
And since I play starcraft as zerg, it would make destroying the other two races WAY easier if they had no guns!!

Maybe the terrans, but the protoss would have more badass psi-blades to compensate, also high templars would probably have stronger psi-storms, so without guns, your boning yourself.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Multi-player, no question about it. Other people are jackasses and I play games for the world-building, immersion, the story, etc. None of those are bolstered by having a real person along - in fact real people are detrimental to just about every single aspect of games that I find enjoyable. And the games that are better played in multi-player mode are almost invariably simpler at a mechanical level - games that essentially function as digital team sports.

Multi-player can be fun, don't get me wrong, but it's an amusing diversion - if games are like reading superhero comics, multiplayer is you and your friends debating about who would win in a fight. In other words, it's non-canonical messing about.

Plus you won't meet any 12-year old racist homophobes (unless the developers intentionally include one).

 

[Trifixion]

Removing guns effectively removes war games.

Removing magic effectively removes fantasy games.

Removing multiplayer effectively removes griefers, spawn campers, spammers, zerg rushers, gold farmers, ragequitters, people who have online names like ubern00bkilla7621, and all sorts of other immature assholes.

Gee, guess which one I picked to get rid of.

 

[Higurashi]

I myself would remove Mahou Magic.
You can substitute technology in its place.
Lightning? Check.
Fire-Ball? Check.
Freeze? Check.
yeah, I think Magic could be removed/replaced easily.

Magic... can do anything, is everything. It is the unexplainable and the wonders of the possible. Once technology advances far enough, it will be magic. Magic is what everything possible and impossible is, and something everything possible will eventually look like. Nothing can substitute magic, as everything eventually becomes it. It can't be replaced; it's a theoretical impossibility.

That aside, I would remove guns. They're honestly not very entertaining in gaming to me. While they may be more fun in real life, they distance us from everything in both mediums, and that makes it less personal in gaming and a prominent danger in real life.

 

[the December King]

I have recently been enjoying cooperative multiplayer games on my PS3 with my brother, who lives far from me. We played Saint's Row 2 for a full year- my favourite PS3 title, I think. Now we're playing Borderlands- and also having a blast. But to remove a concept like magic or guns would change the genres that I love. Since I come from a solo playing background, I'll have to let multiplayer go, but not without trepidation, nor a bit of regret.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

dammit! i've put guns instead of magic !!! XD

 

[Nivag the Owl]

I JUST CAN'T DO IT.

 

[teisjm]

While even though i'm a sucker for fantasy, i haev to say magic, cause it can most easily be substituted.

Take x-men for instance, unless thats considered magic, you can always us etheir idea for anything spells could do.

if by magic you mean "specal powers" be it harry potter, x-men or Alex mercer from prototype then it's kinda harder, but science could still substitute it, would just kill fantasy though :/