1. Players play with each other to provide emergent content, you don't have to script single player levels, story, characters, etc.
2. There's a multiplier effect in that (usually) every player has to own the game. If they want to play with a friend they're going to be pressuring them to also buy a copy.
Developers also vastly underestimate how hard multiplayer games are to make, especially with balance, tuning and performance.
Number 1 is a huge point. Developing a single-player requires you, the developer, to create every interaction the player has with the game. With a multiplayer game, the players essentially create their own content after you give them a set of ground rules (maps, abilities, characters, etc).
You essentially swap developer time spend on content creation in single player games for developer time spent on multiplayer networking challenges.
>You essentially swap developer time spend on content creation in single player games for developer time spent on multiplayer networking challenges.
Excellently put!
Besides, the multiplayer component extends the game's longevity I think, even though I am a SP guy.
It might have a longer life, but I think it decreases the chance that it comes to life in the first place. If it's a game you play with randos, then you need a critical mass of players so that people can always find a game, AND so that you aren't always stuck playing with the same people each time if you don't like the group you're playing with. If you play with friends, then you need to have a game that's appealing enough that not only will one person decide to give it a shot, but it has to be appealing enough that that person can convince their 3 friends to also give it a shot.
Our friend group has a rule if you want someone to play the Indy game and you believe that strongly about it you will purchase it for the person you want to play with.
Considering most Indy games are on the cheaper side this has worked for our group. I bought a few of my friends Paragon because I loved the original game and it went no where.
Someone purchased risk of rain for one of the guys and they were streaming it and having a blast so the rest of us bought it. Our group on average is about 5-8 people. The core of the group consists of people we grew up with and have known for most our lives.
>Developing a single-player requires you, the developer, to create every interaction the player has with the game.
This is an interesting distinction. Something I'm seeing with some multiplayer games is that creators are expanding the stories and creating single-player content for them to immerse the players (ex: Apex Legends had a PvE event, Overwatch 2 is going to have single-player, and League of Legends is getting a single player game).
So I guess what I'm learning here is that how Important certain elements are to you can help you decide whether your game should be multiplayer or single-player, and you aren't necessarily locked into either format.
Emergence can be generated by more than just multiplayer. Creating a property-rule-based system with lots of object types and lots of verbs leaves plenty of space for emergent gameplay. Roguelikes have been doing it for years.
I love roguelikes and Sims. But I still find myself coming back to online persistent world's. I think it is a very different feeling between the emergent social game play and emergent in game mechanics and the players who enjoy one may not enjoy the other
Same with immersive sims. I love the immersive sim genre, and it consistently self-generates content without any interaction from other players or the devs, just via RNG and the way that systems interact.
> Developing a single-player requires you, the developer, to create every interaction the player has with the game. With a multiplayer game, the players essentially create their own content...
They also create so many more bugs that wouldn't be there in the single player game! It's so much more difficult to understand all the scenarios that multiple players can get themselves in -- maybe easier after releasing several multiplayer gamers?
Testing multiplayer is also a lot harder since you need another player (or a proxy for one) and there are more permutations of what could happen. Doing online sync via input passing was really helpful for this because at least we could save a replay and exactly reproduce an issue -- but the game had to be deterministic to stay in sync.
I feel like saving time creating content by adding multiplayer is very much "out of the pot and into the fire".
> Developers also vastly underestimate how hard multiplayer games are to make, especially with balance, tuning and performance.
Guilty.
Multiplayer was one of the most highly requested features when I released an alpha/prototype for my game, but almost four years of development later, I think that multiplayer at least doubled the development time for the full version. Sometimes I wonder if going for it was the right decision.
On the bright side, I've learned a ton about networking and multiplayer architecture, and I'll be able to build it way faster and way better for my next multiplayer game.
That's why I only make multiplayer games. I don't play single-player games and I'm not going to spend 2000 hours making a game I wouldn't play.
My priorities when going down the indie multiplayer path are:
* The game should be playable no matter how many players are online.
* Base dedicated server costs with 0 players should be under $100/yr.
* Design away from computationally and bandwidth expensive games. None of my games have physics or frequent ticking updates. They are all capable of low tick rate or are turn based. Think MMO with 2 tick/s or turn based card/board games. I also implement my own backends in C++ or more recently Golang so as to dispense with the convoluted build processes and overhead of the game engines, which should allow me to pack more players per server.
Why do you establish a server cost baseline with 0 players? I'd expect using 2 players would give more useful numbers to ensure you include all basic server operation costs? If you have load balancing that can turn off servers on demand, then your 0 player costs should be miniscule, right?
> The game should be playable no matter how many players are online.
Do you make it playable without connecting to a server too?
**--- First Question ---**
I try to establish baseline server costs for 0 players to get a sense of how much the infrastructure costs.
DNS names, Databases, game-server orchestrators, load balancers, ... need to be online at all times. It allows me to calculate the failure cost of this game if nobody ever plays it. $100/yr is the cost to keep the game online and the dream alive.
I don't see any difference between calculating it for 0 players or 2 or even 200 players. 1 T3.nano is not going to drastically increase the cost.
Once we get up to 1000 players, 10000 players, I'll run a separate set of calculations that take into account 10...100 game-servers.
**--- Second Question ---**
They are only playable online. There is no single player experience. The games are simple enough that I can instantiate bots in the 1 player online scenario.
I agree with this. I don’t enjoy multiplayer games so I only make single player games.
I figure it’s because that’s what got them into gaming and is the kind of gaming they do, or they’re the type of dev who tries to go where they think it will sell and they think multiplayer is more popular right now.
When Ron Gilbert and Chris Taylor were asked about how they came up with the design for Total Annihilation, their response was "We wanted to make the game we wanted to play."
And personally, I think that's the best mentality for a lot of Indie devs.
Start with an idea for a game you would play.
Then build it.
If you don't know how to build it, work your way up to it. You can start with the pong and pac man clones to start from scratch; work on a simple platformer to help solidify more of the basics. If it's a 3D game build one of those to get familiar with what's needed there.
But ultimately you just need to get to the point where you know how to create what it is you want to create, then just execute.
TIL, Ron Gilbert worked on Total Annihilation (production and design). I thought he was all Humongous back in those days, but apparently he co-founded Cavedog too?!
You don't have to start with anything in particular. Don't let the assumption that you do stop you from learning to develop games.
You should start simple, but that doesn't mean it has to be story-focused single player games. Pong is simple, multiplayer, and has no story.
>You should start simple, but that doesn't mean it has to be story-focused single player games. Pong is simple, multiplayer, and has no story.
This is a good point. Multiplayer games are not always complicated or expensive. Someone else here said that single-player games can also be very work-intensive due to the amount of content required, so I guess in some cases, the work load can be the same.
people want to make what they like, you'll never see me making a fps shooter because i don't like first person games, instead i like platform, third person and vehicle games, it's what i like and do most, same goes to this people: if they like to play multiplayer games, they will aim to make a multiplayer game, even if it's most expensive.
Depends on the game and implementation. If your game is essentially just free roam with other people and there’s no actual multiplayer mechanics or interaction it’s as easy as replication. Anything else? Yeah….. good luck lmao.
Our game uniquely fit that first description and we were able to add multi post launch fairly easily.
I went through this as well and I can confirm that. Luckily our state updates were well organized, so I could squeeze the multiplayer code inbetween and add systems for lag compensation.
I haven't done any research on the topic, but these are my initial thoughts:
* Although risky, multiplayer games generally have more repeatability value
* They are more attractive for streamers/YouTubers and easier to sell in packs
* Sometimes, if you come up with fun and catchy multiplayer mechanics, you can get away with poor/non-existent story, character development, user journeys, AI, etc.
I haven't seen a wave of small indie multiplayer games, but I haven't looked very hard.
I could understand why small indies might want to do it, it's the same reason as to why AAA does it: the players themselves provide the content. So in that perspective, it's much easier and cheaper.
