Imagine any franchise that started with a single player story. Now think to whenever it got a sequel that added multiplayer. Tell me how many times there was outrage from fans and claims that it would take away from the single player experience, that it was unwanted. You’d have a longer list than you can count on your fingers, wouldn’t you? Now tell me how many of these said games became horrid as soon as the multiplayer was added. Take your time.
Not a lot of them went wrong, did they? Dead Space 2, Bioshock 2, Orcs Must Die! 2, GTA IV, Rayman Origins, System Shock 2, Max Payne 3, XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within, Saints Row 2/3/4, Red Faction: Guerilla, Tomb Raider, Trine 2, Portal 2, and more did not suddenly up and die because multiplayer was added.
Even games that had more middling reception like Batman: Arkham Origins, Dead Space 3, Resident Evil 6, and Red Faction: Armageddon were not travesties in some gamers’ eyes because they dared to add multiplayer. Except you can be sure there were those who would swear all these titles and more were lessened because, by golly, they dared to add multiplayer.
It’s not easy being a fan of a new multiplayer spin-off or added multiplayer mode to franchises these days. On record, I’ve played almost every multiplayer mode included in any game I buy, the one exception being Mirror’s Edge. I had a nearly maximum rank splicer in Bioshock 2‘s online mode with similar and moderate ranks in most other competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes.
I am not alone in this respect (in fact I’ve met players who have gotten hundreds if not thousands of hours out of these online components), and there are fairly strong communities for a large number of these games on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Some such as Dead Space 2 on PC have died out, but this is more to do with inadequate servers and lack of new content than disinterest in the games themselves.
We don’t play these multiplayer modes because we need the achievements or just can’t stand anything that lacks multiplayer. We aren’t addicted to games such as Call of Duty or Battlefield, in fact often players from those games have never heard of Bioshock, and Halo may be the closest game to an indie title they’ll ever play. We aren’t mindless numbskulls trying to “lower the medium” or somehow hurt gaming. We play them because we enjoy them.
No really, there isn’t some grand conspiracy here by game publishers. EA and Activision aren’t paying me buckets of money to say this. The only reason I even am is because of just how much hate anyone of us can get if we dare to raise our heads and say we enjoyed a game’s multiplayer. It’s like saying you enjoyed Battlefield 4‘s single player campaign, your opinion is no longer valid because you differed from what is the agreed upon truth. Your enjoyment is invalid because it is not acceptable.
What’s worse is that those who are critical of what multiplayer modes we enjoy will hold it against us and go into the experience expecting something bad. They will focus on the negatives, they will not try to play it as it was meant to be, and they will never enjoy it. I even found this happening again when I reviewed the Tomb Raider reboot. It doesn’t matter what you say, how you say it, you are wrong, you do not count in the grand scheme of things, and how dare you have fun with something. Someone else didn’t want it, so you shouldn’t enjoy it.
If that last line above was true, half a dozen different games in existence would never exist because what people always say they want is either something they think they should want, or something incredibly familar. People do not want change, especially fans of any IP that previously was doing fine. They want it to just keep doing what it’s doing until the next big thing comes rolling around, while still expecting it to have new ideas in the same old model. This is how we end up with something like Call of Duty. Forcing a change when it’s unneeded is one thing, which is why something such as a gritty Bomberman reboot will never stop sounding like a bad idea, but refusing to change is another thing entirely.
What’s most ignored most of all those is the simple fact that instead of making those who enjoy the experience feel bad, people against the inclusion can just ignore it. Really, you can just walk on by and never harass us in the comments or anywhere else online. Please feel free to leave us, think however high-mindedly you do of yourselves that we are but peasants who miss “the point” of a certain franchise or game design. If you just don’t do well at it or for any other reason are not likely to enjoy it, okay, you are not required to. No one is holding a gun to your dog’s head saying “PLAY IT DAMMIT! PLAY THE DAMN MULTIPLAYER OR MR. FLUFFLES GETS IT!”
It’s just pathetic when I have to see someone post “hey, some of us actually enjoyed that you know!” The idea itself is presented as some sort of magic trick. This sheer level of disbelief in the agreed upon opinion even warranted Game Informer to have one of it’s editors to finally stop and take a look, and *gasp* people are still playing a number of these games years after release and are having fun. Stop the presses, someone is actually having fun with a video game with friends and/or complete strangers? What is our world coming to.
If I sound bitter, there’s a reason. I play games to have fun, to enjoy them for their strong points. For some of them it’s the single player, for others it’s the multiplayer. I shouldn’t feel bad for enjoying Tomb Raider‘s competitive matches with their traps and triggerable level-shifting events. I shouldn’t feel bad for finding that Bioshock 2‘s attempt at narrative focused multiplayer was actually arguably better in some ways than Titanfall‘s attempt and that it genuinely transferred most of the campaign mechanics into multiplayer without so much as a hitch. I shouldn’t, yet I do.
I feel regret at experiencing positive emotion towards something, thanks to a barrage of hate and misinformed rage from so-called fans who seem to spend an endless amount of time online on the internet complaining about being offered just the opportunity to play online with other human beings. I guess if you behave like hate spewing person around other people who behave like that, the idea of interacting with them in a game wouldn’t be very appealing at all then.
