Singleplayer versus Multiplayer

[Lyberta]

A single player game? What's the point? I've gone through the whole Debian games section and on average spent 10 minutes playing single player games. There is no point. It gets extremely boring after 1 or 2 levels. Only Freedoom was good enough to finish it.

[andrewj]

A single player game? What's the point? I've gone through the whole Debian games section and on average spent 10 minutes playing single player games. There is no point. It gets extremely boring after 1 or 2 levels.

As a Debian user, I have tried most of the games in it too, and most of them suck pretty badly, regardless of whether they are single player or multi-player.

Multi-player is no guarantee of fun either. Open Arena was a real blast when it first came out, but nowadays there are very few people playing, and you get sick of the some of the maps. (Hopefully OA3 will revive the scene once it comes out).

If someone wants to make a good single-player FOSS game, then good on them I say!

[onpon4]

A single player game? What's the point? I've gone through the whole Debian games section and on average spent 10 minutes playing single player games. There is no point. It gets extremely boring after 1 or 2 levels.

Are you saying that you don't like single-player games or that you don't like the games in the Debian repository? Because if it's the former, then fair enough, but if it's the latter, then I don't see how that has any bearing on Hexoshi.

[Lyberta]

What I'm saying is that is very little point in making single player games. Especially story driven ones. It takes me 70-300 hours to make a Red Eclipse map but it can easily lead to tens of hours of gameplay. Now imagine a single player map. Same 70-300 hours to make, but what, 5, 10 minutes of gameplay? Once you finish it, you're done. You uninstall the game and never look back.

I don't know how much thousands of hours were spent on Super Tux but it gave me 2 hours of gameplay tops.

[charlie]

I've split this discussion from the Hexoshi showcase thread, because it had no relevance there.

[onpon4]

It takes me 70-300 hours to make a Red Eclipse map but it can easily lead to tens of hours of gameplay.

It could. Or it could led to zero hours of gameplay if no one is interested in the map.

Now imagine a single player map. Same 70-300 hours to make, but what, 5, 10 minutes of gameplay? Once you finish it, you're done. You uninstall the game and never look back.

There are so many things wrong with this statement, I don't even know where to begin.

First, you don't spend that much time making a single level. You're more likely to spend 1-2 hours than 70-300 hours. What you might spend 70-300 hours on is an entire campaign.

Second, you're not going to complete something that took that long to make in 5-10 minutes. Try 1-5 hours. Not only would it be absurd to work on something that can be beaten in 5 minutes for hundreds of hours (that's a month of full-time work!), no player is going to get through a game in the fastest time possible on his first playthrough.

Third, the behavior you describe of playing a game once and then throwing it away is not normal. If you like the game, you're going to play it more than once. I must have played The Ur-Quan Masters dozens of times, and I couldn't tell you how many times I've played Project: Starfighter.

Fourth, multiple people can play the same single-player game. Even if a game really does only give anyone who plays it 10 minutes of enjoyment, which means it's a short and mediocre game at best, that's over 150 hours collectively if just 1000 people play it. Start plugging in realistic numbers and you can see how incredibly deflated your numbers are. Take your SuperTux example; if SuperTux gives everyone who plays it 2 hours of enjoyment, and there are 10,000 such people, that's 20,000 collective hours of enjoyment.

Fifth, these numbers don't even matter anyway. You can't measure how worthwhile a game is by how much time people spend playing it. How worthwhile it is depends on something much more subjective: whether or not you enjoyed playing it, and to what extent.

[Lyberta]

First, you don't spend that much time making a single level. You're more likely to spend 1-2 hours than 70-300 hours. What you might spend 70-300 hours on is an entire campaign.

Maybe for extremely blocky undetailed 2d level. Try making a fully 3d detailed level. It would take at least 2 weeks in calendar time. When I was still developing maps for Team Fortress 2, I've heard from people whose maps were added officially that Valve pays 1000$ for geometry and 2000$ for custom assets. Yes, that's 3000$ per level.

Second, you're not going to complete something that took that long to make in 5-10 minutes. Try 1-5 hours. Not only would it be absurd to work on something that can be beaten in 5 minutes for hundreds of hours (that's a month of full-time work!), no player is going to get through a game in the fastest time possible on his first playthrough.