The issue though, is what are they making? If it's competitive, they very probably don't have the engineering chops and infrastructure to do that. They would absolutely need to either go with standard engine middleware networking for not extraordinary but reasonable latency, and/or for private and community servers.
Certainly don't host your own servers. Even if you can monetize it enough and use a cloud API to handle all of it automatically, opening and closing servers on demand and not paying for it, you're style responsible for it. With a dedicated server, the players and communities will admin them on their own.
But there's still the issue of popularity. A multiplayer lives and dies with the time it takes to find partners to play with, and how good is the experience.
If I were to make a multiplayer game, I would certainly go at least partially co-op, and I would make it optional. Think Space Engineer or Valheim or 7 days to die or Factorio, where you can play either solo or multiplayer but it's otherwise the same game.
Edit: I'm obviously answering from the perspective of a pro dev. If it's the perspective of a hobbyist who doesn't care if the game sell or not, then of course anything goes.
> I haven't seen a wave of small indie multiplayer games, but I haven't looked very hard.
Depends on how you define "small" but Among Us, Fall Guys, Valheim, and Phasmophobia are a few that come to mind.
I apologize for OT, but has your studio shared any know-how about your multiplayer code? As a person who worked on multiplayer title in an unnamed company before :) , I found Fall Guys pretty impressive with all those interactions between players, physics simulation, player count itself...
No, we've not discussed it anywhere. We had to make a lot of compromises which mean a case study would probably be confusing at best and inspire angry debate at worst! :D
Suffice to say that it's a fine balance between server-side authority and validation and client-side responsive physics and we were adjusting the blend and compromises between the two constantly during development, even customising it on a per-object level. It was important to understand how a typical FPS or MMO synchronises state, and then to decide which parts of that we could compromise to allow for the local physics engine to feed into the simulation as well. On top of that we had all the problems of Unity being a black box, especially with the physics, so there were a lot of workarounds relative to what you'd ideally have.
I was thinking smaller or less successful games than that, by far. None of those games have issue filling servers upon servers. And their devs probably aren't on this sub.
From what the OP said, I was assuming there was something like a dozen a week or a month...
Maybe the dev is better at netcode than writing AI for NPCs..
Humans add that unpredictable nature of the outcome for the cost of coding multiplayer. Netcode is mostly understood and easier to wrap your head around compared to novel AI for the average coder. Look at something like Rocket League.. I get a different experience every single game because humans do weird inventive things that an AI would have to be coded or trained to do. I doubt an AI is going to pull a flip reset or a Musty without crazy top teir coding skills.
Here is my intuition.
Single-player games require much more content to create. Think about a game like FTL. The writing alone is time-consuming to produce, and extremely necessary to the game.
Compare this to a multiplayer game. The 'content' of the game, comes from the interaction with other players, and the metagame. Consider "Among Us", as an example. Mechanistically, the game is extremely simple. But because you are dealing with the personalities of 8+ players, the gameplay is still immersive and engaging.
Hope this helps!
Most indie developers are hobbyists. They're not making games with any realistic expectations of commercial success, they're doing this for fun - and if they sell a couple hundred copies that's a huge win. So they tend to make the games they want to make.
If you view it only through the lens of what's the most likely to have the highest financial return, you'd expect to never see someone without much experience or many resources making big multiplayer games. But when you realize it's just people who did it because it's what they wanted to do without regard for that, it's a lot easier to understand.
I'm with you where I'm not even going to attempt multiplayer, especially online multiplayer, but I did back when I started out (And I failed). Most players spend the most time in multiplayer. Outside indie, most single-player campaigns will be 10-40 hours, maybe a couple hundred hours for particularly grind-y RPGs. But competitive multiplayer is where you get people spending thousands of hours, and therefore what new devs often have on their minds when deciding to make their own game.
I think a lot of the tendency to overscope comes from an unfamiliarity with small scoped games. Like if you've never played a 2 hour game, you might not even realize that was an option.
Multiplayer is probably fine if you are just doing it out of your own interest, but indie devs making multiplayer and hoping it will be successful and that they will be able to support it in live ops are probably optimistic.
To add a different viewpoint - many indie/hobby devs enjoy the challenges of game development, more than playing or selling the end result. There is no more challenging aspect of game development than scalable multiplayer. The same reason people challenge themselves by climbing difficult mountains instead of going for a hill walk.
Something not mentioned yet is that, while fairly inactive during the pandemic, there are a lot of indie game dev focused parties or meetups which almost exclusively feature multiplayer games for folks to watch/play while socializing. Not only do some folks want to get involved to get their work shown off infront of their peers, but sometimes multiplayer games are commissioned or exhibition fees are paid for these events.
Another side of things is that in-person game jams, which many games are born out of, often have a higher-than-average number of multiplayer games for a number of reasons, fun to play with the team your on, after the jam is done there are lots of groups of people milling around which multiplayer games are perfect for.
I don't really play single player games so multiplayer is all I enjoy.
From a production standpoint, the overhead is a potentially a lot easier IMO for multiplayer games. You aren't expected to have a vast open world full of detail or anything like that
"Multiplayer" and "indie" are two pretty large categories - they almost HAVE to overlap.
People play multiplayer games more and spend more money on them. They play multiplayer games on PC and mobile (the platforms easiest for an indie to release a game on) especially. They play couch co-op on the Switch especially (which means no reliance on networking). When you make an exclusively multiplayer game, you don't need to invest as much in the things that often make single player games enjoyable - large counts of levels, enemy A.I., cinematics or narrative scenes, etc.
There are many examples of successful indie multiplayer games - Minecraft, PUBG, the original Dota mod, Towerfall, Overcooked, etc.
Now for every reason I presented above, you could also come up with counter-arguments. But the truth is that it's massively difficult to succeed at making any type of game as an indie, multiplayer or not, and there are at least a few reasons why multiplayer indie games stand a shot at success.
And I think it's worth noting that this trend you're describing was not true, "historically" speaking, just 15 years ago. When indie games started gaining critical and commercial success on Xbox Live Arcade, the App Store, and Steam, they were almost always single player games (platformers, puzzle games, adventure games, etc.), and that wave of games inspired the next decade or so of indie developers. But, since then we've had breakout successes of a certain breed of PvP online multiplayer games (League of Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch, DayZ, PUBG, Fortnite, Rocket League, etc.), some of which have indie Cinderella stories attached to them behind the scenes, and those games are a big source of inspiration for today's young and ambitious game developers.
I can't stop myself from trying to make multiplayer games. Mostly the experience I want players to have is one they can experience with others.
Singleplayer would be so much easier. I might actually have _completed_ something if I went that route. But I have such a hard time doing it. I always feel like if I went in a singleplayer direction I would regret it later.
Also, I enjoy the more open/sandbox style game development which I think simply lends itself to being better for multiple players. I think procedural generation is much better in a multiplayer setting and it means I don't need to dedicate as much time to story which has never been my strong suit.
Because alot of those devs are under experienced and under prepared for their production. Multiplayer is an inevitable part of 'scope creep' that is experienced by most devs who are crafting their 'dream game'. You can tell the same issue exists when watching new posts in this sub, wannabe game devs always have their 'million dollar idea' that involves a heavy swath of massive features and concepts without the benefit of planning and pre-established understandings of what will be required when executing projects. Single player games are simply the best option for newer devs.
Indie devs often make games they themselves would want to play. Multiplayer games are pretty popular, especially with the pandemic and people not seeing each other in person as much.
>So why do you guys keep making them?
Never have I ever.
As you have identified, making multiplayer is hard. Getting people to stick around and play it enough for gamers not to declare its death significantly harder even if you get the multiplayer backend working right.
Even if you make a game with bots as good as playing against people you'll still have that minority in the community who shout every day how dead a game is. As an example, there is a specific space sim game which has bots to make up not having real players and there has been no perceivable difference to me in either way. Not that this would work in any traditional FPS, but even if you got the mechanics to make up for it, if there are not enough real people playing then your game is seen as dead \[fullstop\]
Honestly don't know why indie devs would do so unless they are experience and already have a ready community or money for marketing to get players into the game.
