Nowadays multiplayer support for video games is assumed to always
be there, every newly released game should have a multiplayer component of some
sort whether it's a full multiplayer experience or just some semi-multiplayer
component. Games like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and Battlefield are just
some of the many games that benefit from having multiplayer support. What most
people might not understand is that providing a server is not easy or cheap, so
what do the gaming companies do if they cannot afford to keep the server
running? They shut the servers down,
disabling the multiplayer support of the game.
Now
things like this always get me thinking about games we buy today. That at some
point in the future, a large portion of the game you paid money for will become
forever inaccessible. To be replayed only in your memories. Sometime in the
future, years from now when I go to play my Battlefield 3 game, I will ONLY
have the single player experience to enjoy. Games such as Left 4 Dead 1 & 2
will turn into short episodic single player games. The highest difficulty setting
on these games will be virtually impossible to beat since you only have your
terrible computer-driven companions at your side.
Years
from now games such as the newly released Mass Effect 3, multiplayer servers
will shut down causing a large portion of the game to go to waste, since you
need to access the multiplayer portion of the game to continue on your single
player campaign.
It is
sad to know that games we play today have content which has a limited lifespan.
Large portions of our games will stop existing, never to be relived again. And
with today’s gaming industry more and more games are having multiplayer content
interlaced with the single player experience.
Cheers!
/Stefan
I totally agree with you about this, but you didn't make any mention of the fact that access to downloadable content will also vanish with time. Not that I care about mappacks that much since I am at heart a single player that some times dips his toes into multiplayer. Therefore access or not access to DLC in the future after the companies have stopped supporting a game is of more importance.
SvaraRadera//Andreas Dahlberg
I have never thought of multiplayer modes until I read your blog. Unfortunately, your thoughts are probably true as when new games are released, the old ones are forgotten and not that popular anymore unless it was a great game such as Warcraft 3. As the new games are released the companies will as you said not allocate any resources on keeping the servers running, thereby shutting them down and disabling the multiplayer mode, which is sad. The single player mode could be fun but most of the time the multiplayer mode is why we buy the game. When these disappear many games will loose its purpose and that is unfortunate. But this is the reality of gameplay, new games will always emerge to replace the old ones and servers will be shut down in order to make room and be redirected towards the new games. We can only hope that the games we play today will be popular the coming two or three decades so we still can play them, although we might not have time to play the games as we probably have a family to take care of.
SvaraRaderaSince I am not a big fan of playing games this is a topic that I have never thought about. But the question that runs through my mind while reading is; do you really want to play the game for that long? As you said, new games show up on the market that you want to try out and then the old games is not that fun anymore for anyone. Why not just embrace the new and have fun while it last, since nothing last forever anyways!
SvaraRadera