We’ve come a long way from the days when one programmer added multiplayer into Goldeneye at the very end of development, that could never happen today.
Why? I can’t name a reason why this couldn’t be. Even extrapolating out for added complexity of network multiplayer, maybe it wouldn’t be feasible to add in just a handful of weeks, but if you’re already developing with client-server in mind, the same thing can still be whipped up today in a reasonable amount of time.
Even the rest of your comment makes it seem like if there aren’t thousands of concurrent players weeks after launch that it’s somehow failed as a multiplayer game. The industry has broken all of our brains so thoroughly that most of us can’t remember a time where that wasn’t a goal, and I’m arguing that it’s better if we didn’t make it the goal. If you make a multiplayer mode that you can play with friends, that has bots to fall back on when you don’t, and is designed to scale to very few players in a match, that multiplayer mode offers just as much value in week 1 as it does 20 years later. It’s not falling back on a single player mode, nor is it a failure as a multiplayer game in a competitive market if you build something that can withstand reaching a small audience, like the industry used to. That we used to get both modes in tons of games back in the day is what made these games “the full package” rather than only a single player game or only a multiplayer game, and I reject the idea that one of those two things has to suffer for the other to be good.
Halo didn’t have Xbox Live until the sequel because Xbox Live didn’t exist yet when Halo 1 was built, but it did still have network multiplayer. And that was still very much serving multiple masters, just like its predecessor.
Because most games aren’t designed client-server. GoldenEye was entirely local, so it didn’t need any networking, replication, or anti-cheat.
Games these days have a lot more going on. You need to replicate a lot of stuff in the world, you need to ensure that none of the clients are telling you something impossible, and you need a way to deal with cheaters. Usually that means accounts, anti-cheat, and bans. That’s a significant amount of infrastructure and management. And then you also have a lot of legal compliance too, like GDPR, and even more problems if minors will be playing your game online.
Even just split-screen multiplayer has value. Replication is handled by the engine. User accounts are handled by your storefront. Anti-cheat is something you’re thinking about if you’re designing an e-sport, but if you’re just making a fun video game that you might play with friends, it’s a nice-to-have. Why are we even collecting data such that GDPR is a problem? I know these are all things that multiplayer devs tell you they’re thinking about as to why this is so complicated, but we’ve lost the plot here so much that they’re building a game that they’re already expecting is going to reach millions of people without even being sure that they’re going to hit thousands. Which is how we get to an article like this one.
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Why? I can’t name a reason why this couldn’t be. Even extrapolating out for added complexity of network multiplayer, maybe it wouldn’t be feasible to add in just a handful of weeks, but if you’re already developing with client-server in mind, the same thing can still be whipped up today in a reasonable amount of time.
Even the rest of your comment makes it seem like if there aren’t thousands of concurrent players weeks after launch that it’s somehow failed as a multiplayer game. The industry has broken all of our brains so thoroughly that most of us can’t remember a time where that wasn’t a goal, and I’m arguing that it’s better if we didn’t make it the goal. If you make a multiplayer mode that you can play with friends, that has bots to fall back on when you don’t, and is designed to scale to very few players in a match, that multiplayer mode offers just as much value in week 1 as it does 20 years later. It’s not falling back on a single player mode, nor is it a failure as a multiplayer game in a competitive market if you build something that can withstand reaching a small audience, like the industry used to. That we used to get both modes in tons of games back in the day is what made these games “the full package” rather than only a single player game or only a multiplayer game, and I reject the idea that one of those two things has to suffer for the other to be good.
Halo didn’t have Xbox Live until the sequel because Xbox Live didn’t exist yet when Halo 1 was built, but it did still have network multiplayer. And that was still very much serving multiple masters, just like its predecessor.
Because most games aren’t designed client-server. GoldenEye was entirely local, so it didn’t need any networking, replication, or anti-cheat.
Games these days have a lot more going on. You need to replicate a lot of stuff in the world, you need to ensure that none of the clients are telling you something impossible, and you need a way to deal with cheaters. Usually that means accounts, anti-cheat, and bans. That’s a significant amount of infrastructure and management. And then you also have a lot of legal compliance too, like GDPR, and even more problems if minors will be playing your game online.
Even just split-screen multiplayer has value. Replication is handled by the engine. User accounts are handled by your storefront. Anti-cheat is something you’re thinking about if you’re designing an e-sport, but if you’re just making a fun video game that you might play with friends, it’s a nice-to-have. Why are we even collecting data such that GDPR is a problem? I know these are all things that multiplayer devs tell you they’re thinking about as to why this is so complicated, but we’ve lost the plot here so much that they’re building a game that they’re already expecting is going to reach millions of people without even being sure that they’re going to hit thousands. Which is how we get to an article like this one.