{"id":97142,"date":"2019-07-23T21:42:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T21:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/347247"},"modified":"2019-07-23T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T21:42:00","slug":"dont-miss-the-challenges-and-rewards-of-designing-local-multiplayer-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/07\/23\/dont-miss-the-challenges-and-rewards-of-designing-local-multiplayer-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss: The challenges and rewards of designing local multiplayer games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making any game is a risky undertaking, but making a game in a niche is going to be twice as daunting. When that niche is local multiplayer, a format that has more obstacles to play than any other, that\u2019s a lot of risk to take on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were making Sportsfriends, <\/em>we would talk about how the hardware platform for couch multiplayer isn\u2019t a particular console or operating system; it\u2019s gamers who have more than one controller,\u201d says Bennett Foddy, creator of Super Pole Riders & QWOP<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThat platform declined enormously when the console manufacturers stopped packing two controllers in with their consoles, and it declined again with the rise of network multiplayer games. By the early 2000s there was basically nowhere to play couch multiplayer games, especially because most PC owners didn\u2019t even have a single controller.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that, we\u2019re seeing local-multiplayer games become more and more common over the past few years, and alongside that they\u2019re often novel, mechanically experimental and generally great fun. Which raises the question: Why make your game local multiplayer rather than online?<\/p>\n

We spoke to the Foddy, as well as the developers of Overcooked<\/em> and Spaceteam, <\/em>about the appeal of developing a local multiplayer game.<\/p>\n

Foddy’s <\/em>Super Pole Riders.<\/p>\n

\n
“Some of my fondest gaming memories involved gathering round a screen with my friends or my family, and that just felt like an experience we really wanted to try and recapture.”<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Today, the proliferation of fast and reliable internet connections has left online multiplayer perhaps the most successful branch of video games in the world — look at the likes of Dota 2<\/em> and League of Legends<\/em>. The fact that these online multiplayer juggernauts haven\u2019t completely squashed local multiplayer suggests that the experiences aren’t really comparable. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, the appeal of making a local multiplayer game was that we had grown up playing those kind of games,\u201d says Phil Duncan, designer o local co-op cooking game Overcooked<\/em><\/a>. \u201cSome of my fondest gaming memories involved gathering round a screen with my friends or my family, and that just felt like an experience we really wanted to try and recapture.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the uniquely intimate experience, local multiplayer also avoids some of the biggest headaches that developers of online multiplayer games must grapple with. \u201cWith internet multiplayer you have to worry about cheating, griefing, unresponsive players, ping times\/lag\/latency, text chat\/voice chat, servers, state synchronization, matchmaking, NAT punchthrough, downtime, player accounts, profanity, privacy issues,\u201d Henry Smith, of Spaceteam<\/em><\/a> fame, tells me. \u201cThere are companies selling Backend-as-a-Service products just to solve all these problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overcooked, which Phil Duncan worked on.<\/em><\/p>\n

These problems can represent a large cost for developers in terms of both time and money. Nidhogg<\/em>, one of the most compelling and downright fun local-multiplayer games made in the past few years, was plagued with online issues after launch. It struggled to translate the frenetic feel that it had been creating excitement around at demo events into the online space. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re designing an internet multiplayer game, you have a huge number of constraints, but the main one is this: for any given series of events in the game, those events might happen at a different time, or even in a different order, on different people\u2019s computers,\u201d Foddy explains. \u201cIf I was designing Towerfall<\/em> for an internet connection, I\u2019d need to either slow the arrows right down (so they can be course-corrected to match everyone\u2019s computer) or make them infinitely fast (so that players don\u2019t notice any discrepancies in flight). It would be a very different game. These are the reasons why certain genres, like FPS, RTS and MOBA games, are so much more popular than other genres of online games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt Makes Games’ <\/em>Towerfall.<\/p>\n

