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Is the multiplayer shooter really good enough to stand alone as a separate genre?
Most SP FPS's come with a good MP mode tacked on: MoHAA, Half-Life and Wolfenstein being good examples. We don't expect to pay extra for these features, so exclusively MP shooters seem to give pretty poor value, and the short and uninspiring SP modes of Q3 and UT hardly provide much of a crossover.
But is multiplayer shooting fun enough to warrant a standalone game in the first place? I don't. Going online on your own and dropping into an enormous melée is fun for a while, but most people will die every minute or so, and getting good requires you losing a lot of the sense of fun: turning graphics settings down, concentrating hard and jumping around stupidly. Can this match the tense, intimate and spectacular experience of a great single player campaign? Is it even an experience at all?; isn't it more an addiction - challenge for the sake of it, literally a tournament consuming weeks of your time?
Real online shooter fans, of course, form clans and play team games, consuming even more weeks of time, so I see online shooters as a bit like a pool table in a crowded pub. A bit unwelcoming, and only really appreciated when you have some mates to play it with. Without that crucial team element, they're uninspiring and not memorable. Exactly like a pool table, something like UT2003 is a tool - designed for the eponymous tournaments. Can they really be rated on a par with a complex and engrossing experience like Half-Life or Deus Ex? I spoke to one of my friends who has broadband. Here's what he said:
"I used to think that single player games were unbeatable, till I got broadband. I also say that single player games are cack because you play them, finish them and if you play it again you know what's going to happen - with multiplayer its not (as much). Before I got broadband I wasn't at all bothered about MP. My connection was a measley 28.8, so trying to play anything was a futile act. Now though, when I buy a game, I still want an engrossing single player, but also an added online dimension to the game, to make it that little bit sweeter and extend it's life on my computer."
In a game I want SP and MP. I won't just buy the game if it is only MP unless the MP is highly recommended. But I will buy a game if it is only SP because, well you should know how it works. I enjoy online and offline a hell of alot. Single player elements in games also interest me so in my opinion, there isn't really any conflict between The Online Gaming and The Offline Gaming. In my perspective, neither can win, they both have their qualities and are both enjoyable. I think offline/online all depends on your internet connection, really. If I could have a decent speed when playing Jedi Knight II then it would be great, but as I don't, there's no point.
Playing MOH:AA or RTCW and playing your part in gradually forcing an enemy away from an objective, with rockets and grenades going off left and right, bullets zipping past your virtual ears, comrades in arms dropping to the left and the right, is such an authentic feeling given the games setting that I do not think any such scripted event can touch it. Personally I find people's habit of focusing on the single player aspect of FPS's a bit daft - they are designed for on-line play, which is where they come into their own. Yes you die a lot, but the buzz of successfully taking the enemy flag, and getting it back to your base undcer heavy fire is a rush that is hard to top. Also the fact that every opponent is a real person (apart from the aforementioned geeks anyhow) makes each frag feel so much better than capping an AI bot.
To sum up, multiplayer gaming is a buzz, brings people of many nationalities together, and is the most rapidly evolving means of gaming I think we have ever seen. It's similar to asking whether a driving game and a puzzle game can be ranked on the same level. A single player game, and a multiplayer game are completly different experience, which can be rated and reviewed on the premises of their own quality. I'm not wondering whether UT gives me the same experience as Deus Ex, I'm wondering whether it gives me a good online experience, and compare it with other online games. I've played Deus Ex through seven times now and am curently on my third romp through Elite Force, but, that said, I have long since lost count of the ammount of Q3A and UT games I've played.
One thing I have sometimes noticed in games is that if a development team concentrates mostly on one mode of play, then the other one can suffer considerably. Take NOLF for example, it is one of the very best single player FPSs that have come out ever. To the best of my understanding, the multiplayer part of it never took off. The immediate thing I think of is that Monolith concentrated much more on the SP side of things, you can see where their priorities lie. Now let's take the other extreme, Quake. I've never understood how this game has reached such acclaimed heights with its plotless SP campaign. If they had made a decent single player portion, then it would have kept me happy. But Quake today, would probably be remembered in a very different light, if at all. So how do we keep both the SPers and the MPers happy? Either release SP-only/MP-only games (at lower prices of course) or go the way that Id went with RTCW. Get two seperate development teams for the MP and the SP.