Try asking devs of Freedoom how much time it took them to make a map, but please also factor the 2.5D nature of the engine. On average, a Freedoom map consists of 5-10 minutes of games play and 30 minutes of trying to find what button to press or where to go. That's on the first run.

Third, the behavior you describe of playing a game once and then throwing it away is not normal. If you like the game, you're going to play it more than once. I must have played The Ur-Quan Masters dozens of times, and I couldn't tell you how many times I've played Project: Starfighter.

I have yet to find a libre story driven game that I could bother completing the 2nd time. Freedoom was good enough to finish it but after that I immediately uninstalled it. Pingu - got to the ~6th tutorial level, got bored, uninstalled, SuperTux - got to the ~8th level, got bored, uninstalled. SuperTuxKart - finished 3 story races, got bored, found that multiplayer in local only, uninstalled.

Fourth, multiple people can play the same single-player game. Even if a game really does only give anyone who plays it 10 minutes of enjoyment, which means it's a short and mediocre game at best, that's over 150 hours collectively if just 1000 people play it. Start plugging in realistic numbers and you can see how incredibly deflated your numbers are. Take your SuperTux example; if SuperTux gives everyone who plays it 2 hours of enjoyment, and there are 10,000 such people, that's 20,000 collective hours of enjoyment.

I've only counted my time playing my map. Thankfully, Red Eclipse has stats. I count give a good estimate how much time people spent playing a map. So let's take my map Castle. It was played 185 times over the last 48 weeks. 1 round is 10 minutes. If we take first 3 pages to find out the average player count, we would get 6.11. Castle was added in 1.5 which was released 22 March 2015, it's been 88.1 weeks. now we can calculate the total time played: 20891 minutes or 348 hours. That's basically only in official server because it was the only one with stats enabled. You can easily multiply it by 2 or 3. This map took me 50-70 hours over the span of 2 months to make.

Fifth, these numbers don't even matter anyway. You can't measure how worthwhile a game is by how much time people spend playing it. How worthwhile it is depends on something much more subjective: whether or not you enjoyed playing it, and to what extent.

Yes, but you can't measure it, and if I would need to play the same single player level hundreds of times during development, I would quickly give up.

[dulsi]

People have different tastes. I don't like multiplayer games for the most part. I will play some with friends but playing with people I don't know generally doesn't interest me. I have a zero interest in first person shooters.

[onpon4]

Maybe for extremely blocky undetailed 2d level. Try making a fully 3d detailed level. It would take at least 2 weeks in calendar time. When I was still developing maps for Team Fortress 2, I've heard from people whose maps were added officially that Valve pays 1000$ for geometry and 2000$ for custom assets. Yes, that's 3000$ per level.

If that's the case, you're comparing apples to apple trees. The conclusion this supports is that working on any 3-D game is not particularly worthwhile unless there are a lot of people playing it. It has very little to do with whether it's single-player or multi-player.

I have yet to find a libre story driven game that I could bother completing the 2nd time. Freedoom was good enough to finish it but after that I immediately uninstalled it. Pingu - got to the ~6th tutorial level, got bored, uninstalled, SuperTux - got to the ~8th level, got bored, uninstalled. SuperTuxKart - finished 3 story races, got bored, found that multiplayer in local only, uninstalled.

Then you clearly don't like any of these games all that much. Perhaps you just don't like to play games by yourself. But not everyone feels the same way as you. A lot of people really do like playing single-player games.

I've only counted my time playing my map. Thankfully, Red Eclipse has stats. I count give a good estimate how much time people spent playing a map. So let's take my map Castle. It was played 185 times over the last 48 weeks. 1 round is 10 minutes. If we take first 3 pages to find out the average player count, we would get 6.11. Castle was added in 1.5 which was released 22 March 2015, it's been 88.1 weeks. now we can calculate the total time played: 20891 minutes or 348 hours. That's basically only in official server because it was the only one with stats enabled. You can easily multiply it by 2 or 3. This map took me 50-70 hours over the span of 2 months to make.

