Blog: "One Month after Amnesia's release"

[mattwestwick]

As I was saying in my previous posts. The traditional method of co-op or multiplay just wouldn't work for frictional's style.

Most single-player games have multiplayer tacked on and can be considered a seperate game.
This is how online multiplay only games became popular. People bought it for the campaign but ended up preferring the online part without even knowing it was there to start with. Think, MoH, Return to Castle Wolfenstein-which spawned Enemy Territory, and all the mods for Half Life.

But this separation which has been magnified and emphasised to attract customers looking for another excellent add-on to the game, often brings down the whole product.

I feel if it was to work with a Frictional game, the multiplayer part would have to emulate the single-player environment that is working so well. All predictability would have to be removed. i.e. knowing for certain that it is your friend in the next room or chatting away over voice text etc. This could be implemented with either randomly or admin generated content. I can't stress enough how much this would have to be done in real-time or at least buffered so that you don't know which map or events will happen. The issue with horror games is that after one play you know whats coming, and with horror multiplay, you can ask what's coming. This must be avoided.

Naturally you would need some kind of communication to set up games prior to their start. But once you are in, the conditions need to be set and unbreakable until it finishes or you quit.

To summarise: all traditional multiplay interfaces that are suited to things like shooters and sports would have to go or be disguised as in-game elements. "Someone leaves the game-they appear get taken by a monster". Thats the kind of ethos I would love to see. It was why the mp aspect of games like Bioshock 2 and crysis was totally different and felt fake compared to the sp side. Characters had names above their heads and their was a scoreboard!! What kind of immersion is this? Are scores and damage meters really necessary for anything appart from sport sims and COD? I think not.

Make this and it would be truly unique