Multiplayer: Greatest Threat to Quality Narratives

I have a very mixed relationship with Multiplayer content in games. You see, some of my favorite games of all time became my favorite games because of how much fun they were to play with other people. Back in the day I played a lot of Quake, and as fun as the single player experience in quake was, the multiplayer elements the game brought to PC gaming are probably among some of my most memorable. But how much does multiplayer do for a game? And is multiplayer really as important as people see it? I'd like to try and cover some of the reasons why multiplayer may not be as great as we all think it is, and why it is still important to gaming in general.

The first experience I ever had with multiplayer gaming of any kind was playing Pong with my Dad. I can imagine that I was terrible at the game, but something about it was just plain fun. The objectives were clear, the level of interaction allowed for us to build upon our father-son relationship, and the game was simply suited to be played by two people. That's part of what worries me with multiplayer content in some games. Sometimes an executive decision is made to add multiplayer to a game that simply doesn't need it, or one that downright isn't suited for it. With Pong, the game would have been dull and easily forgettable had you just been playing against a computer. It was the fact that you were actually facing off with someone you knew that made the game interesting and fun. But other games don't benefit as well.

Let's look at a few examples. This last year Dragon Age: Origins was released. It was highly anticipated and very well received. In an interview with MTV Games, BioWare devs Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk outlined a few points why the game didn't have multiplayer. In a gaming world where more and more games are receiving multiplayer modes, the two stated that Dragon Age: Origins was going to be "a single-player game, and we chose to make it so that we really invest you as the character going through the world and make the experience that much more immersive and deep." Their argument here is an interesting one, one that game developers deal with all the time. Multiplayer modes take time to develop, need to be balanced and tooled for the various players that will be experiencing them. They can't simply be extracted from already existing content overnight. In the interview, Zeschuk drove this point home when he noted: "When we do the multiplayer stuff we'll do it as a foundation of the game. It's not worth it to throw it on after the fact," citing games like Left 4 Dead as good examples of titles that were built from the ground up with Multiplayer in mind.

Part of what I took away from the experiences Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk had with Dragon Age: Origins is that, when it comes down to storytelling, multiplayer just can't quite deliver on the level a single player experience could. I do agree that some Co-op games come close to presenting a very in-depth narrative, but the way most co-op games are designed correspond very closely with single-player only titles.

Dragon Age: Origins decided to leave out extra play modes to ensure a better single player experience, but BioWare is no newcomer to the RPG genre, and certainly wasn't lacking in budget. So what happens to a new studio that has little to no resources compared to the big guys?

Enter Flagship Studios.

Okay, I know. I talk about Hellgate: London every now and then, but with the announcement that it may be coming back to North America, I find it more and more interesting to analyze why a game with so many solid players and a good potential market would go down. Well, if you know anything about Hellgate: London, you likely already have a very good idea. Max Schaefer summed it up pretty well in an interview with Eurogamer:
"If we made a mistake with Hellgate, it was trying to do too many things for too many people. We wanted a cutting edge graphics engine, we wanted multiple business models with subscriptions and free play, and single-player, we wanted to combine third-person play with first-person play, we wanted to do random 3D levels, and when you're starting with a brand new game studio with very limited budget and no existing technologies, that was probably biting off too much. We ended up rushing it to market and not keeping it in the oven long enough, just out of necessity."

That's what the whole Multiplayer issue comes down to. It can create unnecessary burdens on development teams and take away from the potential of the final product. Max and Erich Schaefer's more recent project, Torchlight, shows how they've changed their approach to designing games and keeping the final scope of things more realistic. It seems to me that, for games to truly progress in the way they need to, it is important to avoid making the mistake of turning a game concept into too many sub projects or goals. Many games would have been better off sticking to what it was best suited for, even games that are successful. Single-player only games have not lost their market, and multiplayer isn't necessary to be successful in the gaming world.

While the idea of keeping a game's scope realistic is nothing new, it's probably never been as applicable as now. With the ever increasing emphasis on multiplayer gaming, it is important that we remember how much fun it can really be to keep a strong, story-driven game so that is can be enjoyed by an individual or a small group in the same room in ways that could never be accomplished over an online connection.

Read more!

League of Legends

I recently started playing League of Legends, and I have to say, it's just about one of the funnest games I've played in a long while. If you're interested in playing, check it out here.

Players of DoTA will be very familiar with the game genre that LoL follows, and will especially be happy to know that the original developer of DoTA, Guinsoo. What I love about LoL, though, is that there are several improvements it has over DoTA, especially because it isn't being built off of Warcraft III anymore.

Don't get me wrong. I have always been really impressed at what the DoTA developers were able to accomplish using the Warcraft III editor, but there were a lot of shortcomings that really bothered me. LoL improves on these, keeping your hero selected at all times, but still allowing you to see stats of allies and enemies is a big one for me. There is a revamped hotkey system that makes using skills and keeping track of your hero much easier, and some of the common items you had to buy in DoTA like Town Portal are now built into every hero by default, allowing you to more fluidly manage your hero's inventory.

One thing I hated about DoTA was that, when a game was over, it felt like I really made no real progress. My hero was gone, I really had no major stat tracking going on (I was never very hardcore), and I was a little frustrated with having to start with a wimpy level 1 hero every new game. With League of Legends there is a system called the Summoner System. In LoL, you play a Summoner, one who summons Champions and brings them to the battlefield to defend them. So, in other words, you as the person clicking around on the screen are the summoner, and after each game you gain experience that allows you to unlock spells to cast, build up skill trees that give your characters stat bonuses, and a few other things as well. This keeps the game interesting across all matches, which is really refreshing to say the least.

The downsides to many DoTA players is that the game no longer has secret shops and doesn't allow denying. The LoL team explains themselves on the denying issue, stating:
"I heard that League of Legends doesn't have denying, is that true?

It’s true, even though League of Legends is based on DotA we’ve intentionally decided to remove denying from the game. We know this is a huge change for some people, but we have some really good reasons for removing it!

* It enlarges the early game imbalance between ranged and melee Champions, and we think it is more fun for all Champions to be at least somewhat competitive at all phases of the game.
* It leads to passive play, and slows down the game. We feel that high-activity; high-action faster games are more fun. By not having denying, there’s a stronger incentive to push. Additionally, it prevents strong lane control which is ultimately about passive play. Team fights more than anything else are what make this genre fun, and faster games mean more team fights.
* It is weird. Killing your own guys?"

For more details on the differences between DoTA and LoL, check out this link.

So, LoL is crazy fun, faster paced, and pretty well banaced. Definitely worth checking out.

Try it.

Read more!