Great, so that map is a map that people collectively got a lot of enjoyment from. This has nothing to do with whether or not it's worthwhile to make single-player games.

Yes, but you can't measure it, and if I would need to play the same single player level hundreds of times during development, I would quickly give up.

I think it's a given that you should only develop games that you like. I would have gone insane if I wasn't making ReTux my new favorite side-scrolling platformer, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing its levels over and over again. Again, just because you don't enjoy something doesn't mean that no one enjoys it.

[Lyberta]

If that's the case, you're comparing apples to apple trees. The conclusion this supports is that working on any 3-D game is not particularly worthwhile unless there are a lot of people playing it. It has very little to do with whether it's single-player or multi-player.

That would a chicken-and-egg problem. But for a multiplayer game you can get more gameplay faster and already have matches during an alpha stage.

Then you clearly don't like any of these games all that much. Perhaps you just don't like to play games by yourself. But not everyone feels the same way as you. A lot of people really do like playing single-player games.

I like multiplayer with bots if the game is good. I've spent 200+ hours playing single player Hedgewars, 100+ of MegaGlest and 50+ of 0AD. Because you can make mods and have fun sandbox-style.

Great, so that map is a map that people collectively got a lot of enjoyment from. This has nothing to do with whether or not it's worthwhile to make single-player games.

What I'm saying that gameplay time / development time is an important metric because it clearly says how much fun your are going to get for your hard work. I would only work on something that will give me a high number.

I think it's a given that you should only develop games that you like. I would have gone insane if I wasn't making ReTux my new favorite side-scrolling platformer, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing its levels over and over again. Again, just because you don't enjoy something doesn't mean that no one enjoys it.

Well, if you like playing the same platformer level over and over again... I just wanted that time will be spent on something that will be liked by more people.

[onpon4]

I just wanted that time will be spent on something that will be liked by more people.

Any game developer should only work on the games they want to work on. If you act like a machine cranking out whatever you think will be popular or efficient to develop, then you will not enjoy what you are doing and that will consequently mean you will not produce anything great. It would be exactly the same as the uninspired crap that Hollywood cranks out every year. What's more, you can't even reliably do this without a lot of money, so you would be wasting your time regardless.

[Julius]

Any game developer should only work on the games they want to work on. If you act like a machine cranking out whatever you think will be popular or efficient to develop, then you will not enjoy what you are doing and that will consequently mean you will not produce anything great. It would be exactly the same as the uninspired crap that Hollywood cranks out every year. What's more, you can't even reliably do this without a lot of money, so you would be wasting your time regardless.

Well... that's true if you are a hobbyist game-developer, but as soon as you actually want to pay bills with it, there will be some significant trade-offs between that you want to make and what you can actually create and sell in a reasonable time frame

Single-player Vs. multiplayer largely boils down to personal preference (and not all singlplayer games are strictly linear with high detail 3D environments)... but overall FOSS development style is probably more suited towards multiplayer and sandbox games.

[eugeneloza]

I like singleplayer games, and I don't like multiplayer. ATM I'm playing only one multiplayer game, which is actually almost singleplayer, except for gulid chat and arena, where you can challenge other players.
So, basically, yes. It's not interesting for me to kill&smash other players, I like cool storyline, I like interesting game levels.
Yes, speaking of Debian repository, most of the games are boring (and don't even have any story). And free games with serious plot are rare. Still you might try FreeDink, FreeDroidRPG and Valyria Tear for a really nice and interesting playthrough + FOSS.
But still, yet there is no FOSS alternative to giants like Mass Effect, Witcher, Skyrim, Dark Souls... it takes enormous amount of work, but gives too little yield (without proper expensive marketing).

P.S. And I'm working at a singleplayer story-driven RPG Decoherence at the moment. Still I'm in the very beginning - not yet even a pre-alpha. But looks promising when it'll finally be playable.

[charlie]

I'd add Battle for Wesnoth to that list of 'nice to play' single player games with a well fleshed out story.

[Lyberta]

It's certainly polished but you almost can't cheese CPU player. I gave up after the 4th map but haven't uninstalled yet.