Putting The Players Back In Multiplayer

there's an old gaming saying that claims playing somewhat with other people automatically makes it more fun but is it true well yes the things are actually a little bit more complicated than you might think see recently I decided to give one Warcraft to revisit some Waikiki grab some footage and despite the fact that I was having a fun time blasting dinosaurs with magic I'm running around on a cool junk island and no point I really feel like I was actually getting anything out the fact that I was playing a quote massively multiplayer game sure there's other people running around the same world as you when you can team up with other players to do stuff like dungeons but the times you have to meaningfully interact with your fellow adventurers are pretty few and far between all the story bits and the quests the bit of the game my most enjoyed were difficult or impossible to experience with other people most of the time you just get shunted into your own nil instance area so no other players can get in the way even in the overworld I found myself more willing to wave to my sworn enemies in the opposite faction than actually fight them because trying to kill each other was more hassle than it was worth for eyedroppers as far as I was concerned what a Warcraft may as well have been a single-player game and that's a bit of a shame right multiplayer games have so much unique and cool stuff to offer us that it was a bit depressing to be playing a perfectly good one that just wasn't taking advantage of the format that's when it hit me playing a game with other people doesn't make it more fun what does is interacting with them for example in the indie crazy golf game golf with your friends the default mode pretty much just permits players to putt in perfect parallel the game is fun enough like this but if you turn on collision lane balls bump into each other suddenly you find that you've opened up a whole new layer of the game sabotaging other players blocking them in with your ball and having to work around the fact that you might in early knock someone into the hole creates a bunch of new and interesting challenges that can't be solved by simply loading the course you've got to contend with other humans trying to screw you over as well golf with collision enabled is a much more fun game all thanks to the addition of some good old-fashioned player interaction so let's start at the beginning how do we get players to interact at all because despite how fun player interaction is a lot of games slip into the trap of discouraging it by making working alone more powerful than competing or cooperating in civilized style forex games a common strategies to build a few very densely populated cities in a defensible area and then spend the whole game researching how to get the space and win the science victory without ever really going to war or expanding very far or doing much trading because spending resources in ways that might actually affect other players are resources spent not winning the game while defensive reactive strategies are a good thing by rewarding players for not engaging with the other people in the game they miss out on all the cool stuff multiplayer games have to offer the trick then is to actually encourage players to do these things or making engaging with the other players the only way to win take a look an off world trading company a competitive economic strategy game in off world trading company everything is self in such a way that ties everything you do to the other players resource deposits aren't evenly spaced you've only got a limited number of towers you can claim and your base gradually demands more and more Thea sensual like food and water as it levels up this inherent imbalance creates natural monopolies on certain key resources like steel which is used to make buildings as well as a dependence on players who produce the essentials like oxygen for your colonists because any resources you don't make yourself you've got to buy off other players and prices will fluctuate based on demand this means that in order to make enough money to buy out your competition and win the game you've got to pay constant attention to what your opponents are doing is there big demand for chemicals because the other players are doing research well then you can make a boatload of cash by making them yourself and selling to me the demand has one player completely committed into making food well there'll be a shame if you tanked the price they were swallowed up by debt wouldn't it all green and blue leading the pack why not cut them down to size by targeting greens supply lines with a pirate raid and then blaming on their competition starting a black market war by dishing out lots of tools to mess with other players and rewarding those that do offworld trading company creates an organic social ecosystem that's unique to each game fueling the cutthroat capitalist aesthetic they're going for cooperative games can also encourage interaction in the same way look at deep proc Galactic which is awesome intuitively getting people to work as a team the key to this is the way it cleverly splits up tools between the classes so that no one has a specific job and instead you'll all have to combine forces in order to work efficiently for example the Scout is amazing it zipping around the caves with his cool crap hook breeze got pretty much no tools that can help the rest of the team catch up that job fools to the engineer who can make platforms the gunner who can do zip lines and the driller who can make tunnels similarly when it comes to bashing alien bugs teamwork is essential to not getting eaten the engineers turrets are grater holding an area but he needs to be defended while they're getting set up the driller can deal with small swarms with his flamethrower and smashed the armor on big guys with his drill but his