Problem with this is that there is, a big cross-over between MP and SP in any given game; the same engine, mechanics, models etc are all used in both. This makes putting MP onto mainly SP game (and vice versa) cheap and, if done correctly, effective. Plus, other factors can make this effect even more acute; would HL have had so many mods if it didn't such an amazing (and unparrelleled) SP campaign? Also, having two separate development teams would result in poorer implementation of one halp or the other - programmers don't like working with half-finished stuff from the other development teams, and, if this is really two teams working on different halves of THE SAME GAME, then that is what would happen. Plus, costs would soar! So, even if games were to become exculsively SP or MP, there would be little reduction in price, becuase the cost of developement of a game which is both SP and MP is not a lot higher.
Thankfully though, it's not so much a requirement of games to be made that way. We do have a lot of singlely-developed games (e.g. JO, MOH etc) which have received lots of acclaim for both the MP and SP sides of it. If you look at the situation from a developers point of view, then you can see why there is nearly always a SP portion to an MP game etc. How much more quality/lower price do you think you would get if you just didn't bother to make the less-important half of one of these games? I'm guessing that developers probably don't really know whether the half of the game which they are not concentrating so hard on (eg. SP in Quake, MP in MOHAA) will get decent acclaim or not, but it probably cost them very little to do that half - and, if seen in an overal cost perspective - is probably better value!
"ph34r m3 f0r 1 4m l33t 1nc4rn4t3!"
Flux.
Most SP FPS's come with a good MP mode tacked on: MoHAA, Half-Life and Wolfenstein being good examples. We don't expect to pay extra for these features, so exclusively MP shooters seem to give pretty poor value, and the short and uninspiring SP modes of Q3 and UT hardly provide much of a crossover.
But is multiplayer shooting fun enough to warrant a standalone game in the first place? I don't. Going online on your own and dropping into an enormous melée is fun for a while, but most people will die every minute or so, and getting good requires you losing a lot of the sense of fun: turning graphics settings down, concentrating hard and jumping around stupidly. Can this match the tense, intimate and spectacular experience of a great single player campaign? Is it even an experience at all?; isn't it more an addiction - challenge for the sake of it, literally a tournament consuming weeks of your time?
Real online shooter fans, of course, form clans and play team games, consuming even more weeks of time, so I see online shooters as a bit like a pool table in a crowded pub. A bit unwelcoming, and only really appreciated when you have some mates to play it with. Without that crucial team element, they're uninspiring and not memorable. Exactly like a pool table, something like UT2003 is a tool - designed for the eponymous tournaments. Can they really be rated on a par with a complex and engrossing experience like Half-Life or Deus Ex? I spoke to one of my friends who has broadband. Here's what he said:
"I used to think that single player games were unbeatable, till I got broadband. I also say that single player games are cack because you play them, finish them and if you play it again you know what's going to happen - with multiplayer its not (as much). Before I got broadband I wasn't at all bothered about MP. My connection was a measley 28.8, so trying to play anything was a futile act. Now though, when I buy a game, I still want an engrossing single player, but also an added online dimension to the game, to make it that little bit sweeter and extend it's life on my computer."
In a game I want SP and MP. I won't just buy the game if it is only MP unless the MP is highly recommended. But I will buy a game if it is only SP because, well you should know how it works. I enjoy online and offline a hell of alot. Single player elements in games also interest me so in my opinion, there isn't really any conflict between The Online Gaming and The Offline Gaming. In my perspective, neither can win, they both have their qualities and are both enjoyable. I think offline/online all depends on your internet connection, really. If I could have a decent speed when playing Jedi Knight II then it would be great, but as I don't, there's no point.
Playing MOH:AA or RTCW and playing your part in gradually forcing an enemy away from an objective, with rockets and grenades going off left and right, bullets zipping past your virtual ears, comrades in arms dropping to the left and the right, is such an authentic feeling given the games setting that I do not think any such scripted event can touch it. Personally I find people's habit of focusing on the single player aspect of FPS's a bit daft - they are designed for on-line play, which is where they come into their own. Yes you die a lot, but the buzz of successfully taking the enemy flag, and getting it back to your base undcer heavy fire is a rush that is hard to top. Also the fact that every opponent is a real person (apart from the aforementioned geeks anyhow) makes each frag feel so much better than capping an AI bot.
