Here is Splash Damage’s Edward Stern’s quote from Gamasutra on multiplayer gaming (read first, we’ll discuss after):
It’s just inane. You get games shipping with separate executables, a completely different experience, sometimes a different control scheme. Why would you ever do that? It’s crazy now. There’s no reason to do that.
It seems ludicrous that we’ve got this notion of completely separate online, offline, single-player, multiplayer. That’s in the past. There’s no reason to put up with that anymore.
There are really, really good games — we play them a lot — where you do just move through on a rail, and that’s really satisfying, but the same guy comes out the same doorway every single time. There’s not much reason to replay that except to make it harder or do a time trial and stuff.
As a gamer who doesn’t do multiplayer that often (I’m not alone) or enjoy it that much I have to say that I don’t agree with Stern at all. While having different controls for your multiplayer is pretty dumb, dividing multiplayer and single player up into different parts is anything but ludicrous. Multiplayer doesn’t have to be a second class citizen or anything, but I want my single player and I don’t want my friends coming in on it for the most part. While what Brink is attempting to do sounds very cool, it isn’t for every game and criticizing the fact that other games have clearly defined single player and multiplayer parts simply does not make sense. I’m not “putting up with that,” I like that.
What do you think? Are we headed for games that mold everything together or is separate better.