damage output is actually quite low and so other classes need to take advantage of the opening si creates such as the Scout who has massive damage potential but only against enemy weak points requiring the driller to open them up so that the Scout can blast the aliens in the bum for massive damage if there was a single class with all the building tools or one class that was the best of fighting enemies then deep rock will be a much less interesting game as there be no need to coordinate between players you just all do your jobs independently but by finagling things are the only way to optimize finding loot getting around or killing enemies is to work together to overcome the limitations of your toolset deepwater act it creates a whole new tactical level and a great sense of camaraderie our synergizing your equivalent between encounters and communicating effectively enough so that this doesn't happen ouch but encouraging place to interact is only the beginning once you've got players engaging with each other you need to test those skills in order for them to feel the sweet thrill of victory for cooperating or competing successfully we were here a co-op puzzle game is an amazing example of this in action instead of giving each player specific shortcomings that encourage them to team up and instead gives each player half the problem each and tasks and with communicating with each other to make sense of incomplete data the Explorer that's this guy gets all the context and mechanics of the puzzle whereas the librarian the other one has all the knowledge of how to actually solve it you've probably seen this puzzle basically a million times walk across the room in the right way or you're dialed spikes simple enough right but things are a little bit trickier and way more interesting when there's no way to work at our lone solving this puzzle involves communicating symbols to the player in the library who finds a matching book and then reads out the instructions to you it's a brilliant test of your communication skills because it requires you to work together to bridge the conceptual gap between each other's perspective early on trying to describe symbol that looks like a box with a hook in was a real challenge because neither of us could find the correct phrasing but as me and my teammate go on the same wavelength we ended up both immediately agreeing that this one looks like a robot in a canoe by the end of the game we were super in sync and if how awesome to a forge that connection fact I owe a great industry building survival game CSU gradually organized and optimized a factory to one day get into space and adding multiple players to the mix create a really fun dynamic that somehow works well in a game originally designed for playing alone multiple engineers at once means squabbling over precious resources having to work around people who've designed the factory in ways you wouldn't and frantically working together to avoid cascade power failures because somebody didn't supply the steam engines with water organizing people is just another optimization or problem to solve and so multiplayer fits really neatly into factorial with the addition of multiple players basically just adding more depth to the experience in a multiplayer game you don't just master the mechanics coded into the game but also the people you're playing with this is something that's relevant not just to cooperative games but also to competitive ones like duck game the game which you know besides being about ducks is also really focused on mind games bluffing and all sorts of other high-level social interactions oh by the way we're using a few months in this fridge so I will put a list of them in the description down there yeah it's that thing no one ever reads in duck game movement is very fast and almost any damage will kill a character instantly even for seasoned players the game is just too quick and just too punitive for simply reacting to what you can see to be a viable strategy and as good because duck game offers a bunch of ways to Bluff mess with or disrupt other players in ways that aren't just shooting them you can trap people their nets pretend to throw the pin at grenades set people on fire smashing window I'll run away or fake your own death to name just a few because the game is so lethal disrupting and psychologically manipulating other players in order to open up a chance at a lethal kill is a really important because it forces players to play in a more interesting way than just running at each other firing wildly and it also creates these awesome moments of payoff when someone acts exactly as you predicted they would and you get to pull off an awesome maneuver or kill them with a trap of course everyone else is trying to do this too and that means that super tense standoffs and insanely awesome cabbage strategies aren't just commonplace but encouraged meaning you get to see them a lot by making dealing with other people the winning strap we can encourage players to interact and once they're interacting we can create a bunch of unique challenges by having the main source of difficulty come not from the mechanics but from the other players and the best multiplayer games use this to create a single experience that everyone playing can share designing multiplayer games is fundamentally different to designing single-player ones the role of a developer in a solo game is that of host inviting the player to experience everything a game has them offer and pushing them in the direction of the cool stuff but in multiplayer titles the developer takes a bit of a backseat and instead the game needs to serve as a catalyst and a backdrop for fun the players are gonna have on their own the Jack book series of games illustrate this concept beautifully by having player generated fun be front and center all times whether it's the jokes thing ink whiplash or the robot