Sunday, June 8, 2008

Opinion: When Multiplayer Fails

I'm playing The Club on the Xbox 360 right now. It was released in February 2008 so it's less than 4 months old. There are 15 multiplayer achievements totaling 310 gamerpoints. Ten of these achievements are in Ranked games only. The problem? Nobody is playing online.

Honestly, I can understand. The game is not that engaging. Even in single player, it pretends to have a story, but it really doesn't. But my post isn't actually about The Club. What happens to people who buy these games that expect a big multiplayer community and that community doesn't show up?

This is one of the reason I prefer games that concentrate on the single player, sometimes even abandoning the multiplayer altogether. If I buy/rent/borrow a single player game months or even years after its release, I don't have to worry about it. The game will still be the same. But if that game has a big multiplayer component, I have to worry.

Are there still gamers playing the game? Even if it's good, is it good enough that people are still playing it so long after release? This is a reason I disagree with some current developers who are starting to concentrate primarily on multiplayer. Yes, multiplayer is fun. But only when there are actually other people to play with!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Remember Prey? It was me and like 2 other dudes and we just boosted our achievements. Maybe you should hit the Club forums and find boosters. Luckily gamers will help other gamers get the achievements, but that still doesn't solve the issue of giving us fun games to play online months after release. This would make for a great argument for bots. More online games should include bots.