To sum up, multiplayer gaming is a buzz, brings people of many nationalities together, and is the most rapidly evolving means of gaming I think we have ever seen. It's similar to asking whether a driving game and a puzzle game can be ranked on the same level. A single player game, and a multiplayer game are completly different experience, which can be rated and reviewed on the premises of their own quality. I'm not wondering whether UT gives me the same experience as Deus Ex, I'm wondering whether it gives me a good online experience, and compare it with other online games. I've played Deus Ex through seven times now and am curently on my third romp through Elite Force, but, that said, I have long since lost count of the ammount of Q3A and UT games I've played.
One thing I have sometimes noticed in games is that if a development team concentrates mostly on one mode of play, then the other one can suffer considerably. Take NOLF for example, it is one of the very best single player FPSs that have come out ever. To the best of my understanding, the multiplayer part of it never took off. The immediate thing I think of is that Monolith concentrated much more on the SP side of things, you can see where their priorities lie. Now let's take the other extreme, Quake. I've never understood how this game has reached such acclaimed heights with its plotless SP campaign. If they had made a decent single player portion, then it would have kept me happy. But Quake today, would probably be remembered in a very different light, if at all. So how do we keep both the SPers and the MPers happy? Either release SP-only/MP-only games (at lower prices of course) or go the way that Id went with RTCW. Get two seperate development teams for the MP and the SP.
Problem with this is that there is, a big cross-over between MP and SP in any given game; the same engine, mechanics, models etc are all used in both. This makes putting MP onto mainly SP game (and vice versa) cheap and, if done correctly, effective. Plus, other factors can make this effect even more acute; would HL have had so many mods if it didn't such an amazing (and unparrelleled) SP campaign? Also, having two separate development teams would result in poorer implementation of one halp or the other - programmers don't like working with half-finished stuff from the other development teams, and, if this is really two teams working on different halves of THE SAME GAME, then that is what would happen. Plus, costs would soar! So, even if games were to become exculsively SP or MP, there would be little reduction in price, becuase the cost of developement of a game which is both SP and MP is not a lot higher.
Thankfully though, it's not so much a requirement of games to be made that way. We do have a lot of singlely-developed games (e.g. JO, MOH etc) which have received lots of acclaim for both the MP and SP sides of it. If you look at the situation from a developers point of view, then you can see why there is nearly always a SP portion to an MP game etc. How much more quality/lower price do you think you would get if you just didn't bother to make the less-important half of one of these games? I'm guessing that developers probably don't really know whether the half of the game which they are not concentrating so hard on (eg. SP in Quake, MP in MOHAA) will get decent acclaim or not, but it probably cost them very little to do that half - and, if seen in an overal cost perspective - is probably better value!
"ph34r m3 f0r 1 4m l33t 1nc4rn4t3!"
Flux.
An ideal design would be so that the multiplayer and singleplayer games are effectively the same, but I can't think of a single decent example of this so perhaps I'm completely wrong, heh.
*Jaw hits floor*
Wow..thats a whole lot of typing dude. I dont have the time to read it all at the moment, although i read alot of it. I used to be the DCL (Deputy Clan Leader) in a TFC (Team Fortress Classic) clan. Bearing in mind i was playing on my 56k dial up connection with an average ping of 200ms, this means that if i was a newbie then the chances are i wouldn't last 5minutes let alone get upto the rank of DCL. How did i do it? Quite simple, practice. I practiced until only people with less than 20ms pings could beat me easily. What im trying to say is that you dont have to have broadband, it's how you play the game that counts. Offline games are great too, i love just sitting down and playing on one of the old snes games i have, the reason i still like those is because they have great playability, some of them never get old. However online games can get very old, especially when you see the phone bill for the month (400+ hours...). Luckily for me though im on a 'free' internet dial up (£5 a month, 0800 number so calls are free!). Anyways, basically its really hard to choose between solely online, and soley offline games. I think a really good game should have a really good even mix of them both.
