Autant le hacker interviewé sur 3DA est drôle tellement son raisonement est pathétique, autant les reflexions du développeur sur AVault sont interessantes par leur pertinence. Il discute de l’audience des jeux vidéo: pourquoi faire un moteur 3D quand on vise un publique qui ne posséde peut-être pas de carte 3D (Starcraft), faire un jeu uniquement multiplayer est-ce intéressant, etc.
C’est moins drôle que de se moquer du hacker sur 3DA mais c’est beaucoup plus interessant.
Now, another shocking thing to learn is that most people actually prefer single player games. Surely that’s wrong? What about all the multiplayer-only titles? Dare to put out a strategy game these days without a hefty multiplayer experience and you’re in for a pretty painful review. How many times have you seen that? A really good game get a luke warm or negative review because it didn’t have multiplayer built in. For me personally, multiplayer is a must. I generally won’t buy a strategy game that doesn’t have it, but I’m in the minority, I’m a « hardcore » gamer; I live to play online. But according to the report and just from anecdotal evidence, there is a growing backlash from gamers who simply want designers to start putting their energies into making a good single player product. Make decent computer players and make the game rich enough to keep them coming back for more. As opposed to what many recent titles have brought us — single player experiences that are essentially tutorials for multiplayer.
It’s easier to prove that multiplayer isn’t that big of a deal than it is to prove how low end most people’s hardware is because we can just go look at GameSpy or Microsoft’s GameZone or Battle.net. Lots of people on there right? Yep, thousands. Note: Thousands, not millions. Counterstrike is pretty popular; how many people are playing at once? Several thousand, not hundreds of thousands.
