Do online modes for games matter?

[Margalis]

Let me clarify a bit: yes they matter for games that are naturally multiplayer anyway, like fighting and racing games.

But these days I see a lot of games that have an online mode bolted on. Basically any psuedo-realistic game with guns has some online mode where you can put a bunch of people on a map and fight, blah blah blah. MGS4, GTA, Kane & Lynch, whatever.

How many of these do we need? The way I've played online shooters I pick one or two and play those exclusively, for a variety of reasons -- you get better at the game, you learn your way around the community, etc.

Am I unique? It seems to me that for a lot of single-player games with extra multi-player content the community will largely die off within weeks or months. Does the average person need 10 single-player games with lightweight online modes that don't offer much beyond any other game. Are these more than just checkboxes for marketing?

[schild]

MGO is incredibly full featured. We're talking full fledged server browser filterable by connection quality, full clan system, full leveling system with skills that go up as you play, etc. GTA4, Kane & Lynch, etc - yea, I agree.

[Fordel]

As long as it includes Co-Op.

Every game should have online Co-Op. 

[lesion]

Item #1: "Every game should have online Co-Op. [sic, emphasis mine, quis custodiet ipsos custodes]"

Item #2: Flying friends into skyscrapers or bouncing heavy objects off their heads is always fun, even with a six-month refractory period. As long as it doesn't have a huge impact on the important stuff, like if 3D Realms revealed in 2015 that DNF had gone gold after decades of necessary Deathmatch QA.

[Margalis]

When I talked about games that were naturally multiplayer I mean to include co-op style games. Basically I'm talking about games that have an online mode which is pretty different from the "normal" game. Like your typical story and level driven FPS game that has a cruddy online mode with 4 maps and 3 modes.

[Merusk]

It doesn't matter to me.  I don't even have my consoles hooked into the 'net anymore, and my kids aren't old enough to play the more mature stuff with me.  So, it's a feature that's usually ignored beyond dicking around for a few minutes when I first pick up a PC game. 

However, Kids & college students are more and more connected and more and more socially adept.  They want/ require multiplayer, and despite what us "old" men say, they're still the primary users/ market for games due to their copious free time and cash.   Reading youth-occupied sites I see statements like "no online/ multi? fuck that game" plenty enough.  It's getting to be a requirement, even if us old farts don't use it, and even if we don't think it'd mesh well with the game type.

It's an evolution like the transition to 3d years ago.  Some games it made perfect sense, some you went "why'd they bother?"

[Venkman]

When I talked about games that were naturally multiplayer I mean to include co-op style games. Basically I'm talking about games that have an online mode which is pretty different from the "normal" game. Like your typical story and level driven FPS game that has a cruddy online mode with 4 maps and 3 modes.

For market purposes, yea, having an online computer is going to become standard in a few years, even for consoles.

For gamers though, there's going to be a lot of shit

[Kail]

Well, there are times I've wanted multiplayer modes in single player games that don't have them (RPGs especially, like KotOR or Morrowind), and I can't think of any time I've ever seen a multiplayer mode that was so bad I wished they hadn't included it.  Even with the most tacked on deathmatch, I can just refrain from playing it if I don't like it.

And there have been a few times I've been pissed off by companies going "halfway" with their games by not including modes like this.  For example, Unreal 2 and Unreal Tournament 2003 came out fairly close to each other... U2 having a mediocre single player campaign and no multiplayer (initially), and UT2k3 having mediocre multiplayer play and basically just bots for single player mode.  It felt like if they'd packaged them together in the same box and charged $50 for it, it would have been a solid package, but paying $50 for each felt like they were selling me half a game twice.