Multiplayer and New Rebuilt Engine. (Question to Dev's)

[pigeonpigeon]

it's also usually the case that people who take the initiative to check out a game's forum or internet community tend to be more likely to partake in a game's multiplayer aspect.

I am sorry but that statement is completely false, its the is hardcore fans and serious players that take the initiative to visit the forums of a singleplayer game often.

The missing factor is people like my friends who wont touch a singleplayer game under any circumstances and have never and will never sign up to a forum.

Just think how many people only play mc often and only multiplayer that never go to the forums. Out of the 12.2 million mc copies sold only 2.3mil have signed up the forums. that is only 18%

It's not untrue at all, although it might vary across different sorts of games. For example, Stardock reported that of everyone who bought their game Demigod, only 23% ever even tried to play multiplayer even once, and far fewer actually played it regularly. The vast majority of people who played Demigod did so solo, despite the fact that the singleplayer component of that game was a half-hearted afterthought. It was a multiplayer game through and through, and fewer than 1/4 people ever even tried to participate in it, preferring the comfort of playing by themselves. And yet if you were to look at their forums, it was completely filled with discussions about multiplayer and you could've been forgiven for not even knowing there was a singleplayer mode.

I honestly don't see how your statistics for minecraft are informative at all. You haven't provided any quantitative information about how many people who play minecraft do so in a multiplayer environment vs. alone, for one. That said I'll use your own numbers against you. 18% of all minecraft players have signed up to the forums. But what fraction of those 18% regularly play multiplayer, vs. those who largely play singleplayer? I will bet you that an overwhelming majority of minecraft players that have registered on the forums play multiplayer. I will also bet you that the percent of all minecraft players that regularly participate in multiplayer is significantly smaller than that. Which brings us back to exactly my point... Typically, the forum population of a game with multiplayer and singleplayer components will skew towards the multiplayer side of things.

That said, it might not work that way for a game/series like X, simply because there is no multiplayer, so the demographics are likely quite different. On the other hand, your friends not touching a single player game under any circumstance is completely unrelated to the fact that they will also never sign up to a forum. You just happen to have friends who like multiplayer games and who have no interest in participating in the game's community outside the game itself. I happen to have friends who prefer singleplayer games but will also never sign up to a forum - they prefer their games alone and have no interest in any part of the community at all. So that's just blowing smoke and is completely irrelevant.

There's a large population of gamers who prefer multiplayer games, and also a large population of gamers who prefer singleplayer games. As such, you can twist logic to argue that every game, therefore, should have single- and multi-player modes in order to satisfy the widest possible demographics. But in reality developers have finite resources and they have to decide where those resources are best spent. Implementing both modes of play involves a tremendous amount of work; it adds a great deal of technical work and makes gameplay design more challenging, because it has to function in more than one environment. As such, developers often have the choice of choosing one mode and doing it well, or trying to do both and usually have one or both fall short.

Egosoft made the decision that, financially, they are better off keeping their devoted audience happy than ignoring them for the time it would take to develop a multiplayer mode in order to try to entice some people over from the 'multiplayer only' crowd. They seem to have made it pretty clear that they'd like to add multiplayer, but only if they are able to do it parallel to the development of the main game, and so far they haven't been able to find the funding for that.

[Santi]

Sandbox games try to replicate a living world that reacts to the player actions, they are the "state of the art" technology currently available to gamers, they are pushing the boundaries of AI, of economic models, of verbal interaction, it is human against machine.

Multiplayer games create a living world where players interact with other players, most of the challenge, is created by the players or by the necessity to perform certain tasks repetitively to gain an advantage, it is human against human.

That is why there is such a negative response to multiplayer in the X series, we are embarked in our own personal Butlerian Jihad, it is us against the machine.

[Sandalpocalypse]

r example, Stardock reported that of everyone who bought their game Demigod, only 23% ever even tried to play multiplayer even once, and far fewer actually played it regularly.

that statistic comes with a caveat,

a lot of the time people get games that they never even try or give up on immediately. this varies hugely from game to game. you can see this best by looking at Steam Global Achievement Stats:

I picked a few games I own. These are all very basic achievements, completable with less than an hour of gameplay.

X-Com Enemy Unknown: only 87% finish a research project or build an item
Civilizaiton V: only 79% have discovered an Ancient Ruin
Sword of the Stars II: only 55% build their first ship
Magicka: only 61% used every spell element

alot of those people who wern't online likely just wern't playing at all

[Wraith_Magus]

r example, Stardock reported that of everyone who bought their game Demigod, only 23% ever even tried to play multiplayer even once, and far fewer actually played it regularly.

that statistic comes with a caveat,

a lot of the time people get games that they never even try or give up on immediately. this varies hugely from game to game. you can see this best by looking at Steam Global Achievement Stats:

I picked a few games I own. These are all very basic achievements, completable with less than an hour of gameplay.

