This idea first began bubbling in my brain after reading Friday's Penny Arcade strip, which portrays an Activision executive's public relations spin in the Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band debate. Ironically, this blog is not about the epic struggle between these two giant rhythm games, but about the statement "We've finally included online multiplayer, which should have been in Guitar Hero II." There's no question online gaming is big and here to stay (even Nintendo has included it this time around), but I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that just because every game can have online multiplayer doesn't mean that every game should have online multiplayer. Online play is still not perfect at this point, and lag is always present no matter how solid the network code. In most cases, this is an acceptable part of playing online and everyone learns to deal with it. However, the situation with Guitar Hero II is different, because timing needs to be completely perfect for a rhythm game because... it's a rhythm game. You can't play a song correctly in Guitar Hero if the game keeps slowing down and then correcting itself. The fact of the matter is, the goal of the gameplay for Guitar Hero is to keep a big streak going and rack up points while completely rocking out with the music, and you wouldn't be able to do that in an online mode with the current methods. Supposedly, Rock Band has some 'unique solution' to fix this problem with online rhythm games, but I'll believe that when I see it.

In addition, there's been somewhat of an outcry over the lack of online multiplayer (or any multiplayer at all) in Metroid Prime 3 and Bioshock. But again, I would argue that adding multiplayer would go against what these two games are about. Bioshock, like the System Shock games before it, is all about creating an engrossing single-player experience with a compelling narrative and a convincing environment. The entire game is meant to be a sandbox for player choice, both in terms of gameplay, with the multiple methods of approaching obstacles within the gameworld, and in terms of morality, with the primary example being whether to prey upon the 'little sisters' and use the genetic resource that brought down the city of Rapture in order to save yourself. Multiplayer doesn't fit into the goals the designers have with respect to making this game, and I think adding multiplayer would be an unnecessary drain on the development resources anyway. Try to think about how much work would have to go into balancing all of those genetic mutations for a multiplayer mode. Plus, for all we know, the design of the city of Rapture might not lend itself to proper multiplayer maps. Even if they were to avoid all these issues and take out all the genetic factors and design new maps for the multiplayer mode, well then, what does it even have in common with Bioshock at all? It'd be a lot like the multiplayer in The Darkness: so auxillary and slapped together that it only really brings the rest of the game down. Plus, if Irrational Games (or 2K Boston, as they're apparently called now) had to devote some of their team to making a multiplayer mode, the game probably wouldn't look or play as fantastically as it seems to from all of the demos and videos we've seen so far. Just because it falls under the first-person shotoer genre doesn't mean that its only appeal is in the multiplayer arena.

Metroid Prime 3 is a similar case. The gameplay of the Metroid Prime games isn't solely designed around blasting people. Much of the gameplay revolves around learning more about your environment by scanning clues and solving puzzles, and even when you get a chance to smoke some guys, most of the excitement comes from the hulking titanic bosses rather than any other individual human-sized, similarly armed characters (although presumably Metroid Prime 3 will at some point involve a showdown with Dark Samus). Like Bioshock, map design would be an issue with any multiplayer mode in Metroid Prime 3. Like the Castlevania games, the world of Metroid is designed to be gradually explored as you unlock Samus's arsenal of amazing abilities, which isn't exactly conducive to fast-paced multiplayer matches. Sure, they could design new maps, but how do you deal with concepts like weapon drops when theoretically all of the high-powered weapons should already be a part of Samus's suit? I'll admit that multiplayer would be a lot easier to add to Metroid Prime 3 than BioShock, but really, it's not been a focus of this series at any point before, so what's the point in changing it now? I'd rather have the game now with all the features Nintendo and Retro intended it to have than wait another several months for them to splice a multiplayer mode into it, especially when you consider all the countless other shooters that will be out this holiday season that are probably designed specifically for multiplayer, and thus would likely do it much better than Metroid Prime 3. Sure, it'd be the first one on the Wii, and it certainly would be interesting to see how the new control scheme enabled by the Wii works in a multiplayer context, but ultimately I think that anyone who really wants an online shooter probably already has a 360, PS3, or PC anyway.

Another worrisome trend I've noticed is games neglecting every factor of gameplay but multiplayer. The most noticable examples of this are SOCOM: Confrontation and Warhawk, which both went from full-fledged retail releases to downloadable multiplayer-only games. I'm certainly not suggesting that focusing on creating a fun and engaging multiplayer experience is a bad idea. In fact, many games, like Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers, and Halo, derive nearly all of their lasting appeal from their great multiplayer action. However, none of these games is completely devoid of another way to play. The sticking point for me for games like Warhawk is the fact that even though they're stripping most of the features other games of its type have, they're still charging about as much money for them as they do for regular retail games. Even as a digital download, Warhawk is going to ring up 40 dollars, and if you want it on a disk then it'll set you back the full 60 bucks. While no pricing has been yet annoucned for SOCOM, every indication is that it will follow similar parameters. Are these games really giving us 40 or 60 dollars of content? Surely the budget can't be as high if they're only making a single mode? A similar point was raised in Alex's review of Motorstorm, a game that essentially had (at the time it was released) an online multiplayer mode and a single player tutorial for the online mode. It seems almost lazy to me that developers would cut a game down to only the bare essentials of what keeps people interested. It's a pattern I hope doesn't get repeated in the future. Basically, the logic should come down to this: if you're putting less content in a game, you should be charging us (as gamers and consumers) less money for it. It's a pretty simple concept. Maybe I'm just out of touch and all anyone really wants out of games anymore is to compete online, or just paranoid about what is just a new fringe of game development that will capture its own market and not threaten other types of games. But I can't help but feel that games are being dumbed down a bit in the face of the growing emphasis on frantic multiplayer action. Feel free to let me know what you think.