wrapping Mad verse city or the fast-paced pitching game patently stupid not only does the win condition involve appealing to or manipulating other players but simply being a part of the game is fun as well this could take the form of creating elaborate in jokes such as responding to every single prompt with some variation on a slightly smaller version of that thing or referencing obscure birmingham-based bands from the 90s referencing the fact I have it set a YouTube channel is also a good option apparently gang can laugh along with the people you're playing with quoits a collaborative experience the single-player games just can't offer in Monster prom a multiplayer dating game where you have to try and smooch Scott the werewolf and other characters who are objectively inferior choices there's actually relatively a little player interaction but the game does a great job of making the players feel like they're a group of high school friends by getting them to argue of a dumb topics and by giving them opportunities to sabotage or help each other's romantic conquests all this helps to flesh out their characters create alliances and rivalries and generally adds a lot of interesting depth and charm towards otherwise a pretty dumb game even dull game which I'm mentioning twice because I've played a lot of it and its really good caters to less skilled players for having effective play create a bunch of funny scenarios that are great to watch unfold thanks to it surprisingly detailed to study mechanics trapping someone in a net from the net gun or accidentally running into your own net leaves a player to hop around ethically as they tried to escape mashing buttons in order to break out before someone picks them up and lobs them off the edge rocks and boxes and even the corpses of other ducks will kill you if they land on someone's head leading to some awesome moments when someone finally pulls off the legendary rock takedown against someone using an actual weapon my personal favor is saying someone on fire because it's a really effective strategy but you've got to immediately run away from the other players now doomed flaming duck as they take a little while to die and if they touch you you get set on fire too leading to these wacky chase scenes as your enemies try to take you down with them I think the key here regardless of if a game wants players to work together against each other or both is that it has to bring them together not drive them apart just giving players chances to communicate like emotes torts or a dedicated quack bun can add layers of social nuance that can tone water ultimately pretty simplistic games into experiences with more playtime to offer to the longest RPGs or the biggest strategy games because the potential depth of human communication and social interactions is almost limitless multiplayer games can be so much more than just single-player games you play next to someone else but we need to approach them in such a way that promotes empathetic understanding of other people and a willingness to work with them to create an experience cooperative or competitive that's more than the sum of its parts and if there's anything for gamers and people on the internet have historically been greater it's making friends and understanding alternative points of view hang on a minute hello and thanks for watching I've been struggling through several technical difficulties to get this one out CPU failure and now my monitors on the way out so hopefully it's all been worth it before I get to the regular thank-yous and extra special thanks to all the people who've helped me get food for these games because this video was a bit of a weird one turns out talked about multiplayer games it's pretty hard and that's why no one does it but what kind of end of video wrap-up with dis beef without me weeding out the list of my top tier patreon supporters who are Alex to launch a Ceran on o 94 Baxter he'll Brian Atari Ani Calvin Han Cullen her man Daniel matches Dirk Jan Karen bailed feats a lot Jessie rhyme Jonathon Kristensen John to a Binswanger leech - Lucas slack lunar Eagle 1996 makes window 54 Patrick Romberg Ray's dad Samuel Vander Plaats strategy in Ultima Garen mirin and ciao thanks to all of you for being cool cats and continuing to support the channel and I guess thanks to you folks for watching and being cool dogs I'll um I'll get back to you on that anyway bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 319,436

Keywords: Games, Video Games, PC Gaming, Gaming, Adam, Architect, AoG, Review, Analysis, Critique, Video Essay, British, Deep Rock Galactic, Multiplayer, Co-op, Competitive, Duck Game, Offworld Trading Company, World of Warcraft, Civilization

Id: 39DqD38J-l0

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

tl:dr of the video is that interacting with other players is what makes multiplayer fun, not merely the indifferent presence of other players. It's a good point that specifically WoW is now very boring (outside of raiding, apparently) because there's never any interaction anymore. I am so bitter about how WoW has been ruthlessly butchered. There's nothing left of the game I used to love, and I have such high hopes for Pantheon because of it.

The MMO genre is wonderful and unique, but there's no point to it if the social aspect isn't in the foreground, and inter-player dependency (i.e. you and your class can't do everything alone) is such an obvious way of encouraging social behavior, and this should not be limited to raiding.

[u/Scoriae]

A friend posted this in discord and I found that it pretty much explains how I feel and what I want from multiplayer games, including Pantheon. I thought some of you guys might agree and appreciate this perspective, so I'm sharing it here. I hope Pantheon can deliver on at least this level of meaningful player interaction.

[u/Mordraeth]

Deep Rock Galactic is an amazing game.