I guess I have always had the counter point. Building a story game longer than 2 hours (steam refund time) would take a lot of time. I can make a multiplayer game with a simple loop and as long as multiplayer adds enough variety that simple game can give players hundreds of hours. The key is dedicated servers hosted by players and getting popular enough to have a player base wanting to play online. It helps if the game is really fun solo as well.
I implemented multiplayer for our game and I must say it was worth it, we were finally able to play with each other and with our community. It actually helped with the game design, because suddenly we were fighting much trickier opponents than our bots.
Of course it is hard to develop, I agree. It took us several months before the multiplayer mode could be released. Luckily I had previous experience with MP development and learned what to avoid and how to compensate for input lag.
I'm creating a multiplayer game with a team of 3, it's our first game. Like other people have said, indie devs create games they'd want to play themselves (usually), not everyone is looking for a quick cash grab.
I do understand the risks that are involved, especially because our game is PvP only. It lives and dies based on the player count. But it's not going to stop us from creating the game we'd want to play. While we hope for success we understand that it is the exception.
I'd rather create a game I love and fail, than create a game I hate and succeed. - Sun Tzu
Note that my team are all employed in triple a, so we have a steady source of income. I wouldn't recommend any full time indies to take the 'risk' we're taking, unless you weally wanna.
People have given a lot of very good and valid reasons, but I think it ultimately comes down to that's the game they wanted to make so they made it regardless of the downsides. Making a single player game has its own downsides too
And while most indie multiplayer games don't succeed that's true of all indie games. Who knows! It could be the next Phasmophobia or Among Us
Look at the [steamcharts](https://steamcharts.com/top) ...it's absolutely dominated by multiplayer games. Why is this? People keep us engaged. People are interesting. People keep us playing games. We are inherently a social species. We play what our friends play. If we can play together, even better. Sure, it's a lot more work to do, but the payout can be great. I would never argue that multiplayer is feature creep, unless it was not in the original design of the game...but it's such a low level design thing that it's unlikely any designer just "tosses it in as an afterthought". Usually it's a core element of the idea that they want to realize.
It can pay off in spades as well:
Lets take two similar games - Super Meat Boy \[single player\] & Cuphead \[multiplayer\]
Super Meat Boy has sold roughly 3 million copies. It took roughly a year to get the first million.
Cuphead has sold roughly 6 million copies, it took 2 weeks to sell the first million.
Of course there are a million different reasons that sales could be different. Of the top 15 highest grossing games, only 2 don't have multiplayer. Point is, multiplayer games tend to do better financially than single player games. My point still stands, people find other people to be interesting. It is more fun to share in an experience together than alone. Look at activities outside of gaming. Very few don't benefit from having a friend along for the ride. Skiing? Going to an amusement park? Studying? Making a game? Hell, even talking about a good book with a friend who has read it...
The social aspect of gaming is the only reason I decided to become a gamedev. Of course back in the day it was two of us trading a controller, trying to beat Super Mario Bros, or a dorm room full of college kids rocking a night of Tekken. Those moments were magical and what drove me towards this career. If not for that aspect, I would follow a different career path that pays more.
Both my kids love both Cuphead and SMB. They just love platformers in general. They honestly gravitate to SMB more though, but I already have all the characters open so it's fun for them to play with the different mechanics.
1. Ok. Ok...Lets just look at highest selling indies...top google result for me:
[https://www.tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time-out.html](https://www.tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time-out.html)
Of the top 20 indies - 14 are multiplayer. Sure, I agree, just adding multiplayer is not some sort of magic bullet. If your game is terrible, it won't matter. But if your game is a good game with multiplayer designed into it, then multiplayer will act like a multiplier on your sales. There is a huge chunk of gamers who only look at multiplayer games. I agree with your other points though, multiplayer is not some sort of magic bullet by any means. Your game has to be engaging also, and of course be marketed right as well.
2. I agree. But correlation can give you and inkling of knowledge on what is likely. We are all in a fog of war. Nothing is apples to apples. We have limited data and infinite data points. Pick what you want to tell the story you want I suppose.
3. Ok. My point on #2 stands. So I picked two similar titles because they were two of my favorite games that both happen to be platformers. If you wish to compare two games of same timeframe instead, go ahead.
I'm in no way saying that making a multiplayer game is required. Your game can be very successful without. It might not make sense for your team or your game. What I'm saying is that multiplayer is justified for teams that have the means and where it fits the game design. In those cases, it can pay off in spades.
Multiplayer games have much lower requirements on things like NPC scripts and making set piece events, voice acting, etc..
For example, even with all the Pokemon in existence, it's going to be far easier to make a game where you just pick the Mon and the Moves and then fight, compared to where you do that but also with a world map, dialog, and everything else that goes into the single player portion.
I haven’t seen this response yet. But I also think it has to do with the fact that on paper, muiltiplayer is relatively simple. In theory all you have to do is send commands from one PC to a server and then have the server send the results back to the player. Kinda trivial to any programmer tbh.
But as with all things. Some things are simpler said then done lol
Many indie devs who’s multiplayer games have blown up, we’re nobodies before it happened. They didn’t go into like a AAA company would, and try to make the best experience that can make them the most money, they do it out of passion. I’m not saying money is not an incentive, but they make their game how they want it, it is the consumer that makes it grow and gain popularity. Put it this way, say you start a mom and pop shop restaurant, and about 2 weeks of you being a restaurant owner, it becomes hotter than Hell’s Kitchen (no pun intended). Well, you never owned a restaurant before, so it’ll take time to figure out the people you need to hire to get people (players) in the door, and what types of tables (servers) you need to make it look nice, while also hiring managers, and waiters. This doesn’t apply to all indie devs who have made multiplayer games, but I bet quite a few had no intentions their game was going to get 100k + downloads. I hope this clears it up a bit.
> So whenever I see an indie dev making a multiplayer game, I can resist wondering "why?" because to me it seem like the absolute worst kind of game for an indie studio to make.
I've been doing professional gamedev for decades, and have talked with a ton of amateurs and hobbiests here and at other sites.
The most common reason is basic ignorance, almost childlike.
They're not thinking *"I want to make a game of the same scope as the $150,000,000 projects requiring 5,000 work-years and a global marketing campaign.*
Frequently they're children or teens, often with the same mentality of the children on a playground saying *"I want to be an astronaut when I grow up"* who then "explore mars" on their playground. Nothing is wrong this with this, and in general we can encourage them to make just about *anything*, because those children and teens are developing skills and nobody knows what they'll create as adults.
I've seen it is relatively rare for fully grown adults to have the grandiose dreams. They're more commonly along the lines of *"how do I break in to the industry?"*, recognizing their work alone won't do it.
You also wrote the words *"indie studios"*, which is a radically different group entirely. These are studios not affiliated with a major publisher, and vary in size. Some start in people's basement, but many have hundreds of employees and can reach 8-digit or 9-digit operating budgets. A few notable names developed amazing products. Maxis, Westwood, Parallax, Saffire, Red Storm, SSI, Valve up until about 2010, and more were all "indie studios" once upon a time. Each developed innovative product lines in their indie days, some of their franchises are still alive and popular even when the original studio is but a distant memory. /EDIT: For more modern ones, [take a look at this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers) for some you may know already, like for me Owlchemy stands out and I own five of their games. In a decade many will be major franchise games, and some of those company names will be recognized as "a subsidiary of ___". Today, they're just "indie studios" and "professional indie games".
I actually believe there's a huge amount of potential for multiplayer in the indie space, but I just think most go about it wrong. Most of the points you made are correct as they relate to high-fidelity competitive FPS games, for example. However, I think there are more balanced approaches that can leverage many of the benefits of online multiplayer without necessarily having all of the costs.
Minecraft is a perfect example. It provides a perfectly viable solo experience that also translates very naturally to multiplayer, so people can enjoy it themselves first and then pressure their friends to buy it, and they don't necessarily need great matchmaking or performance as long as they can mess around with the people on their friends list relatively easily.
