Has online gaming ruined ACTUAL games?

Zeouterlimits

........

It's a fact that multiplayer-inclusive games generally sell better than singleplayer only games. RPGs are practically the only genre that can really survive that.
Look at Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Uncharted 1 etc.
All pretty good/great singleplayer only titles that didn't sell nearly as well as simialarly AAA titles with multiplayer.
It's a much bigger incentive to the customer if there's a multiplayer component to drop their €60 on a title. And that really makes a lot of sense.
So including a multiplayer component both helps sales and slows down trade-ins.

Have to disagree really with the notion that it has ruined singleplayer games (saying "ACTUAL games" is ridiculous, grow up).

BlitzKrieg

hightower1 wrote: »

I dont accept this whole "its production cost thing" and thats why games are getting shorter.

Major hollywood movies take approx 2 years from start to finish. 3 in some cases this is the exact same time as a game and the production costs for games are a LOT lower while the profit is an awful lot higher.

Firstly the 2 year turnover is pretty much only for the hollywood blockbuster system, which when you consider the sub standard crap (Twilight, Transformers 2) they shovel onto viewers two years is a pretty pathetic timeframe for some of these projects. Movies are difficult to gauge since those 2 years you are counting on in most projects outside of the studio system tend to be only the time for a movie in production/post production, completely cutting out the pre production stage which in a lot of films can be the longest and most difficult part (get funding, write script put together cast and crew).

Secondly thats two years without the need to extensively beta test the finished project. While the test audiance is a much expressed example of movie beta testing, it has nowhere near the same extensive requirement as a beta test does. In fact its very rare for a movie to have any major reshoots because of a test audiance.

Finally thats two years for a movie that clocks in around 2 hours, considering vast amounts of the same techniques used in video games match up with those of the animation industry lets see what the average turnaround for an animated movie, you even named most of them mo cap voice acting, weather effects etc...

Why its 4 years minimum. The absolute minimum for an animated film at disney is 4 years.

some examples

Ratatouille:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratatouille_%28film%29

Jan Pinkava came up with the concept and directed the film from 2001, creating the original design, sets and characters and core storyline.

six years from conception to release

Lion King: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lion_king

The production of The Lion King, originally titled King of the Jungle, took place at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Glendale, California, and Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. The original treatment, inspired by Hamlet, was written by Thomas M. Disch (author of The Brave Little Toaster), as “King of the Kalahari” in late 1988.

six years from conception to release


WALL E: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_e

In late 2003, Stanton and a few others created a story reel of the first twenty minutes of the film. Lasseter and Steve Jobs were impressed and officially began development,[15] though Jobs stated he did not like the title, originally spelled "W.A.L.-E."[16]

5 years.

The facts are its easier and cheaper and more time effective to make a multiplayer portion of a game than single player..... and now we see multiplayer portions of games being the focus and single player being pushed to the backround.

You're kidding right?

Multiplayer is the easiest part of a game to get wrong Its impossible to rely on multiplayer as a crutch in a new development because for it to take off you need the support of a community of players. Getting the multiplayer even slightly off will decimate your chances of forming a franchise, more so then any other type of video game you will need the turnover of players from one iteration of the series to the next if you want to continue, take a wrong step and the number of players that will simply stop playing will kill the series dead. The industry is litered with the countless games who's multiplayer was abandoned and as such the franchise is dropped.

If anything single player is a crutch for games focused on multiplayer, having a single player at least stops you from being at the whim of the online community and allow for continued sales. You can mishap with one entry in a single player game but with a good story or gameplay mechanic easily recover for a sequel.

Case in point Assassins Creed and Assassins Creed 2. But a mishap with a multiplayer game will kill the series because if you cant fill those servers the game is dead and worthless a few months after release. A single player game is the same regardless if you bought it on release or a year later.

Online sucks and not only that... its being promoted at the detriment of single player aspect. boo urns.

Again, this was predicted back in 1999 with the release of unreal tournament and quake 3.

considering that quake went back to single player with quake 4 (and so has Battlefield with bad company) since then and unreal tournament has not done anywhere near as well as it could have on release that seems to suggest the opposite is true.

Look at Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Uncharted 1 etc.
All pretty good/great singleplayer only titles that didn't sell nearly as well as simialarly AAA titles with multiplayer.

Assassins creed sold well as did its sequel, no multiplayer there. lets not forget wii titles like Mario Galaxy and Zelda Twilight princess as well.

The prince of persia series has consistenly done well. As has Ratchet and Clank.

Dead Space was still a commercial success btw despite throwing it in with mirrors edge and uncharted.

