Spec Ops Multiplayer Is a "Cancerous Growth"

[bells]

If time and money wasn't tossed in the multiplayer "just cause it has to have it" the gameplay would be polished to properly serve the Awesome set pieces and amazing structure that game has.

Ans y'know what? A Shooter that tries to sell itself saying "Our Singleplayer is enough" would probably earn a few extra curiosity buys and maybe a poke or two of the media about it in a more positive light

So, yeah i do think the multiplayer dragged down the potential this game had. Hell, The Line is a game that could easily be expanded with further DLC (STORY FOCUSED DLC) telling more of the Backstory and what happened BEFORE walker came in, that would totally be worth it.

Now we just got robbed of another potentially great game in order to offer another sacrifice to the "COD MOH" Totem.

 

[GenGenners]

The only reason I didn't buy this game was because I heard that the actual gameplay is average. Seeing now that even the devs didn't want that gameplay, but it was forced that way to accommodate the multiplayer, I feel rather guilty for not buying it.

^An example of how multiplayer can actually LOSE customers. Take note publishers.

 

[Farther than stars]

Ah, you shouldn't worry too much about multiplayer. I've played great games, such as Saints Row 3 and Dead Rising 2, which have multiplayer, but I never even looked at it because I was having so much fun with the single player. I don't buy single player games to play the multiplayer section in the same way that I don't play multiplayer games and then expect them to have a single player campaign.

 

[Valanthe]

Yikes, them's fightin' words.

props to him for having the balls to say something he actually means, rather than whatever the PR filters think he should feel.

As for his point, I agree, multiplayer when just a check box on the accountant's spreadsheet is never needed and does detract from the overall game. However, in games where it makes sense, and when it is integrated properly, (See ME3 for a recent example) it can be an excellent addition to a game that greatly improves the fun and longevity of it.

 

[vrbtny]

Wow, look at all the fucks this guy doesn't give. I thought people like that were pretty much extinct in today's gaming industry, guess I was wrong.

....You're kidding right? What end, of what stick have you grasped to come up with that analogy? This guy genuinely cares about this game, and gives many fucks about it. He cares about it enough to speak out against his boss, saying that Mutlti-player was not needed, and he is more than happy to condemn a company that screwed up his game.

The gaming industry needs a lot more guys like this, hell, it would be good for the industry if all lead desingers were like this.

We need more like this guy. Not less.

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

Yager . . . I like you, Yager.

 

[TheSYLOH]

The big problem was they timed the price drop poorly.
I was willing to fork out full price for the game, but they were selling it as part of a large pack on a Steam sale.

Did they just accidentally pack it, or were they just that confident in the game.

 

[Two-A]

I find it funny they think it didn't sell well because of this. It didn't sell well because you wanted me to pay 50$ for a >5 hour campaign. If you made it 12 instead I MIGHT find the price warranted, or if you cut the price to 19.99, but you didn't so I didn't buy it.

Bastion has a longer campaign than this, hell, EVERY SINGLE CALL OF DUTY HAS A LONGER CAMPAIGN THAN THIS (even though the publishers got lazy and cut 2 - 3 hours off of every thing from the first modern warfare (not including world at war)).

The pricing problem has been addressed before in other articles, the thing is, a publisher who tacks an useless multiplayer mode to a game is not a publisher who would want to sell a triple A game at a lower than "standard" price.

Besides ,don't you think they could have spent more time polishing the single-player campaign (and making it longer) if they didn't have to spent part of the game's budget programming a crappy multiplayer campaign that nobody is playing?

 

[Mr Companion]

This guy has balls for calling out his publisher, and even bigger balls for making a game that would likely not sell well to the idiot masses with he money. I like him.

 

[Callate]

No, seriously, Mr. Davis- tell us how you really feel...

Wow. Ouch.

I might have to pick this one up. I've heard so much about it, and it sounds like just the sort of game those who have been clamoring for games to be taken more seriously as a medium should be supporting...

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

I've been hearing good stuff about this recently but the marketing did it no favours i played the demo and thought blah modern military fps how very call of duty.

 

[Lunar Templar]

No, seriously, Mr. Davis- tell us how you really feel...

Wow. Ouch.

I might have to pick this one up. I've heard so much about it, and it sounds like just the sort of game those who have been clamoring for games to be taken more seriously as a medium should be supporting...

this, the whole thing, cause you stole my post! >.<

 

[Baldry]

I tried the multiplayer, ruins the whole point of the game so I have to agree with Mr. Davis on this matter. If they wanted to make a multiplayer that meant something to the game it should've had your character die permanently once they'd been killed and that was it, your character would stay dead forever.

 

[vxicepickxv]

I wished he didn't use cancer as an analogy. It was bad taste.

He could have used a puss-filled boil instead. You know, something which 33% of all humans will suffer from in their life time and everyone knows someone close who has suffered from the disease.

In honesty, pointing out how bad the multi player is is only going to make people notice it more :\

I think the word anchor would have been a better choice. Of course, sometimes people surprise you with some amazing multiplayer, and get yelled at for making it.

Goldeneye multiplayer was made in less than a month, without knowledge of most of the dev team, and none of the publishers. It was a last minute surprise they probably bribed their QA guys to allow it, because they didn't know it was coming. I guess they had exactly just enough space on the cartridge to shove in multiplayer, because they did.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh look, someone dictated that they needed to do multiplayer in a shooter, because Call of Duty 4.x does it.
And it failed to achieve Call of Duty 4.x's success. Guess who is probably going to take the blame? That's right, the developer, not the publisher.

It's the Economic concept of Network Goods in action.
Don't compete with the top network good by cloning it. Unless the difference in quality is outstanding, it won't work.

Wonder why WoW clones fail to even approach WoW's rates of success, even after 8 years?
Same concept.

Only here, the forced inclusion and emphasis on multiplayer had detrimental effects on the REST of the game.

 

[RatRace123]

OK, big ups right now.

Mr. Davis, I wish more people in the industry had your line of thinking when it comes to multiplayer.

Publishers just don't seem to realize that not ever game needs multiplayer, and for projects like this, where you're not gonna get a huge budget and being forced to add a tacked on multiplayer does take away from the singleplayer resources, and single player, in this instance was the whole damn point of the game.

Forced multiplayer is indeed something that's killing the industry, I think. And kudos to Mr. Davis for having the cajones to rip on an aspect of his own game to say something.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Is schadenfreude what I'm feeling right now? I don't know, but whatever it's called, it feels good. I want to buy this man a steak.

 

[kajinking]

Crysis 2, Bioshock 2, The Darkness, Far Cry 2, Dead Space 2, feel free to add any more to my list of games which didn't need multiplayer.