Opinion: Why The Way Multiplayer is Sold Needs to be Rethought

When the first games allowed multiplayer via dial-up modems and local area networks, the multiplayer features were usually an extension of the single player product. Most of the assets used in multiplayer came straight from the single player experience and the products were simple enough that enthusiastic fans could easily make up environments of their own to play in. Some might call this the "golden age of multiplayer," back when many gamers became life-long fans of franchises like Doom, Quake, Warcraft and Command & Conquer and swore by their keyboard and mouse.

Things have changed over the years, however. Consoles are now viable means by which to play online multiplayer, many FPS titles are now developed for use on controllers and games have gotten a whole lot more expensive to make. What's more, multiplayer experiences are now more than an adjunct to the single player- they're uniquely crafted creations, with their own balancing and other considerations. Sure, many assets are still reused in one form or another from single player, but many are crafted particularly for the single player: it's almost like two separate games are being developed at once.

Now there are some people who will never bother to log online even once with their game and there are some who might give the entire single player story-mode a miss. The point of this is that most standard releases these days make gamers pay for both the single player and multiplayer when they might only be interested in one or the other. It's been standard practice up until now, but both components are far too key for this to continue.

Look ma, I'm fragging without a single-player component!

A strategy that would make more sense in our minds is to offer multiplayer components essentially like large DLC offerings. For the record, we're not thinking of something like Resident Evil 5, where there was a full price for the regular game and then a DLC multiplayer component that stacked on top of that.  We think (or hope) the cost of the multiplayer component would be subtracted from the price of the disc product, somewhere in the range of $10 to $30. By doing this, consumers are more likely to buy a game early because the retail price is more reasonable, and they can opt in to the multiplayer at their leisure. This takes some of the appeal out of buying cheaper used games that the industry seems to loathe so much and guarantees steady income as more and more people buy into the multiplayer DLC.

Now, perhaps the multiplayer could just be a separate DLC of its own and maybe the disc copy with the single player component could have some sort of free trial- there are many ways to do this. The point is, the way multiplayer in games is sold right now just doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it; somebody inherently needs to be online to truly take advantage of multiplayer components anyway, so why not just sell it online? It doesn't necessarily fit every game, but it fits many of them and the success of Battlefield 1943 proves that online multiplayer can be sold as DLC. Ultimately, DLC multiplayer could end up being a service to both consumers and game makers, and shouldn't that be the biggest priority of all?