We could also bring up the hugely successful Civilisation series or the total war series, both franchises that sell mostly on their single player campaigns (which are both 30+ hours btw)

Asmodean

Mirrors edge was a cracker, although it still had a paltry play-through time despite it being single player only (which is not technially true seeing as how you can 'race' other players ghosts online)

Zeouterlimits

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

Assassins creed sold well as did its sequel, no multiplayer there. lets not forget wii titles like Mario Galaxy and Zelda Twilight princess as well.

The prince of persia series has consistenly done well. As has Ratchet and Clank.

Dead Space was still a commercial success btw despite throwing it in with mirrors edge and uncharted.

We could also bring up the hugely successful Civilisation series or the total war series, both franchises that sell mostly on their single player campaigns (which are both 30+ hours btw)

Assassin's Creed, and two Nintendo franchises are what I'd see as exceptions to the norm.
As for:
Prince of Persia
Ratchet and Clank
Dead Space
All which the recent iterations of have been said to have had disappointing sales by their publisher.
Ratchet charted at 16 week of release in the UK and hasn't appeared on the chart since. It never charted here in Ireland at all.

Undead

Has online gaming ruined ACTUAL games?

No.


No it hasn't.

DirkVoodoo

I'll get back to you when Starcraft 2 is released.

If Blizzard have been simply appealing to the lucrative pro-gamer scene in Korea and elsewhere and neglecting the story, unlikely as it seems, I will give you a "yes".

Sure, COD:MW2 was short, 8 hours seems to be the acceptable average for a shooter since Half Life, I think MW2 rolls in under 5. Would you want more than 5 hours? Not really, it's hardly a story driven shooter like HL and the game is pretty much chock full of action from start to finish. If anything, blame the underhanded pricing strategy.

As for the multiplayer, I have yet to play. My younger brother comes home from school and plays MW2 religiously (he is unfortunately injured so besides that and study he has little else to do). He enjoys it. I asked him would he prefer a longer campaign with no multiplayer, "No".

As for "actual" games. I'm playing Dragon Age at the moment. Certainly plenty of single player storytelling in there, looking forward to Mass Effect 2 and Starcraft 2.

Can you compare these games to MMORPGs like WOW? I don't think so, they aren't really in the same bracket as a "multiplayer component", but I have no interest in those games so I'll leave that avenue be for now.

So what does this mean? Well, successful games, be they single player or multiplayer tend to produce sequels of varying quality and are studios just doing business and cashing in on success. Like movies. That's all you can say really. Like Hollywood is killing independent and original movies in the mainstream with crap like "Twilight", games publishers and developers are taking fewer chances on original titles.

Mobile games are probably the last refuge for originality for now. Even Dragon Age for me is a rehash of KOTOR and Mass Effect, but that's no bad thing for me.

BlitzKrieg

Zeouterlimits wrote: »

Assassin's Creed, and two Nintendo franchises are what I'd see as exceptions to the norm.

I'd argue the opposite, I'd say games more focused on multiplayer that are huge successes are more of an exception then a single player exclusive game being a success.

Prince of Persia

from wiki

Prince of Persia was the fourth best-selling game on the Playstation 3 in December 2008, but sold only 483,000 units on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 combined Ubisoft later released sales figures showing that Prince of Persia has sold over 2.2 million copies worldwide as of January 2009

Ratchet and Clank

http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2009/11/22/a-crack-in-time-insomniacs-best-selling-ratchet-clank-yet/

Dead Space

also from wiki

Dead Space was a commercial success as well, with EA CFO Eric Brown confirming 1 million sales in 2008 across three platforms

irishman123

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

Ihttp://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2009/11/22/a-crack-in-time-insomniacs-best-selling-ratchet-clank-yet/

Finished it - One of the best games of the year!

Zeouterlimits

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

I'd argue the opposite, I'd say games more focused on multiplayer that are huge successes are more of an exception then a single player exclusive game being a success.

Hmmm, perhaps I am mistaken, warped perception by the gaming media/publisher expectations I guess.
I still in the eyes of the consumer a multiplayer-inclusive game is a better incentive to spend your well earned dosh.

pipeliner

i dont think online gaming is at fault. Games like movies follow trends. I remember the n64 days the selling point was the lenght of the game. Turok 2 was something like 60 hours long, but people got bored after 6.

But then developers realised that gamers preferred their games if they were completable. Hence shortening them, dumbing them down and adding the latest fad to make them more appealing (co op, sandbox, bullet time, etc, etc)

Mitch Connor

what annoys me most about the prevalence of online gaming, is that developers have focused on it almost entirely for their multiplayer content.

So many games are coming out now that don't have a split screen element, such as Burnout Paradise, Far Cry, Battlefield Bad Company. I know there are a lot more, but i can't think of them right now. I was actually surprised that COD:MW2 had a split screen mode.

Asmodean

Yeah I definitely agree in that regard a lot of titles are missing the split-screen element.