So a wider range of design options, fewer technical constraints, and a little dose of nostalgia certainly go a way to explaining the steady flow of local multiplayer games over the past few years. But Henry Smith asserts that it\u2019s more than that. \u201cIt’s mostly unexplored territory,” he says. “There’s so much room for experimentation and new experiences and new audiences. I get quite a few Spaceteam<\/em> reviews that say ‘I’m not a gamer, but I love your game’ or ‘This is the only game on my phone!.’ People are playing with their kids and grandparents and their teachers. Seems to me like there are some great opportunities here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fear is that you\u2019re putting restrictions on the \u2018when\u2019 of your game, rather than the \u2018how\u2019. Instead of relying on someone merely being interested in playing your game, you need them to be interested and<\/em> have enough people to play it with and <\/em>have enough controllers. The trade off, Foddy tells me, is that developing local multiplayer is just plain fun. <\/p>\n

Bari Bari Ball, which was part of <\/em>Sportsfriends along with <\/em>Super Pole Riders.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking a good local multiplayer game can be more enjoyable than making a good single player game,” he says. “With local multiplayer games, as soon as you add the most basic functionality and placeholder art, you call over your friend to play it and you\u2019re instantly having a good time. With single player games, there can sometimes be months or even years of work before you have your first enjoyable playtest.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best local multiplayer experiences involve deep competitive gameplay, but they also bring out a spirit of social fun and camaraderie, and a party atmosphere that is completely absent in networked multiplayer games,” he adds. “That\u2019s the major draw for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Duncan and Smith gave me variations of the same answer when I asked them why we were seeing more local multiplayer games, and that\u2019s that there is just more people playing games these days. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy guess is that games are getting more diverse and inclusive in general, and they’re losing some of their stigma, so more people want to join in,\u201d Smith tells me. \u201cThey might be people you hang out with anyway, or your family, or roommates, so adding games to the mix is a pretty natural extension.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messhof’s <\/em>Nidhogg.<\/p>\n

Duncan agrees: \u201cThe way we look at it was that most people live with someone; be that their family, their partner, housemates etc. and that most games don\u2019t allow for these people to play together in the same space (either because they don\u2019t cater for players of different ages\/abilities or simply because they don\u2019t allow same screen multiplayer). We wanted to create a game that people could play together with their friends or their family in the same space and which would allow people who maybe don\u2019t play many games all that much to have fun together.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the interest in these novel experiences grows, so too does the ability to play them. While digital is a big factor in actually getting these games into the hands of those who want to play them, the proliferation of control methods is growing too. This is exemplified by Smith\u2019s Spaceteam<\/em>, which uses mobile devices as the controllers. It even works to the game\u2019s benefit, as having your own screen and not seeing those of the people you\u2019re playing with is an essential element of Spaceteam\u2019s chaos and confusion. <\/p>\n

A group playing Henry Smith’s <\/em>Spaceteam.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to design for the unique strengths of the platform and environment I’m using,\u201d Smith explains. \u201cFor local multiplayer games, that means things like: being able to see and talk to other players directly, a shared screen or small play area, the possibility of spectators. For phone games like Spaceteam,<\/em> there are additional aspects: touch input, movable devices, ability to play in different physical locations, seeing other players’ screens.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no single answer to why you might want to make a local multiplayer game, but from talking to Foddy, Smith and Duncan, what\u2019s clear is that, primarily, the time from idea to playtesting is an extremely short one, relative to other types of games. That means that during the development, you\u2019re going to be constantly iterating in a very hands-on way, able to get an idea of how your game feels and plays throughout the development, rather than after you\u2019ve done a chunk of work. When you think of it in that way, it\u2019s hard not to see it as an attractive prospect. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making any game is a risky undertaking, but making a game in a niche is going to be twice as daunting. When that niche is local multiplayer, a format that has more obstacles to play than any other, that\u2019s a lot of risk to take on. \u201cWhen we were making Sportsfriends, we would talk about how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}