Wow..thats a whole lot of typing dude. I dont have the time to read it all at the moment, although i read alot of it. I used to be the DCL (Deputy Clan Leader) in a TFC (Team Fortress Classic) clan. Bearing in mind i was playing on my 56k dial up connection with an average ping of 200ms, this means that if i was a newbie then the chances are i wouldn't last 5minutes let alone get upto the rank of DCL. How did i do it? Quite simple, practice. I practiced until only people with less than 20ms pings could beat me easily. What im trying to say is that you dont have to have broadband, it's how you play the game that counts. Offline games are great too, i love just sitting down and playing on one of the old snes games i have, the reason i still like those is because they have great playability, some of them never get old. However online games can get very old, especially when you see the phone bill for the month (400+ hours...). Luckily for me though im on a 'free' internet dial up (£5 a month, 0800 number so calls are free!). Anyways, basically its really hard to choose between solely online, and soley offline games. I think a really good game should have a really good even mix of them both.
Is the multiplayer shooter really good enough to stand alone as a separate genre?
Most SP FPS's come with a good MP mode tacked on: MoHAA, Half-Life and Wolfenstein being good examples. We don't expect to pay extra for these features, so exclusively MP shooters seem to give pretty poor value, and the short and uninspiring SP modes of Q3 and UT hardly provide much of a crossover.
But is multiplayer shooting fun enough to warrant a standalone game in the first place? I don't. Going online on your own and dropping into an enormous melée is fun for a while, but most people will die every minute or so, and getting good requires you losing a lot of the sense of fun: turning graphics settings down, concentrating hard and jumping around stupidly. Can this match the tense, intimate and spectacular experience of a great single player campaign? Is it even an experience at all?; isn't it more an addiction - challenge for the sake of it, literally a tournament consuming weeks of your time?
Real online shooter fans, of course, form clans and play team games, consuming even more weeks of time, so I see online shooters as a bit like a pool table in a crowded pub. A bit unwelcoming, and only really appreciated when you have some mates to play it with. Without that crucial team element, they're uninspiring and not memorable. Exactly like a pool table, something like UT2003 is a tool - designed for the eponymous tournaments. Can they really be rated on a par with a complex and engrossing experience like Half-Life or Deus Ex? I spoke to one of my friends who has broadband. Here's what he said:
"I used to think that single player games were unbeatable, till I got broadband. I also say that single player games are cack because you play them, finish them and if you play it again you know what's going to happen - with multiplayer its not (as much). Before I got broadband I wasn't at all bothered about MP. My connection was a measley 28.8, so trying to play anything was a futile act. Now though, when I buy a game, I still want an engrossing single player, but also an added online dimension to the game, to make it that little bit sweeter and extend it's life on my computer."
In a game I want SP and MP. I won't just buy the game if it is only MP unless the MP is highly recommended. But I will buy a game if it is only SP because, well you should know how it works. I enjoy online and offline a hell of alot. Single player elements in games also interest me so in my opinion, there isn't really any conflict between The Online Gaming and The Offline Gaming. In my perspective, neither can win, they both have their qualities and are both enjoyable. I think offline/online all depends on your internet connection, really. If I could have a decent speed when playing Jedi Knight II then it would be great, but as I don't, there's no point.
Playing MOH:AA or RTCW and playing your part in gradually forcing an enemy away from an objective, with rockets and grenades going off left and right, bullets zipping past your virtual ears, comrades in arms dropping to the left and the right, is such an authentic feeling given the games setting that I do not think any such scripted event can touch it. Personally I find people's habit of focusing on the single player aspect of FPS's a bit daft - they are designed for on-line play, which is where they come into their own. Yes you die a lot, but the buzz of successfully taking the enemy flag, and getting it back to your base undcer heavy fire is a rush that is hard to top. Also the fact that every opponent is a real person (apart from the aforementioned geeks anyhow) makes each frag feel so much better than capping an AI bot.
