What it is: Valve's new marketing buzzword for a new gamed called The Crossing that meshes simultaneous multiplayer action with a single player story campaign. Unlike most multiplayer games, crossplayer promises to put every player in a simultaneous protagonist role while other real players somehow co-exist in the same universe ... all orchestrated into a single story. Ambitious.
Why you should care: Valve made Half-Life, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, all which closely rival sliced bread's greatness. Simply put, Valve makes great video games. When they speak, panties drop.
Why you should be skeptical: We've heard this kind of stuff before -- a perfect example was the marketing behind Shenmue on the Dreamcast. The promise was to morph RPG into something called "Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment." By Sega's definition, F.R.E.E. means that you can "Go wherever you want to go, see whatever you want to see, investigate whatever you want to investigate." Back in reality, Shenmue was one of the most linear games we've ever played with a lot of redundant dialogue inbetween. It was a cool game (who doesn't like sailors?) but we all know that it was more of a cautionary tale than an influence to other studios.
That said, it's hard to tell whether or not Valve really has something new that deserves to be called anything but a multiplayer game or an FPS MMO. I don't doubt that the game will be great, but whether or not their marketing people need a spanking for coining "crossplayer" is unseen.
Yanier "Niero" Gonzalez is Destructoid's founder and guy-in-the-helmet.After 2,000+ stories posted and years of starting trouble on the front page he's now busy behind the scenes building the future of Destructoid. His story is our motto: "Living The Dream".
They talk about it more on the 1UP show. Apparently Valve is doing something other devs have always wanted to do. It's supposed to be something revolutionary. At least, that's how they hyped it up to be.
Anyway, like I said, watch the latest 1UP show. They go into it a bit more.
Valve didn't make Counter-Strike. It was made only as a mod by some HL fans in a garage, later Valve bought all the rights for it... I'm not sure how it was with Team Fortress.
Btw, something like merging singleplayer with multiplayer was already announced for Spore, wasn't it?
I love FPS games but I tend not to get roped into any form of RPG these days as I know that as soon as I have learned the system, I'll be hooked forever! This Crossplayer thing sounds interesting but I'm not expecting it to be released for about five years when Valve can stick some more coal into ye olde steam engine. Yes I'm bitter about Portal and HL2E2 :P
@macr:
Well, only one out of two guys who created it ;-p
Valve as a company (together with some other video game developers) made CS:CZ (which was shite) and CSS (which was a bit better than CZ, but still shite). Anyway, none of them was better than the original CS (right at this moment more people play it than all other games on steam combined);-/
This discussion is going nowhere ;-p But imho the only great games from Valve were HL and HL2. And nothing else.
So, I ghues that in that game you'll have an open world, inhabited by all the players of the game.
I think that every player would get some kind of unique mission, and being in the open world with all the other players doing their thing and that some storys cross each other in some kind of way.
annyhow, wasn't there already a MMOFPS in the make called Huxley?
Hmmm this is not developped by Valve, but by Arkane Studio (http://www.arkane-studios.com/en/index.php) French guys taht made Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic :p
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
11:38 AM on 12.26.2006
| 
Anyway, like I said, watch the latest 1UP show. They go into it a bit more.
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/8142
Btw, something like merging singleplayer with multiplayer was already announced for Spore, wasn't it?
I love FPS games but I tend not to get roped into any form of RPG these days as I know that as soon as I have learned the system, I'll be hooked forever! This Crossplayer thing sounds interesting but I'm not expecting it to be released for about five years when Valve can stick some more coal into ye olde steam engine. Yes I'm bitter about Portal and HL2E2 :P
Point is, I think there's more to this than what Valve is saying publicly right now, if you go buy what the 1UP people are saying.
At least we dodged the manfaye bullet this time.
Well, only one out of two guys who created it ;-p
Valve as a company (together with some other video game developers) made CS:CZ (which was shite) and CSS (which was a bit better than CZ, but still shite). Anyway, none of them was better than the original CS (right at this moment more people play it than all other games on steam combined);-/
This discussion is going nowhere ;-p But imho the only great games from Valve were HL and HL2. And nothing else.
I think that every player would get some kind of unique mission, and being in the open world with all the other players doing their thing and that some storys cross each other in some kind of way.
annyhow, wasn't there already a MMOFPS in the make called Huxley?