The problem with multiplayer games is..
August 9th, 2005, By Duncan Gough
The other player. Anyone who has played Counter Strike knows what I mean. Anyone who has tried a multiplayer webgame will know what I mean. If you are lucky enough to find someone else to play with, they’ll either spend most of the time cheating, insulting you or, most frustratingly, not really playing. A large percentage of multiplayer opponents will most likely disconnect before the game is over.
I tackled this problem about a year ago, on holiday in Andalucia and sadly on paper only, with a number of robots that would run on Playaholics or within specific games (the first of which was going to be a Rong clone, complete with a morphing pitch) to take over from the drop-outs either seamlessly or with some kind of warning.
The Casual Games Quarterly has a much better solution though:
Brian Goble: In Jig Words, we expanded our networking systems to allow two more community features. Jig Words has a feature that allows you to add your own digital photos into the game, but we also created a server-based “Photo Sharing” feature that allows users to send packs of photos to their friends from within the game. This is a fun way to allow our users to spread Jig Words to their families and friends.
Jig Words also features a mode of play called “Letter Racing” which puts the player in competition against 3 other players that recently played online. Using recently recorded games for our multiplayer mode gave us several significant advantages:
Once the game has started, the connection is no longer needed so lag or broken connections don’t ruin the game.
We’re able to do “smart” player matching because we know the skill level of the local player and we know the results of the already-played games. This allows us to match people with other players close to their skill level. This makes for really close/fun games and avoids the problem of grossly mismatched players and one of them not having fun getting there butt kicked (and possibly not playing the game again).
The match-making is always instant since we have a large collection of already-played games to choose from. Thus, the player never has to wait for their multiplayer game to start.
The opponents will never leave during the middle of the game since the collection of already-played games only consists of games that were played all the way to the end.
Perfect, time-shift the users into a multiplayer game. That’s genius, that’s even better than my idea ;)
3 comments
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casualities at Suttree, Elixir for Immortal Baboon replied:
[...] The focus of 2006 is community? Here’s how to create a guaranteed multiplayer experience. [...]
February 14th, 2006 at 6:39 pm. Permalink.
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Game Darwinism, Spore at Suttree, Elixir for Immortal Baboon replied:
[...] Intriguingly, there seems to be no multiplayer component to Sport. Rather, the game uses other players to generate the other races you stumble upon during the game. Again, asynchronous multiplayer gaming really is a vastly underrated idea. I love the idea that my in-game decisions inform the makeup of my own virtual race as well as the experiences of other players. [...]
March 4th, 2006 at 4:18 pm. Permalink.
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Game Review: GeneRally at Suttree - Real Artists Ship replied:
[...] The best feature in Gene Rally, though, are the driver files. You can download small files that contain the stats and styles of any other driver and incorporate them into your game. It’s such a simple idea. Clearly, they’re not going to drive exactly like a real human being but they do provide the computer with a different way of creating oppoonents for you to race against. It’s that old massively single player, staggered multiplayer solution again. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do this in Doom, or Quake 4. Download an AI file from my website and fire up a deathmatch game on your own PC, against a bot that plays just like I have, that has the attributes, avatar customisation and, well, flaws that I have. [...]
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:10 pm. Permalink.