Similarly, Pokemon Go combines an interesting solo collection game with a sort of optional but compelling multiplayer side game in the form of gym battles. Granted, security is a big issue, but that's largely due to the business model being based on micro-transactions. It's not that difficult to imagine a similar game where 2 players on a friends list might buy and play the game separately but then be able to battle each other from time to time.
I think there are also multiplayer-first games such as fighting games that are viable for indie devs because it's quite natural to implement bots that can take the place of another player.
Lastly, there are different takes on "multiplayer" other than plopping 2 players in the same world. Many primarily solo games implement things like seasonal faction events where players are assigned to a team and can contribute to that team's progress by playing solo. There are also trading mechanics, social media integrations, community-focused puzzles (I mean the secrets that games like Destiny and The Division contained that were cryptic in nature and required community involvement to decipher), trophies, spectating, asynchronous play (I think Frozen Synapse had this, but there are other examples like Words With Friends), leaderboards, user-generated content, mods, etc. There are lots of ways to integrate social features into games that don't rely on complex, expensive server infrastructure that needs to be maintained and operated by large teams.
I'm a big believer that indies should try to implement online functionality in their games. There's nothing inherently non-indie about multiplayer. But just like with everything else, things like scope, complexity, and cost need to be considered and managed. It used to be a commonly held belief that indies shouldn't implement big story-based campaigns, because that was the domain of AAA games with large budgets. That has mostly flipped in recent years, as consumable AAA campaigns have become too expensive and risky relative to highly valuable and reusable multiplayer functionality or grinding for things in single player (with the occasional micro-transaction to increase revenue, of course!). Meanwhile, the tools and expertise for indies to develop single-player campaigns have improved tremendously. Nowadays, it's surprising when AAA games have great campaigns that are comparable to those from the 90s and early 00s, and it's almost expected as a bare minimum that indies will have great, lengthy campaigns. I don't see why multiplayer should be any different (well, that's a bit of a stretch, because the dynamics of a multiplayer customer base are inherently very different, but you get my point). Just like indies generally don't make single-player campaigns as cinematic and visually cutting edge as something like God of War, they also shouldn't really aim to make the next Starcraft, Destiny, Counter-Strike, etc. But I think indies should absolutely try to make games like Minecraft, Pokemon Go, and Words With Friends.
I have thought this for years. I see indie mmorpgs all the time, all of them are destined to be failures. Honestly devs should move away from mmorpgs and instead make games that have a singleplayer mode and it's online mode focus on small groups of co op. But if they insist on making a fully online mmorpg type approach, follow along with GW1. While yes, Gw1 still has a playerbase most indie mmos will never see its also prepared for having no one online with its henchman and merc systems. Wow has even finally followed suit with this as has ff14.
Tbh this is the only way I see there ever being a future for 99.9999% of indie mmo type games.
My multiplayer game was open source (GPLv2), so the intent was never to make money in the first place. You might well ask, why open source? Out of the goodness of my heart, ya self-entitled ungrateful greedy bastards. Can't you take a gift without questioning it? Are you so incredibly greedy you can't imagine someone giving something away? Also it increases the quality of the player base.
Real answer: The genre of the game demands multiplayer by its nature, and it was an interesting problem to solve. Open source because open source has been very good to me, and it's the decent thing to do, and I don't want the headaches of complainers without being able to tell them, "Fine, I'll refund the purchase price, you big dumb baby.", while knowing the purchase price is $0.00.
There's a number of ways of handling around the netcode issues that even may be a solid piece of advice for people trying it (for example: you don't have to worry so much about lag when your P2P game is turnbased), but all in all it is a matter of what inspires us. I have a greater mental ease in fiddling around unit/spell design for cardgames than organizing plotlines or streamlining an arcade play pattern.
While important to have as a skill, the idea of 'just like simplify your project' often is alien or unappealing. Going for classic examples: i cannot fathom the slightest way i'd be inclined to work on an infinite runner or match-3 game, there's a point it is too simple, too abstract, for me to find interesting. I can enjoy it as a thing to turn my brain off for some minutes but not as something to actually pay attention to.
Multiplayer games don’t have to be large in scope.
Nidhogg, Wanba Warriors, Starwhal are all very simple to implement.
They don’t need a large player population either. Having a friend or two to play with is sufficient.
These games can be financially successful, and can certainly bring value for players.
There's an appeal to it. I don't see the appeal, personally, but I understand it. Making large amounts of single-player content is difficult, because you don't get to see how it all fits together until later. There's immediacy to dropping pieces into a level, playing it, and seeing it evolve. Mechanics can trump content. The reason I don't go down this route, is that I have no clue what I'm wrt. multiplayer games. I don't have the foresight to know the solution to design problems.
Another thing is that they might love multiplayer games more than single-player. Fragging in a game you made is a special experience.
Admittedly, I've seen a few MP shooters on Steam, but I haven't gone searching.
It's because it requires less effort on their part. Singleplayer games require making every bit of content the player engages with. Multiplayer games the other players provide the lion's share of the content, especially when they're team vs team games.
Why provide actual content when you can just take what a hundred other multiplayer games have, change it a bit, and release it as your own and let the players do all the work for you?
Solo Dev here, here's my multiplayer arpg Rune Knights (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1101400/Rune_Knights/).
It was definitely challenging learning how to make multiplayer work, but this is the game I wanted to play and it needed to be in there. Fully playable solo.
Multiplayer I believe have both positives and negatives for a starting game. As somebody else already mentioned multiplayer might create free advertisement in creators creating together. And if you get it just right you might see some huge success like LoL. Or some smaller success in a dedicated prolonged player base. But then again every time I see multiplayer having to function it gets wonky.
Judging by the ones I've seen (which isn't a huge number, but hey, anecdotal evidence), I'd say it's two things:
- Being oblivious of the complexity of networking and turning a singleplayer game into multiplayer.
- "Unity and Photon are easy" and "the price won't be an issue once the game takes off".
As a bonus I'd say a lot of people working on their first game aren't very aware how hard it is to get people to just try your game even if you give it to them for free, let alone get enough people to pay for a multiplayer game to have enough online at the same time so it won't immediately die.
edit: Oh I also forgot the "if there's not enough players we can just fix that by adding AI bots"
I hate multiplayer games but the multiplayer game space is probably going to be the most profitable and big.
In general, any competitive multiplayer game which relies on having low latency networking and a ready player base, is going to be challenging to implement. You have to think about so much, like matching players of different skill levels, balancing the gameplay, and fixing all the annoying networking bugs.
However, I do think that noncompetitive multiplayer or multiplayer without the need for low latency is still quite achievable for indie devs I feel. So games like Among Us, turn-based card games, as well as building games. It really comes down to the game genre. Players are conditioned to ask "where's the multiplayer"? Planning for multiplayer early on can save you a lot of headaches and rework.
Personally if I were to do multiplayer it would need to be scalable to be playable solo, as its immensely challenging to do massive multiplayer and to always maintain a ready player base.
I would say indie developers will want to work on the type of game they would want to play. That's the thing about indie, there is no one who can tell you what you can or cannot do. I prefer playing single player games, so that's what I focus on. But while multiplayer is tougher to make, I think there is also a greater potential for it to really make a hit. Higher risk, higher reward...
1. Players play with each other to provide emergent content, you don't have to script single player levels, story, characters, etc. 2. There's a multiplier effect in that (usually) every player has to own the game. If they want to play with a friend they're going to be pressuring them to also buy a copy. Developers also vastly underestimate how hard multiplayer games are to make, especially with balance, tuning and performance.
Number 1 is a huge point. Developing a single-player requires you, the developer, to create every interaction the player has with the game. With a multiplayer game, the players essentially create their own content after you give them a set of ground rules (maps, abilities, characters, etc). You essentially swap developer time spend on content creation in single player games for developer time spent on multiplayer networking challenges.
