In defense of tacked-on multiplayer

"And he's right; single-player "fire-and-forget" games generally don't have that much replay value, and it’s hard to justify keeping a game after you complete the campaign" I've never understood this sentiment. Whatever happened to the days when people just kept their games? I mean, I may never play some of the games sitting on my game shelf again, but I'd rather them sit there and collect dust than not having them if/when I suddenly feel like playing one again. Anyways, the problem with tacked on multiplayer is that it does tend to come at the cost of the single player campaign. You used Dead Space 2 as an example, and you know what, the single player campaign might have been good, but it surely wasn't better than the first Dead Space. Whether that had to do with the multiplayer component, that would all be speculation, but the game was shorter, turned into a corridor shooter, and lacked any interesting boss fights, which I was surprised I actually missed from Dead Space. A lot of single player franchises with newly tacked on multiplayer seem to suffer much from the same problems, as their multiplayer components get 'better' their single player portions scale back. It's usually all about resources, and multiplayer takes away development resources. Some franchises have been successful with added multiplayer by having a separate, but closely related studio working on it without pulling away from the single player team, but more often than not, one or the other does suffer, and for me at least, I want a single player narrative I can enjoy and discuss, that will stick with me fondly in memory, than I do another competitive multiplayer experience to just come and go as soon as the next multiplayer juggernaut comes out. I can get behind co-op modes, but they best be done right and spectacularly well, otherwise I'm going to blame the faults of the game on needlessly tacked on multiplayer.

"I mean, I may never play some of the games sitting on my game shelf again, but I'd rather them sit there and collect dust than not having them if/when I suddenly feel like playing one again." I'm completely with this sentiment! Though I do get a bit angry when I see Wreckless still sitting on my shelf.

My sentiments exactly regarding dead space 2 "Was Dead Space 2 ruined by the Necromorphs vs. Humans battles that most agreed were an absolute blast? " Nope, the singleplayer portion managed to do that just fine.

"Stop freaking out. When a publisher or a developer reveals some sort of co-op or multiplayer for its game" I understand what you were going for in the article but the problem with this is that for every AAA game that gets an alright MP there are 20 AA games that get a terrible MP which dies within a couple months. I'm not going to go through my giant library of games in which this is the case but since Singularity is right in front of me that is just as good of an example. Did multiplayer help that game sell better in any form? No. If they had cut out the development cost and time creating MP they might not have seen it as such a failure. (Not a guarantee but you know what I'm getting at)

I don't even want to touch the slapdash MP DLC they release for mainly single player games either. I guess my main complaint about this article would be that while I can pop into the SP of any number of games I own I'm only able to play the MP for a month or so until it dries up. Basically, this portion of the game that I paid full price for becomes invalid. (I know this isn't the case for most AAA games but it seems about 90% of the time this happens to anything that isn't COD, Borderlands or any other ridiculously high profile game.

Better yet, don't give them the benefit of doubt. That way they might put in that extra bit of effort in impressing us. I don't like multiplayer too much. Never will. It's usually overflowing with idiots, bellends, racists, misogynists and mentally imbalanced sociopaths. I don't want to waste my free time in that company. So when a developer announces it's not bothering with multiplayer, I have a little celebration because I know they are putting all their best tricks into a single player experience. Also, developers are usually under contract not to badmouth parts of their game before release. So, obviously, they are going to singing about how "great" multiplayer is. I don't remember 2K Marin slamming the "tacked-on" multiplayer prior to Spec Ops: The Line's release. Nice article but I still remain unconvinced.