To sum up, multiplayer gaming is a buzz, brings people of many nationalities together, and is the most rapidly evolving means of gaming I think we have ever seen. It's similar to asking whether a driving game and a puzzle game can be ranked on the same level. A single player game, and a multiplayer game are completly different experience, which can be rated and reviewed on the premises of their own quality. I'm not wondering whether UT gives me the same experience as Deus Ex, I'm wondering whether it gives me a good online experience, and compare it with other online games. I've played Deus Ex through seven times now and am curently on my third romp through Elite Force, but, that said, I have long since lost count of the ammount of Q3A and UT games I've played.
One thing I have sometimes noticed in games is that if a development team concentrates mostly on one mode of play, then the other one can suffer considerably. Take NOLF for example, it is one of the very best single player FPSs that have come out ever. To the best of my understanding, the multiplayer part of it never took off. The immediate thing I think of is that Monolith concentrated much more on the SP side of things, you can see where their priorities lie. Now let's take the other extreme, Quake. I've never understood how this game has reached such acclaimed heights with its plotless SP campaign. If they had made a decent single player portion, then it would have kept me happy. But Quake today, would probably be remembered in a very different light, if at all. So how do we keep both the SPers and the MPers happy? Either release SP-only/MP-only games (at lower prices of course) or go the way that Id went with RTCW. Get two seperate development teams for the MP and the SP.
Problem with this is that there is, a big cross-over between MP and SP in any given game; the same engine, mechanics, models etc are all used in both. This makes putting MP onto mainly SP game (and vice versa) cheap and, if done correctly, effective. Plus, other factors can make this effect even more acute; would HL have had so many mods if it didn't such an amazing (and unparrelleled) SP campaign? Also, having two separate development teams would result in poorer implementation of one halp or the other - programmers don't like working with half-finished stuff from the other development teams, and, if this is really two teams working on different halves of THE SAME GAME, then that is what would happen. Plus, costs would soar! So, even if games were to become exculsively SP or MP, there would be little reduction in price, becuase the cost of developement of a game which is both SP and MP is not a lot higher.
Thankfully though, it's not so much a requirement of games to be made that way. We do have a lot of singlely-developed games (e.g. JO, MOH etc) which have received lots of acclaim for both the MP and SP sides of it. If you look at the situation from a developers point of view, then you can see why there is nearly always a SP portion to an MP game etc. How much more quality/lower price do you think you would get if you just didn't bother to make the less-important half of one of these games? I'm guessing that developers probably don't really know whether the half of the game which they are not concentrating so hard on (eg. SP in Quake, MP in MOHAA) will get decent acclaim or not, but it probably cost them very little to do that half - and, if seen in an overal cost perspective - is probably better value!
"ph34r m3 f0r 1 4m l33t 1nc4rn4t3!"
Flux.
Most SP FPS's come with a good MP mode tacked on: MoHAA, Half-Life and Wolfenstein being good examples. We don't expect to pay extra for these features, so exclusively MP shooters seem to give pretty poor value, and the short and uninspiring SP modes of Q3 and UT hardly provide much of a crossover.
But is multiplayer shooting fun enough to warrant a standalone game in the first place? I don't. Going online on your own and dropping into an enormous melée is fun for a while, but most people will die every minute or so, and getting good requires you losing a lot of the sense of fun: turning graphics settings down, concentrating hard and jumping around stupidly. Can this match the tense, intimate and spectacular experience of a great single player campaign? Is it even an experience at all?; isn't it more an addiction - challenge for the sake of it, literally a tournament consuming weeks of your time?
Real online shooter fans, of course, form clans and play team games, consuming even more weeks of time, so I see online shooters as a bit like a pool table in a crowded pub. A bit unwelcoming, and only really appreciated when you have some mates to play it with. Without that crucial team element, they're uninspiring and not memorable. Exactly like a pool table, something like UT2003 is a tool - designed for the eponymous tournaments. Can they really be rated on a par with a complex and engrossing experience like Half-Life or Deus Ex? I spoke to one of my friends who has broadband. Here's what he said:
"I used to think that single player games were unbeatable, till I got broadband. I also say that single player games are cack because you play them, finish them and if you play it again you know what's going to happen - with multiplayer its not (as much). Before I got broadband I wasn't at all bothered about MP. My connection was a measley 28.8, so trying to play anything was a futile act. Now though, when I buy a game, I still want an engrossing single player, but also an added online dimension to the game, to make it that little bit sweeter and extend it's life on my computer."