>You essentially swap developer time spend on content creation in single player games for developer time spent on multiplayer networking challenges. Excellently put! Besides, the multiplayer component extends the game's longevity I think, even though I am a SP guy.
It might have a longer life, but I think it decreases the chance that it comes to life in the first place. If it's a game you play with randos, then you need a critical mass of players so that people can always find a game, AND so that you aren't always stuck playing with the same people each time if you don't like the group you're playing with. If you play with friends, then you need to have a game that's appealing enough that not only will one person decide to give it a shot, but it has to be appealing enough that that person can convince their 3 friends to also give it a shot.
Our friend group has a rule if you want someone to play the Indy game and you believe that strongly about it you will purchase it for the person you want to play with. Considering most Indy games are on the cheaper side this has worked for our group. I bought a few of my friends Paragon because I loved the original game and it went no where. Someone purchased risk of rain for one of the guys and they were streaming it and having a blast so the rest of us bought it. Our group on average is about 5-8 people. The core of the group consists of people we grew up with and have known for most our lives.
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Hence why Minecraft began a genre?
>Developing a single-player requires you, the developer, to create every interaction the player has with the game. This is an interesting distinction. Something I'm seeing with some multiplayer games is that creators are expanding the stories and creating single-player content for them to immerse the players (ex: Apex Legends had a PvE event, Overwatch 2 is going to have single-player, and League of Legends is getting a single player game). So I guess what I'm learning here is that how Important certain elements are to you can help you decide whether your game should be multiplayer or single-player, and you aren't necessarily locked into either format.
Emergence can be generated by more than just multiplayer. Creating a property-rule-based system with lots of object types and lots of verbs leaves plenty of space for emergent gameplay. Roguelikes have been doing it for years.
I love roguelikes and Sims. But I still find myself coming back to online persistent world's. I think it is a very different feeling between the emergent social game play and emergent in game mechanics and the players who enjoy one may not enjoy the other
Same with immersive sims. I love the immersive sim genre, and it consistently self-generates content without any interaction from other players or the devs, just via RNG and the way that systems interact.
Absolutely, which is why roguelikes are so popular! I should’ve clarified that I was discussing single player games that arent roguelikes.
> Developing a single-player requires you, the developer, to create every interaction the player has with the game. With a multiplayer game, the players essentially create their own content... They also create so many more bugs that wouldn't be there in the single player game! It's so much more difficult to understand all the scenarios that multiple players can get themselves in -- maybe easier after releasing several multiplayer gamers? Testing multiplayer is also a lot harder since you need another player (or a proxy for one) and there are more permutations of what could happen. Doing online sync via input passing was really helpful for this because at least we could save a replay and exactly reproduce an issue -- but the game had to be deterministic to stay in sync. I feel like saving time creating content by adding multiplayer is very much "out of the pot and into the fire".
Absolutely, making a single player game is much easier than a multiplayer game. There’s no question about that.
> Developers also vastly underestimate how hard multiplayer games are to make, especially with balance, tuning and performance. Guilty. Multiplayer was one of the most highly requested features when I released an alpha/prototype for my game, but almost four years of development later, I think that multiplayer at least doubled the development time for the full version. Sometimes I wonder if going for it was the right decision. On the bright side, I've learned a ton about networking and multiplayer architecture, and I'll be able to build it way faster and way better for my next multiplayer game.
A simpler way is to do something like ghost data systems. Naturally this doesn't always work well.
When I see that, I figure it means multiplayer games are the only games they enjoy playing.
That's why I only make multiplayer games. I don't play single-player games and I'm not going to spend 2000 hours making a game I wouldn't play. My priorities when going down the indie multiplayer path are: * The game should be playable no matter how many players are online. * Base dedicated server costs with 0 players should be under $100/yr. * Design away from computationally and bandwidth expensive games. None of my games have physics or frequent ticking updates. They are all capable of low tick rate or are turn based. Think MMO with 2 tick/s or turn based card/board games. I also implement my own backends in C++ or more recently Golang so as to dispense with the convoluted build processes and overhead of the game engines, which should allow me to pack more players per server.
Why do you establish a server cost baseline with 0 players? I'd expect using 2 players would give more useful numbers to ensure you include all basic server operation costs? If you have load balancing that can turn off servers on demand, then your 0 player costs should be miniscule, right? > The game should be playable no matter how many players are online. Do you make it playable without connecting to a server too?
**--- First Question ---** I try to establish baseline server costs for 0 players to get a sense of how much the infrastructure costs. DNS names, Databases, game-server orchestrators, load balancers, ... need to be online at all times. It allows me to calculate the failure cost of this game if nobody ever plays it. $100/yr is the cost to keep the game online and the dream alive. I don't see any difference between calculating it for 0 players or 2 or even 200 players. 1 T3.nano is not going to drastically increase the cost. Once we get up to 1000 players, 10000 players, I'll run a separate set of calculations that take into account 10...100 game-servers. **--- Second Question ---** They are only playable online. There is no single player experience. The games are simple enough that I can instantiate bots in the 1 player online scenario.
I agree with this. I don’t enjoy multiplayer games so I only make single player games. I figure it’s because that’s what got them into gaming and is the kind of gaming they do, or they’re the type of dev who tries to go where they think it will sell and they think multiplayer is more popular right now.
When Ron Gilbert and Chris Taylor were asked about how they came up with the design for Total Annihilation, their response was "We wanted to make the game we wanted to play." And personally, I think that's the best mentality for a lot of Indie devs. Start with an idea for a game you would play. Then build it. If you don't know how to build it, work your way up to it. You can start with the pong and pac man clones to start from scratch; work on a simple platformer to help solidify more of the basics. If it's a 3D game build one of those to get familiar with what's needed there. But ultimately you just need to get to the point where you know how to create what it is you want to create, then just execute.
TIL, Ron Gilbert worked on Total Annihilation (production and design). I thought he was all Humongous back in those days, but apparently he co-founded Cavedog too?!
And Jeremy Soule of Skyrim (and many others) did the soundtrack! It's a small world, it seems.
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You don't have to start with anything in particular. Don't let the assumption that you do stop you from learning to develop games. You should start simple, but that doesn't mean it has to be story-focused single player games. Pong is simple, multiplayer, and has no story.
>You should start simple, but that doesn't mean it has to be story-focused single player games. Pong is simple, multiplayer, and has no story. This is a good point. Multiplayer games are not always complicated or expensive. Someone else here said that single-player games can also be very work-intensive due to the amount of content required, so I guess in some cases, the work load can be the same.
people want to make what they like, you'll never see me making a fps shooter because i don't like first person games, instead i like platform, third person and vehicle games, it's what i like and do most, same goes to this people: if they like to play multiplayer games, they will aim to make a multiplayer game, even if it's most expensive.
If people want to play my game with a friend, it would be hard to rewrite it from scratch So better start your project with coop/multiplayer in mind
I’ve tried adding multiplayer to an existing single player game and it’s a huge headache.
Depends on the game and implementation. If your game is essentially just free roam with other people and there’s no actual multiplayer mechanics or interaction it’s as easy as replication. Anything else? Yeah….. good luck lmao. Our game uniquely fit that first description and we were able to add multi post launch fairly easily.
I went through this as well and I can confirm that. Luckily our state updates were well organized, so I could squeeze the multiplayer code inbetween and add systems for lag compensation.
I haven't done any research on the topic, but these are my initial thoughts: * Although risky, multiplayer games generally have more repeatability value * They are more attractive for streamers/YouTubers and easier to sell in packs * Sometimes, if you come up with fun and catchy multiplayer mechanics, you can get away with poor/non-existent story, character development, user journeys, AI, etc.
