Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

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Rachael
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Rachael »

Don't you just love video games-- excuse me I meant "live services" because Ubisoft would have you believe that game is an archaic term and that no one uses it anymore...
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The Ultimate DooMer
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by The Ultimate DooMer »

2-player Lemmings on the Amiga...now that was a split-screen multiplayer like no other. (got really competitive when me and a friend used to play)
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by NeuralStunner »

I wonder what video game tradition will be "dying" next month? (My guess: Singleplayer.)
Chris wrote:Such a feature need not explicitly be removed by publisher request. But publishers can and do require particular features (or anti-features) in games, like online multiplayer, recurring monetization, "live services", etc, which leaves less time for offline features that don't have recurring revenue. Thus effectively losing such features because of the publisher, even if the publisher never explicitly said to remove it.
This is something not a lot of people seem to get, and which I would like to write on in the future. "The developers" don't make these decisions, but they get most of the blame when these things happen.
Rachael wrote:Don't you just love video games-- excuse me I meant "live services" because Ubisoft would have you believe that game is an archaic term and that no one uses it anymore...
I'm starting to suspect at this point that Ubisoft is literally run by demons. Personally, I hate them even more than EA. (And I don't outright hate things often.)
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by JadedLexi »

NeuralStunner wrote:I wonder what video game tradition will be "dying" next month? (My guess: Singleplayer.)
This already happened when people were complaining that story driven single player games were dying because EA cancelled their SP star wars game. :P
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Kinsie »

If only those awful publishers would stop distracting audio middleware programmers from adding support for more than one listener...
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Assassin of Purity »

NeuralStunner wrote:I wonder what video game tradition will be "dying" next month? (My guess: Singleplayer.)
Hah! I hope not.
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The Ultimate DooMer
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by The Ultimate DooMer »

I thought all of those spunkgargleweewee modern military shooters with 4-hour SP slideshows campaigns were already a sign of that :P
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Rachael
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Rachael »

Assassin of Purity wrote:
NeuralStunner wrote:I wonder what video game tradition will be "dying" next month? (My guess: Singleplayer.)
Hah! I hope not.
Well - that's what's coming down the pike, if EA and Ubisoft and Activision and others have their way.

Single player is going the way of the dodo (according to these companies, anyway) because it does not offer as many or as easy methods of monetization that they can exploit.

After all, if they can keep you on their servers while you play the game - there's all sorts of fuckery and control they can put on you...

And these problems will keep getting worse until people start to vote with their wallets.
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by InsanityBringer »

I'd say there's still hope for SP, given the presence of a lot of experiences in recent times that have sat well with people and lasted a long time. Nier Automata comes to mind as a fairly common example. Indeed, I can't see a lot of the bigger US based dev firms (I'd throw Valve on that list) doing this kind of thing because nier's not monetized at all, but just the fact that a company can put out a great SP game, that becomes incredibly popular and sells well, I'd say is a good sign for the future.
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Viscra Maelstrom »

isn't the "Soulsborne" series popular as well and sold rather well for all its entries? sure there's some online stuff with invasion and summoning, but that's just to augment the SP campaign, and it kind of popularized actual difficulty in games again. plus, i think even the new God of War game takes elements from Soulsborne, particularly with the weight of your weapons and having to dodge-roll attacks, whereas previous games were mostly button-mashing from what i remember.
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by wildweasel »

Viscra Maelstrom wrote:isn't the "Soulsborne" series popular as well and sold rather well for all its entries? sure there's some online stuff with invasion and summoning, but that's just to augment the SP campaign, and it kind of popularized actual difficulty in games again. plus, i think even the new God of War game takes elements from Soulsborne, particularly with the weight of your weapons and having to dodge-roll attacks, whereas previous games were mostly button-mashing from what i remember.
Sometimes I'd really prefer my single-player games to be actually single-player, and not "single-player, but you have to pay the online fee for the privilege of having random players invade to beat you up."

....yeah, those games really aren't for me. :?
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Chris
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Chris »

If the rumors are to be believed, apparently even Bethesda is moving away from single player. Which is ironic since it was last E3 where they made a big deal for single-player games, essentially attacking EA's and Ubisoft's stance of 'everything online', but now their flagship dev house with one of their flagship SP RPG series are going multiplayer. Of course, the whole Fallout 76 thing is a mess from multiple angles (what's up with Starfield? didn't you say two games with a new IP/IPs before returning to TES/Fallout universes? why two Fallouts in a row?).

The only way it could smooth me over is if it's optional co-op multiplayer, sort of the drop-in/drop-out style like Divinity: Original Sin. But I'm not hopeful for that.
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Re: Split-Screen Multiplayer is Dying

Post by Kinsie »

Chris wrote:Of course, the whole Fallout 76 thing is a mess from multiple angles (what's up with Starfield? didn't you say two games with a new IP/IPs before returning to TES/Fallout universes? why two Fallouts in a row?).
The most recent news I saw is that BGS had "two major, multiplatform releases" on the schedule before returning to the Elder Scrolls series. No further specific details outside of that. There was a recent interview on the AIAS Game Maker's Notebook podcast with Todd where he mentioned that they were actively working on one of those games (presumably the now-revealed Fallout 76) while the other was in a pre-production state, planning and preparing tech improvements (a new animation system was mentioned) so they'd be ready to go into full work once the first game was done. TES6 is presumably next on the list after that.

No word on Starfield. It might have become something else, as these things tend to do.
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