In a game I want SP and MP. I won't just buy the game if it is only MP unless the MP is highly recommended. But I will buy a game if it is only SP because, well you should know how it works. I enjoy online and offline a hell of alot. Single player elements in games also interest me so in my opinion, there isn't really any conflict between The Online Gaming and The Offline Gaming. In my perspective, neither can win, they both have their qualities and are both enjoyable. I think offline/online all depends on your internet connection, really. If I could have a decent speed when playing Jedi Knight II then it would be great, but as I don't, there's no point.
Playing MOH:AA or RTCW and playing your part in gradually forcing an enemy away from an objective, with rockets and grenades going off left and right, bullets zipping past your virtual ears, comrades in arms dropping to the left and the right, is such an authentic feeling given the games setting that I do not think any such scripted event can touch it. Personally I find people's habit of focusing on the single player aspect of FPS's a bit daft - they are designed for on-line play, which is where they come into their own. Yes you die a lot, but the buzz of successfully taking the enemy flag, and getting it back to your base undcer heavy fire is a rush that is hard to top. Also the fact that every opponent is a real person (apart from the aforementioned geeks anyhow) makes each frag feel so much better than capping an AI bot.
To sum up, multiplayer gaming is a buzz, brings people of many nationalities together, and is the most rapidly evolving means of gaming I think we have ever seen. It's similar to asking whether a driving game and a puzzle game can be ranked on the same level. A single player game, and a multiplayer game are completly different experience, which can be rated and reviewed on the premises of their own quality. I'm not wondering whether UT gives me the same experience as Deus Ex, I'm wondering whether it gives me a good online experience, and compare it with other online games. I've played Deus Ex through seven times now and am curently on my third romp through Elite Force, but, that said, I have long since lost count of the ammount of Q3A and UT games I've played.
One thing I have sometimes noticed in games is that if a development team concentrates mostly on one mode of play, then the other one can suffer considerably. Take NOLF for example, it is one of the very best single player FPSs that have come out ever. To the best of my understanding, the multiplayer part of it never took off. The immediate thing I think of is that Monolith concentrated much more on the SP side of things, you can see where their priorities lie. Now let's take the other extreme, Quake. I've never understood how this game has reached such acclaimed heights with its plotless SP campaign. If they had made a decent single player portion, then it would have kept me happy. But Quake today, would probably be remembered in a very different light, if at all. So how do we keep both the SPers and the MPers happy? Either release SP-only/MP-only games (at lower prices of course) or go the way that Id went with RTCW. Get two seperate development teams for the MP and the SP.
Problem with this is that there is, a big cross-over between MP and SP in any given game; the same engine, mechanics, models etc are all used in both. This makes putting MP onto mainly SP game (and vice versa) cheap and, if done correctly, effective. Plus, other factors can make this effect even more acute; would HL have had so many mods if it didn't such an amazing (and unparrelleled) SP campaign? Also, having two separate development teams would result in poorer implementation of one halp or the other - programmers don't like working with half-finished stuff from the other development teams, and, if this is really two teams working on different halves of THE SAME GAME, then that is what would happen. Plus, costs would soar! So, even if games were to become exculsively SP or MP, there would be little reduction in price, becuase the cost of developement of a game which is both SP and MP is not a lot higher.
Thankfully though, it's not so much a requirement of games to be made that way. We do have a lot of singlely-developed games (e.g. JO, MOH etc) which have received lots of acclaim for both the MP and SP sides of it. If you look at the situation from a developers point of view, then you can see why there is nearly always a SP portion to an MP game etc. How much more quality/lower price do you think you would get if you just didn't bother to make the less-important half of one of these games? I'm guessing that developers probably don't really know whether the half of the game which they are not concentrating so hard on (eg. SP in Quake, MP in MOHAA) will get decent acclaim or not, but it probably cost them very little to do that half - and, if seen in an overal cost perspective - is probably better value!
"ph34r m3 f0r 1 4m l33t 1nc4rn4t3!"
Flux.