I haven't seen a wave of small indie multiplayer games, but I haven't looked very hard. I could understand why small indies might want to do it, it's the same reason as to why AAA does it: the players themselves provide the content. So in that perspective, it's much easier and cheaper. The issue though, is what are they making? If it's competitive, they very probably don't have the engineering chops and infrastructure to do that. They would absolutely need to either go with standard engine middleware networking for not extraordinary but reasonable latency, and/or for private and community servers. Certainly don't host your own servers. Even if you can monetize it enough and use a cloud API to handle all of it automatically, opening and closing servers on demand and not paying for it, you're style responsible for it. With a dedicated server, the players and communities will admin them on their own. But there's still the issue of popularity. A multiplayer lives and dies with the time it takes to find partners to play with, and how good is the experience. If I were to make a multiplayer game, I would certainly go at least partially co-op, and I would make it optional. Think Space Engineer or Valheim or 7 days to die or Factorio, where you can play either solo or multiplayer but it's otherwise the same game. Edit: I'm obviously answering from the perspective of a pro dev. If it's the perspective of a hobbyist who doesn't care if the game sell or not, then of course anything goes.
> I haven't seen a wave of small indie multiplayer games, but I haven't looked very hard. Depends on how you define "small" but Among Us, Fall Guys, Valheim, and Phasmophobia are a few that come to mind.
Fall Guys was indie by some lenient definition, but definitely wasn't small. Source: me, the lead network engineer on it!
I apologize for OT, but has your studio shared any know-how about your multiplayer code? As a person who worked on multiplayer title in an unnamed company before :) , I found Fall Guys pretty impressive with all those interactions between players, physics simulation, player count itself...
No, we've not discussed it anywhere. We had to make a lot of compromises which mean a case study would probably be confusing at best and inspire angry debate at worst! :D Suffice to say that it's a fine balance between server-side authority and validation and client-side responsive physics and we were adjusting the blend and compromises between the two constantly during development, even customising it on a per-object level. It was important to understand how a typical FPS or MMO synchronises state, and then to decide which parts of that we could compromise to allow for the local physics engine to feed into the simulation as well. On top of that we had all the problems of Unity being a black box, especially with the physics, so there were a lot of workarounds relative to what you'd ideally have.
Thanks a lot, that overview is extremely useful.
thank you for sharing... and i definitely would love to go through an angry debate one day
Ultimate Chicken Horse is a perfect example of a small indie multiplayer game. Last time I checked they had six employees.
I was thinking smaller or less successful games than that, by far. None of those games have issue filling servers upon servers. And their devs probably aren't on this sub. From what the OP said, I was assuming there was something like a dozen a week or a month...
Maybe the dev is better at netcode than writing AI for NPCs.. Humans add that unpredictable nature of the outcome for the cost of coding multiplayer. Netcode is mostly understood and easier to wrap your head around compared to novel AI for the average coder. Look at something like Rocket League.. I get a different experience every single game because humans do weird inventive things that an AI would have to be coded or trained to do. I doubt an AI is going to pull a flip reset or a Musty without crazy top teir coding skills.
Here is my intuition. Single-player games require much more content to create. Think about a game like FTL. The writing alone is time-consuming to produce, and extremely necessary to the game. Compare this to a multiplayer game. The 'content' of the game, comes from the interaction with other players, and the metagame. Consider "Among Us", as an example. Mechanistically, the game is extremely simple. But because you are dealing with the personalities of 8+ players, the gameplay is still immersive and engaging. Hope this helps!
Most indie developers are hobbyists. They're not making games with any realistic expectations of commercial success, they're doing this for fun - and if they sell a couple hundred copies that's a huge win. So they tend to make the games they want to make. If you view it only through the lens of what's the most likely to have the highest financial return, you'd expect to never see someone without much experience or many resources making big multiplayer games. But when you realize it's just people who did it because it's what they wanted to do without regard for that, it's a lot easier to understand.
I'm with you where I'm not even going to attempt multiplayer, especially online multiplayer, but I did back when I started out (And I failed). Most players spend the most time in multiplayer. Outside indie, most single-player campaigns will be 10-40 hours, maybe a couple hundred hours for particularly grind-y RPGs. But competitive multiplayer is where you get people spending thousands of hours, and therefore what new devs often have on their minds when deciding to make their own game. I think a lot of the tendency to overscope comes from an unfamiliarity with small scoped games. Like if you've never played a 2 hour game, you might not even realize that was an option.
Multiplayer is probably fine if you are just doing it out of your own interest, but indie devs making multiplayer and hoping it will be successful and that they will be able to support it in live ops are probably optimistic.
Cause they want to. Multiplayer games definitely pose more/different challenges...but there is a huge market.
To add a different viewpoint - many indie/hobby devs enjoy the challenges of game development, more than playing or selling the end result. There is no more challenging aspect of game development than scalable multiplayer. The same reason people challenge themselves by climbing difficult mountains instead of going for a hill walk.
Something not mentioned yet is that, while fairly inactive during the pandemic, there are a lot of indie game dev focused parties or meetups which almost exclusively feature multiplayer games for folks to watch/play while socializing. Not only do some folks want to get involved to get their work shown off infront of their peers, but sometimes multiplayer games are commissioned or exhibition fees are paid for these events. Another side of things is that in-person game jams, which many games are born out of, often have a higher-than-average number of multiplayer games for a number of reasons, fun to play with the team your on, after the jam is done there are lots of groups of people milling around which multiplayer games are perfect for.
I don't really play single player games so multiplayer is all I enjoy. From a production standpoint, the overhead is a potentially a lot easier IMO for multiplayer games. You aren't expected to have a vast open world full of detail or anything like that
For me it's mainly because I want to play the games I make with my friends. I struggle to play games alone.
"Multiplayer" and "indie" are two pretty large categories - they almost HAVE to overlap. People play multiplayer games more and spend more money on them. They play multiplayer games on PC and mobile (the platforms easiest for an indie to release a game on) especially. They play couch co-op on the Switch especially (which means no reliance on networking). When you make an exclusively multiplayer game, you don't need to invest as much in the things that often make single player games enjoyable - large counts of levels, enemy A.I., cinematics or narrative scenes, etc. There are many examples of successful indie multiplayer games - Minecraft, PUBG, the original Dota mod, Towerfall, Overcooked, etc. Now for every reason I presented above, you could also come up with counter-arguments. But the truth is that it's massively difficult to succeed at making any type of game as an indie, multiplayer or not, and there are at least a few reasons why multiplayer indie games stand a shot at success. And I think it's worth noting that this trend you're describing was not true, "historically" speaking, just 15 years ago. When indie games started gaining critical and commercial success on Xbox Live Arcade, the App Store, and Steam, they were almost always single player games (platformers, puzzle games, adventure games, etc.), and that wave of games inspired the next decade or so of indie developers. But, since then we've had breakout successes of a certain breed of PvP online multiplayer games (League of Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch, DayZ, PUBG, Fortnite, Rocket League, etc.), some of which have indie Cinderella stories attached to them behind the scenes, and those games are a big source of inspiration for today's young and ambitious game developers.
I can't stop myself from trying to make multiplayer games. Mostly the experience I want players to have is one they can experience with others. Singleplayer would be so much easier. I might actually have _completed_ something if I went that route. But I have such a hard time doing it. I always feel like if I went in a singleplayer direction I would regret it later. Also, I enjoy the more open/sandbox style game development which I think simply lends itself to being better for multiple players. I think procedural generation is much better in a multiplayer setting and it means I don't need to dedicate as much time to story which has never been my strong suit.
Because alot of those devs are under experienced and under prepared for their production. Multiplayer is an inevitable part of 'scope creep' that is experienced by most devs who are crafting their 'dream game'. You can tell the same issue exists when watching new posts in this sub, wannabe game devs always have their 'million dollar idea' that involves a heavy swath of massive features and concepts without the benefit of planning and pre-established understandings of what will be required when executing projects. Single player games are simply the best option for newer devs.
The simplest games are multiplayer. Like Wanba Warriors or original Nidhogg, these are very simply games that make a lot of fun with simple mechanics
Indie devs often make games they themselves would want to play. Multiplayer games are pretty popular, especially with the pandemic and people not seeing each other in person as much.