X-Com Enemy Unknown: only 87% finish a research project or build an item
Civilizaiton V: only 79% have discovered an Ancient Ruin
Sword of the Stars II: only 55% build their first ship
Magicka: only 61% used every spell element

alot of those people who wern't online likely just wern't playing at all

Yes, I know I have bought some Steam games that have achievements that I haven't even started playing (or even installed) yet.

That said, just because it's the only statistic easily visible to players doesn't mean that it's the only statistics available to the developers.

Many games have what functionally amount to a "Yay, you went through the intro!" achievement. That makes measuring the amount of players who played more than an hour quite easy, as you yourself point out, which makes even players who are only looking at Steam achievements capable of knowing that you should multiply the percentages of every player who completes whatever achievement by 1.5 if only 66% of the players complete the tutorial level.

Presumably, the devs were capable of using more informative statistics, or at least ones that skimmed off the top those who didn't actually play their single player game at all, either, or they wouldn't bother reporting it. (Unless they were purposefully trying to spread disinformation about their game, which seems a little odd, but is at least possible.)

Besides, even if half the "players" of the game never played either mode, ever, for the purposes of those statistics, then you'd still wind up with an argument for over half the remaining population never playing multiplayer in a multiplayer-focused game... which is fairly telling, still.

And, I think, it deserves reinforcement to Pigeonpigeon's point that the people who clamor for multiplayer in this forum being a vocal minority that every time there's a poll on this subject, they get proved, once again, a minority. Nevertheless, there's a constant amount of vocalization over this topic. A topic that is constantly at the forefront, getting a plurality of the attention as a topic of anything besides maybe Steam bashing, in spite of, as everyone here admits, it being the minority view of regular forum-goers.

Doesn't that lend some evidence to the point Pigeonpigeon's making?

Multiplayer types that like games as networking tools tend to be the ones that most relentlessly get onto every forum they can to network and spread their views. Not every one does it, plenty don't care enough to sign onto any game they're not currently already networked into, but enough of them do that the clamor for multiplayer can become the constant thrubbing drone in the background of every single game company's forum to be on the Internet.

There are people who constantly press for multiplayer even in Dwarf Fortress - a game made by only one person, running on donations, who has absolutely no experience in making anything multiplayer, in a game that has essentially no capacity to ever be made multiplayer through any method other than e-mailing saves around. There's no chance at all of that being made multiplayer. But some tiny selection of people still try getting on the soapbox to argue for it, anyway.

[JClosed]

This is still going on?

Well - as it is clearly stated by people at Egosoft. Multi-player is possible, but not easy. Multi-player can be added to the game engine, but at this moment there are no components inside the game engine that support that. That means the game engine has to be re-designed (not build from the ground up, but big parts has to be re-written - I guess about 75%). At the same time the single player part must not suffer from this re-design, and that's not a simple task - make no mistakes about that. Oh, and no - this cannot be done by modders, because you have to make changes to the core of the engine, and the game engine source is (for obvious reasons) not available or even usable for external developers.

Letting developers re-designing an game engine will cost time and money. This is not (relatively simple) bug-hunting or adding features. No - we are talking about a complete re-design! And guess what? Those people are not going to work for nothing, and it also will cost a considerable amount of time. That means this will going to cost time and money - lots of it! That's the economic reality we are facing here. You cannot have something for nothing. People have to be payed, places have to be hired, equipment has to be bought (you must stay up-to date), and other overhead cost wont dissolve in thin air.

Now - that means all those people that really want multi-player have to do their part too and have to invest. You want multi-player and that will cost you. Plain and simple.

First of all - raise enough money to pay the developers for re-designing the game engine. I guess this will take about one to two years for about 10 developers (and maybe I am even a bit too optimistic here). So - raise enough money to pay your multi-player. You won't get it for free of coarse! I guess a quarter to a half million dollars will do (although I might be optimistic here too - do not forget we are not talking about payment only - the overhead costs have to be payed too).

And secondly - have patience. As there is no multi-player component in the game engine now (as said by the developers), it will take a lot of time before a really reliable game engine will be re-designed, re-build, debugged and optimized to be usable (and remember - single player must not suffer from this too).

And I am now presuming this can be done by the same 20 man strong development team, without hiring extra developers. If they have to hire extra people (because the single player bug-hunting and expansions have to roll on), the cost will be considerable higher.

Now - all those people that want multi-player. Your task is really simple. Organize enough people and raise enough money (crowd funding or something), and you will get your beloved multi-player. Simple huh?

Oh - and by the way - I am happy with single player. As an result I am not prepared to give any money or pay more for the game, just for adding features that I did not want and did not asked for. I won't take part at any crowd funding project that adds multi-player. I just do not want to wast my money for that kind of thing. Let me be clear about that..