As an avid gamer, I listen to a lot of podcasts — probably too many for my own good, but I feel like it’s one of those merit badges gamers have to earn. The problem with listening to all of these podcasts is that content tends to blur. I hear these editors speak, but I’m not listening to them. Sometimes it takes a little push to actually comprehend what these guys are saying. Thankfully I read enough news feeds that reference past podcast topics that I’m currently driven to not write about a certain game coming out next week. Considering the general media blackout that has occurred in anticipation for said game, I’m reaching a little for a topic that doesn’t have anything to do with Modern Warfare 2. I know you all will have your fill of every gaming entity talking about that game after it is released, so let us take a trip in the mini way-back machine and talk about unnecessary multiplayer in video games again.

Stephen Totilo of Kotaku fame put up a quick post with a particularly interesting quote from ex-Midway producer John Vignocchi. From an episode of the Giant Bombcast, Vignocchi said “We were having this battle all the time, talking about, ‘OK, is a totally amazing single-player experience, the most important thing? Or should it be an 80% single-player experience and then a pretty cool multiplayer?’ Stranglehold went through that exact same problem. I think if you ask every single person that worked on Stranglehold whether or not multiplayer was a necessity for that product, they would all say, ‘I wish we never did it.’ It was the worst part of the game, and it was something that executive management had said, ‘This has to be in the game.’ And no one wanted it, and it turned out the way it turned out. That’s something every game developer goes through.”

When the competitive multiplayer component for Uncharted 2 was announced I wrote down a quick list of games that had useless competitive multiplayer components in them. Off the top of my head: Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Deadlocked, Resident Evil 5, Bionic Commando, Condemned 2, The Darkness, BioShock 2, and Stranglehold. At the time, I was concerned with the direction Uncharted 2 was going, but thankfully I have seen the light on that one. The rest of these games, however, are a big head scratcher. Even BioShock 2, with all the good faith earned from the first game and despite the fact that this game has yet to be released, has the mother of all uphill battles when it comes to convincing gamers that their multiplayer is worth our time. This quote from someone behind the scenes shines some light on a fact that I’m sure many of us already knew: it was not their call.

If it is your job to do as you’re told, what choice do you have when the creative talents of your team are forced in an unpopular direction? If the entire staff of Midway was against the multiplayer but was powerless to do anything about the desires of the higher-ups, do you think it is likely that this type of interaction is happening at these other developer meetings? For the sake of this text, I’m going to say yes. And with that, I am deeply troubled. Exactly who is responsible for making these decisions? I’m naive enough to believe that the code monkeys and creative directors are traditional gamers and know what their consumers want because they play and love video games as much as the rest of us. But if corporate suits and flowcharts are dictating the direction of some of these games, then all of that talent at the binary level is being wasted on something that gamers do not want and will not enjoy.

Expanding upon that idea, and again for the sake of this text, I’m also going to put on my tin-foil hat: what if all the shenanigans occurring on the PC side of Modern Warfare 2 were never the call of Infinity Ward? We have all read the quotes from Activision CEO Bobby Kotick about how he views games as “annualizable” properties. If the decree came from above to remove dedicated servers, limit multiplayer matches to 9 against 9, eliminate mod support, charge a full price for the retail copy, and pave the way for substantially priced downloadable content, then Infinity Ward had no decision but to toe the company line. The funny thing about a cliche like that is that it so very true. While a subset of gamers are holding Infinity Ward accountable for the restrictions placed on Modern Warfare 2, has anyone considered the notion that they never had a choice in the matter? Clearly these decisions will generate new revenue streams for Activision, despite whatever protests and online uproar results from these unpopular moves. Is it out of the realm of possibility that the people who care the most about their product have the least impact in big decisions? Sure, Infinity Ward has earned a lot of respect in the industry, but everybody reports to somebody more important than themselves.

I’m sure I’ve jumped to a lot of wild conclusions in these paragraphs, but the initial quote at the top has all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around in my head at the moment. I know you can’t extrapolate an epidemic of irrational business decisions from one comment on a podcast, but I believe it serves as a solid start to the discussion. Whoever is responsible for these games always has to consider the bottom line in every business decision made regarding their product. This means that logic sometimes takes a backseat to charts and graphs. With the success of online multiplayer components in games like Call of Duty and Halo, it’s only natural for other companies to want to get in on the action. Defy all common knowledge about what their game is and, more importantly, what it isn’t to add in a needless component and wither the final product to a less than satisfactory product for potential consumers.

The referenced quote can be found here – http://kotaku.com/5396034/developer-the-bosses-mandated-strangleholds-unnecessary-multiplayer-mode

This post is also featured on Talking About Games – http://talkingaboutgames.com