this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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Alright, I accept this is your opinion but the overall aversion to multiplayer on Lemmy surprises me. Games have historically been multiplayer experiences since human existence. Go back thousands of years to ancient mesopotamia and people will play games with each other. And even in videogames, they play a huge part. I've had countless fun hours in games like Super Smash Bros., Minecraft multiplayer or Team Fortress 2 and I'm always looking forward to multiplayer experiences that look interesting. I'm not sure what you mean by
in this particular case. Do the devs have a bad track record when it comes to this? Because it's not something exclusive to online games by any means.
Anyway I understand the title rubs people the wrong way because it's nonsene of course, but I don't get the hate. It's almost like people want the same old stuff wrapped in a new shell over an over again when they criticize studios solely for going into a new direction instead of making yet another sequel.
I think what he means is multi-player games are typically cheaper than single-player because the devs make 6 maps or whatever and let the players loose.
A full campaign requires a lot more work to keep it interesting for more than a few minutes.
That couldn't be further from the truth. Mutliplayer games are a huge undertaking because you have no choice but to develop and test for any possible individuality and keep pushing new patches so the game can keep running smoothly. Not to speak of server costs and complex match making systems that typically come with it. No, multiplayer games are hard to make and they're rarely ever finished.
I mean that (besides always-online DRM, and scamming your victims with subscriptions and microtransactions) the main reason for perpetrating an online multiplayer computer game is that you can get away with not writing a story, or lore, or quests, or puzzles, or NPCs, or AI, or any actual gameplay, or anything even remotely resembling a proper game through the magic of scamming your customers (or rather victims) into paying you for the privilege of filling in the gaps and acting as NPCs, and gameplay, and whatnot.
You get away with selling the rotting carcass of what could have been a game, and scamming your customers into believing it's still alive just because it's (temporarily) crawling with maggots.
I can get any old single player game and, provided I can replicate its environment, play it and enjoy it just as much as I could have when it came out, or even more.
Even if it was possible to enjoy an online game, on the other hand, it will have been stillborn to start with, a mere shell of a game, an insult to real games, a sad parody only resembling a game as long as there's enough victims trapped in the scam; the second they start leaving (supposing the scammers don't turn the servers off before that, to drive their victims to their latest shiny defecation) it'll go back to being the empty unplayable shell it's always been, utterly devoid of enjoyability or replayability.
The very concept is insulting, revolting, and a clear intentional predatory attack on computer game players and the very concept of computer games.
Online computer games are not games. They're a cheap (as long as you can afford the initial investment), fast, and easy way of extracting as much wealth as possible from their customers using the least effort.
The companies making them don't care about computer games, or about whatever setting they're raping and tearing apart in order to promote their crap, or about their customers. They just care about extracting as much wealth as possible from them, and moving on to their next scam.
And if left unchecked they'll destroy the very concept of computer games as an art form, or even as an industry, and they won't care, because they'll have already extracted everything they could.
None of the downsides you've mentioned are exclusive to online games, though. Publishers put these mechanics in single player games as often as they do it in online games so you criticism doesn't make much sense here, to be honest. There are also countless online games that don't have any of those things.
Only online "games" this maybe wouldn't apply to would have to be peer to peer, serverless, and probably open source to be safe... and, even then, you'd have to provide a sufficient amount of players to replay them a decade on, as, lacking any actual game, they're useless without other players.
As for offline games, sure, publishers might attempt to use them in the same way, but it's much more expensive since a minimum amount of game must actually exist in order for players to fall for it, and they can't fake it using other players. Asset flips are obviously a thing, but easily detected and avoided. And, most importantly, even those will remain equally playable or unplayable in a few decades, while an online "game" will be unplayable the instant it doesn't have enough players.