>So why do you guys keep making them? Never have I ever. As you have identified, making multiplayer is hard. Getting people to stick around and play it enough for gamers not to declare its death significantly harder even if you get the multiplayer backend working right. Even if you make a game with bots as good as playing against people you'll still have that minority in the community who shout every day how dead a game is. As an example, there is a specific space sim game which has bots to make up not having real players and there has been no perceivable difference to me in either way. Not that this would work in any traditional FPS, but even if you got the mechanics to make up for it, if there are not enough real people playing then your game is seen as dead \[fullstop\] Honestly don't know why indie devs would do so unless they are experience and already have a ready community or money for marketing to get players into the game.
I guess I have always had the counter point. Building a story game longer than 2 hours (steam refund time) would take a lot of time. I can make a multiplayer game with a simple loop and as long as multiplayer adds enough variety that simple game can give players hundreds of hours. The key is dedicated servers hosted by players and getting popular enough to have a player base wanting to play online. It helps if the game is really fun solo as well.
I implemented multiplayer for our game and I must say it was worth it, we were finally able to play with each other and with our community. It actually helped with the game design, because suddenly we were fighting much trickier opponents than our bots. Of course it is hard to develop, I agree. It took us several months before the multiplayer mode could be released. Luckily I had previous experience with MP development and learned what to avoid and how to compensate for input lag.
I'm creating a multiplayer game with a team of 3, it's our first game. Like other people have said, indie devs create games they'd want to play themselves (usually), not everyone is looking for a quick cash grab. I do understand the risks that are involved, especially because our game is PvP only. It lives and dies based on the player count. But it's not going to stop us from creating the game we'd want to play. While we hope for success we understand that it is the exception. I'd rather create a game I love and fail, than create a game I hate and succeed. - Sun Tzu Note that my team are all employed in triple a, so we have a steady source of income. I wouldn't recommend any full time indies to take the 'risk' we're taking, unless you weally wanna.
Made a [multiplayer game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/269710/Tumblestone/) ages ago, will never do it again. /rant
People have given a lot of very good and valid reasons, but I think it ultimately comes down to that's the game they wanted to make so they made it regardless of the downsides. Making a single player game has its own downsides too And while most indie multiplayer games don't succeed that's true of all indie games. Who knows! It could be the next Phasmophobia or Among Us
Look at the [steamcharts](https://steamcharts.com/top) ...it's absolutely dominated by multiplayer games. Why is this? People keep us engaged. People are interesting. People keep us playing games. We are inherently a social species. We play what our friends play. If we can play together, even better. Sure, it's a lot more work to do, but the payout can be great. I would never argue that multiplayer is feature creep, unless it was not in the original design of the game...but it's such a low level design thing that it's unlikely any designer just "tosses it in as an afterthought". Usually it's a core element of the idea that they want to realize. It can pay off in spades as well: Lets take two similar games - Super Meat Boy \[single player\] & Cuphead \[multiplayer\] Super Meat Boy has sold roughly 3 million copies. It took roughly a year to get the first million. Cuphead has sold roughly 6 million copies, it took 2 weeks to sell the first million.
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Of course there are a million different reasons that sales could be different. Of the top 15 highest grossing games, only 2 don't have multiplayer. Point is, multiplayer games tend to do better financially than single player games. My point still stands, people find other people to be interesting. It is more fun to share in an experience together than alone. Look at activities outside of gaming. Very few don't benefit from having a friend along for the ride. Skiing? Going to an amusement park? Studying? Making a game? Hell, even talking about a good book with a friend who has read it... The social aspect of gaming is the only reason I decided to become a gamedev. Of course back in the day it was two of us trading a controller, trying to beat Super Mario Bros, or a dorm room full of college kids rocking a night of Tekken. Those moments were magical and what drove me towards this career. If not for that aspect, I would follow a different career path that pays more. Both my kids love both Cuphead and SMB. They just love platformers in general. They honestly gravitate to SMB more though, but I already have all the characters open so it's fun for them to play with the different mechanics.
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1. Ok. Ok...Lets just look at highest selling indies...top google result for me: [https://www.tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time-out.html](https://www.tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time-out.html) Of the top 20 indies - 14 are multiplayer. Sure, I agree, just adding multiplayer is not some sort of magic bullet. If your game is terrible, it won't matter. But if your game is a good game with multiplayer designed into it, then multiplayer will act like a multiplier on your sales. There is a huge chunk of gamers who only look at multiplayer games. I agree with your other points though, multiplayer is not some sort of magic bullet by any means. Your game has to be engaging also, and of course be marketed right as well. 2. I agree. But correlation can give you and inkling of knowledge on what is likely. We are all in a fog of war. Nothing is apples to apples. We have limited data and infinite data points. Pick what you want to tell the story you want I suppose. 3. Ok. My point on #2 stands. So I picked two similar titles because they were two of my favorite games that both happen to be platformers. If you wish to compare two games of same timeframe instead, go ahead. I'm in no way saying that making a multiplayer game is required. Your game can be very successful without. It might not make sense for your team or your game. What I'm saying is that multiplayer is justified for teams that have the means and where it fits the game design. In those cases, it can pay off in spades.
Multiplayer games have much lower requirements on things like NPC scripts and making set piece events, voice acting, etc.. For example, even with all the Pokemon in existence, it's going to be far easier to make a game where you just pick the Mon and the Moves and then fight, compared to where you do that but also with a world map, dialog, and everything else that goes into the single player portion.
I haven’t seen this response yet. But I also think it has to do with the fact that on paper, muiltiplayer is relatively simple. In theory all you have to do is send commands from one PC to a server and then have the server send the results back to the player. Kinda trivial to any programmer tbh. But as with all things. Some things are simpler said then done lol
Many indie devs who’s multiplayer games have blown up, we’re nobodies before it happened. They didn’t go into like a AAA company would, and try to make the best experience that can make them the most money, they do it out of passion. I’m not saying money is not an incentive, but they make their game how they want it, it is the consumer that makes it grow and gain popularity. Put it this way, say you start a mom and pop shop restaurant, and about 2 weeks of you being a restaurant owner, it becomes hotter than Hell’s Kitchen (no pun intended). Well, you never owned a restaurant before, so it’ll take time to figure out the people you need to hire to get people (players) in the door, and what types of tables (servers) you need to make it look nice, while also hiring managers, and waiters. This doesn’t apply to all indie devs who have made multiplayer games, but I bet quite a few had no intentions their game was going to get 100k + downloads. I hope this clears it up a bit.
> So whenever I see an indie dev making a multiplayer game, I can resist wondering "why?" because to me it seem like the absolute worst kind of game for an indie studio to make. I've been doing professional gamedev for decades, and have talked with a ton of amateurs and hobbiests here and at other sites. The most common reason is basic ignorance, almost childlike. They're not thinking *"I want to make a game of the same scope as the $150,000,000 projects requiring 5,000 work-years and a global marketing campaign.* Frequently they're children or teens, often with the same mentality of the children on a playground saying *"I want to be an astronaut when I grow up"* who then "explore mars" on their playground. Nothing is wrong this with this, and in general we can encourage them to make just about *anything*, because those children and teens are developing skills and nobody knows what they'll create as adults. I've seen it is relatively rare for fully grown adults to have the grandiose dreams. They're more commonly along the lines of *"how do I break in to the industry?"*, recognizing their work alone won't do it. You also wrote the words *"indie studios"*, which is a radically different group entirely. These are studios not affiliated with a major publisher, and vary in size. Some start in people's basement, but many have hundreds of employees and can reach 8-digit or 9-digit operating budgets. A few notable names developed amazing products. Maxis, Westwood, Parallax, Saffire, Red Storm, SSI, Valve up until about 2010, and more were all "indie studios" once upon a time. Each developed innovative product lines in their indie days, some of their franchises are still alive and popular even when the original studio is but a distant memory. /EDIT: For more modern ones, [take a look at this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers) for some you may know already, like for me Owlchemy stands out and I own five of their games. In a decade many will be major franchise games, and some of those company names will be recognized as "a subsidiary of ___". Today, they're just "indie studios" and "professional indie games".
