Evolution of Multiplayer Games and Online Play

Multiplayer games have come a long way in the past ten years, so much as to force many gamers to the restriction of online play solely. While some have embraced this with open arms, many others have been left standing with blank befuddled looks as to what caused their favorite games to be pushed to "Internet Only" play.

While some games such as World of Warcraft were built solely for this purpose and are vastly popular for their unique social networking dynamic, other multiplayer games have had a far more difficult time adjusting to online multiplayer. For example, many Real Time Strategy games have had an online multiplayer capability for many years but due to Internet connectivity issues, online play was never fully embraced. Not until the past few years have we seen companies start to focus solely in the direction of the online gaming aspect due to the majority of users having a broadband connection now. Most all online games don't even have "dial up" listed in their game requirements any longer.



So the real question becomes, just how far do you take the online dynamic? Recently, games such as the highly anticipated Starcraft 2 and recently announced Command & Conquer 4 seem to desire a further evolution of online play in requiring you to be logged in at ALL times in order to have access to any piece of the game and yes, even single player! This could potentially cause many head aches and possibly even create a rift between old school gamers and those new neophytes who have embraced the online portion and run with it. It's not hard to wonder what head aches might be caused but a large one looms in Internet connectivity as mentioned previously. Many gamers live outside of the city and those broadband connections, while not weak, have been known to be a bit spotty at times leading to frequent drops.

But probably the greatest issue that this affects would be the Lan Party. Yes, we Lan gamers might become an endangered species if other game companies start to grab hold of this philosophy. It's a simple concept really, probably two fold. First, it's a method or perhaps feeble attempt to thwart piracy of said computer games since as you know, many do have pirated copies of games at lan parties and other gaming events such as those you'd play at home with friends. Second, certain games such as C&C4 have stated their game will feature a "persistent class hierarchy" in which you'll go through many promotions. This feature will record both single player and multiplayer games that are played and rank you accordingly so you'd have to be connected to the EA servers in order to be ranked properly.

While we completely understand this method and how it works, we quite simply feel that it was not thought out correctly but fortunately the game is still very early in development so Electronic Arts has some time to flesh things out. It would be far more beneficial if EA as well as Blizzard (SC2) simply added a "play offline mode" in which your stats were not recorded. This would be a nice compromise to those with Internet connectivity issues as well as Lan Party attendees that have legit versions of the game and yes, there are MANY that do Mr. Game Executive.



If something isn't remedied or explained soon, it could be potentially lead to bad publically for the game companies that put out games that require you to be online. Activision/Blizzard is already feeling the heat from gaming web sites all over the web. Simply do a Google search and you'll know what we mean. It could also potentially do harm to Lan Parties as we mentioned, thus limiting their capacity to hold large events such as Quakecon due to Sponsors having lesser or no desire to sponsor events because of the dwindling number of playable games at these lan events. Yes, that means the Call of Duty series, Counter Strike and possibly other lan heavy games might have to look over their shoulder for this is a mac truck with his brakes cut and it's headed in your direction, eventually that is, even if it is another 10 years away, it might just affect you too!

Last, be sure to check out the lively debate on the Command & Conquer forums.