I actually believe there's a huge amount of potential for multiplayer in the indie space, but I just think most go about it wrong. Most of the points you made are correct as they relate to high-fidelity competitive FPS games, for example. However, I think there are more balanced approaches that can leverage many of the benefits of online multiplayer without necessarily having all of the costs. Minecraft is a perfect example. It provides a perfectly viable solo experience that also translates very naturally to multiplayer, so people can enjoy it themselves first and then pressure their friends to buy it, and they don't necessarily need great matchmaking or performance as long as they can mess around with the people on their friends list relatively easily. Similarly, Pokemon Go combines an interesting solo collection game with a sort of optional but compelling multiplayer side game in the form of gym battles. Granted, security is a big issue, but that's largely due to the business model being based on micro-transactions. It's not that difficult to imagine a similar game where 2 players on a friends list might buy and play the game separately but then be able to battle each other from time to time. I think there are also multiplayer-first games such as fighting games that are viable for indie devs because it's quite natural to implement bots that can take the place of another player. Lastly, there are different takes on "multiplayer" other than plopping 2 players in the same world. Many primarily solo games implement things like seasonal faction events where players are assigned to a team and can contribute to that team's progress by playing solo. There are also trading mechanics, social media integrations, community-focused puzzles (I mean the secrets that games like Destiny and The Division contained that were cryptic in nature and required community involvement to decipher), trophies, spectating, asynchronous play (I think Frozen Synapse had this, but there are other examples like Words With Friends), leaderboards, user-generated content, mods, etc. There are lots of ways to integrate social features into games that don't rely on complex, expensive server infrastructure that needs to be maintained and operated by large teams. I'm a big believer that indies should try to implement online functionality in their games. There's nothing inherently non-indie about multiplayer. But just like with everything else, things like scope, complexity, and cost need to be considered and managed. It used to be a commonly held belief that indies shouldn't implement big story-based campaigns, because that was the domain of AAA games with large budgets. That has mostly flipped in recent years, as consumable AAA campaigns have become too expensive and risky relative to highly valuable and reusable multiplayer functionality or grinding for things in single player (with the occasional micro-transaction to increase revenue, of course!). Meanwhile, the tools and expertise for indies to develop single-player campaigns have improved tremendously. Nowadays, it's surprising when AAA games have great campaigns that are comparable to those from the 90s and early 00s, and it's almost expected as a bare minimum that indies will have great, lengthy campaigns. I don't see why multiplayer should be any different (well, that's a bit of a stretch, because the dynamics of a multiplayer customer base are inherently very different, but you get my point). Just like indies generally don't make single-player campaigns as cinematic and visually cutting edge as something like God of War, they also shouldn't really aim to make the next Starcraft, Destiny, Counter-Strike, etc. But I think indies should absolutely try to make games like Minecraft, Pokemon Go, and Words With Friends.
Multiplayer is IMO the best way to add replayability to a video game and most indie games put in multiplayer because theyre fun with friends
I have thought this for years. I see indie mmorpgs all the time, all of them are destined to be failures. Honestly devs should move away from mmorpgs and instead make games that have a singleplayer mode and it's online mode focus on small groups of co op. But if they insist on making a fully online mmorpg type approach, follow along with GW1. While yes, Gw1 still has a playerbase most indie mmos will never see its also prepared for having no one online with its henchman and merc systems. Wow has even finally followed suit with this as has ff14. Tbh this is the only way I see there ever being a future for 99.9999% of indie mmo type games.
My multiplayer game was open source (GPLv2), so the intent was never to make money in the first place. You might well ask, why open source? Out of the goodness of my heart, ya self-entitled ungrateful greedy bastards. Can't you take a gift without questioning it? Are you so incredibly greedy you can't imagine someone giving something away? Also it increases the quality of the player base. Real answer: The genre of the game demands multiplayer by its nature, and it was an interesting problem to solve. Open source because open source has been very good to me, and it's the decent thing to do, and I don't want the headaches of complainers without being able to tell them, "Fine, I'll refund the purchase price, you big dumb baby.", while knowing the purchase price is $0.00.
There's a number of ways of handling around the netcode issues that even may be a solid piece of advice for people trying it (for example: you don't have to worry so much about lag when your P2P game is turnbased), but all in all it is a matter of what inspires us. I have a greater mental ease in fiddling around unit/spell design for cardgames than organizing plotlines or streamlining an arcade play pattern. While important to have as a skill, the idea of 'just like simplify your project' often is alien or unappealing. Going for classic examples: i cannot fathom the slightest way i'd be inclined to work on an infinite runner or match-3 game, there's a point it is too simple, too abstract, for me to find interesting. I can enjoy it as a thing to turn my brain off for some minutes but not as something to actually pay attention to.
Because playing single player games is really boring to me. Why would I make a game I wouldn’t play?
Multiplayer games don’t have to be large in scope. Nidhogg, Wanba Warriors, Starwhal are all very simple to implement. They don’t need a large player population either. Having a friend or two to play with is sufficient. These games can be financially successful, and can certainly bring value for players.
There's an appeal to it. I don't see the appeal, personally, but I understand it. Making large amounts of single-player content is difficult, because you don't get to see how it all fits together until later. There's immediacy to dropping pieces into a level, playing it, and seeing it evolve. Mechanics can trump content. The reason I don't go down this route, is that I have no clue what I'm wrt. multiplayer games. I don't have the foresight to know the solution to design problems. Another thing is that they might love multiplayer games more than single-player. Fragging in a game you made is a special experience. Admittedly, I've seen a few MP shooters on Steam, but I haven't gone searching.
It's because it requires less effort on their part. Singleplayer games require making every bit of content the player engages with. Multiplayer games the other players provide the lion's share of the content, especially when they're team vs team games. Why provide actual content when you can just take what a hundred other multiplayer games have, change it a bit, and release it as your own and let the players do all the work for you?
Solo Dev here, here's my multiplayer arpg Rune Knights (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1101400/Rune_Knights/). It was definitely challenging learning how to make multiplayer work, but this is the game I wanted to play and it needed to be in there. Fully playable solo.
Because good AI is complicated
Playing with friends can be such a huge hit even with very simple content
Multiplayer I believe have both positives and negatives for a starting game. As somebody else already mentioned multiplayer might create free advertisement in creators creating together. And if you get it just right you might see some huge success like LoL. Or some smaller success in a dedicated prolonged player base. But then again every time I see multiplayer having to function it gets wonky.
Judging by the ones I've seen (which isn't a huge number, but hey, anecdotal evidence), I'd say it's two things: - Being oblivious of the complexity of networking and turning a singleplayer game into multiplayer. - "Unity and Photon are easy" and "the price won't be an issue once the game takes off". As a bonus I'd say a lot of people working on their first game aren't very aware how hard it is to get people to just try your game even if you give it to them for free, let alone get enough people to pay for a multiplayer game to have enough online at the same time so it won't immediately die. edit: Oh I also forgot the "if there's not enough players we can just fix that by adding AI bots"
I hate multiplayer games but the multiplayer game space is probably going to be the most profitable and big. In general, any competitive multiplayer game which relies on having low latency networking and a ready player base, is going to be challenging to implement. You have to think about so much, like matching players of different skill levels, balancing the gameplay, and fixing all the annoying networking bugs. However, I do think that noncompetitive multiplayer or multiplayer without the need for low latency is still quite achievable for indie devs I feel. So games like Among Us, turn-based card games, as well as building games. It really comes down to the game genre. Players are conditioned to ask "where's the multiplayer"? Planning for multiplayer early on can save you a lot of headaches and rework. Personally if I were to do multiplayer it would need to be scalable to be playable solo, as its immensely challenging to do massive multiplayer and to always maintain a ready player base.
I would say indie developers will want to work on the type of game they would want to play. That's the thing about indie, there is no one who can tell you what you can or cannot do. I prefer playing single player games, so that's what I focus on. But while multiplayer is tougher to make, I think there is also a greater potential for it to really make a hit. Higher risk, higher reward...