I know you’re kidding but, for a guy with your perspective, if people feel like “multiplayer, whatevs…” that’s got to sting. With COD specifically as a franchise, I think people buy it more for multiplayer than for single-player. Still, other designers who make other kinds of game experiences feel endangered by the encroachment of multiplayer modes.
Here’s the beautiful thing about the games industry. There’s lots of different games for lots of different people and there’s lots of people who play games. So maybe you want to play Farmville. That’s the kind of thing you’re into. That’s cool. You’re playing games. So that makes you awesome right away. Because you’re a gamer. Even if it’s Farmville. If we can take some Farmville players and make them Call of Duty multiplayers gamer, good for us. Different strokes for different folks, right?
There’s nothing so de-incentivizing than jumping in the multiplayer game, playing for a bit and like you last five seconds. And then it happens over and over again.
Right. That’s not very satisfying. I know. I go online. There’s some people out there who think it’s fun to abuse you. I get that. My first reaction is to abuse them back by killing them over and over again.
But the real truth there is, I think that the experience of multiplayer can be shared with a broader range of people who are not necessarily intrinsically comfortable with that kind of sometimes hostile environment. However, that’s what Combat Training is for. That’s what private parties are for. There are ways and tools to get around those things. The thing that’s hard is that not everybody knows about them. And what we have to do as designers and developers and gamers and journalists is to go out and make sure that these people know that there is a way. That their criticism of the game, there’s a way to deal with their criticism.
There is a solution to those problems. If you’re getting raped repeatedly online, that there is a way to come back and take care of this. There’s a way to come back and practice up. There’s a way to play private matches with your friends who will help you to become better players. We have solutions to these problems.
According to our friends in Activision marketing and research, 30 to 40 percent of the people who play single-player never play multiplayer. Now I’m sure there’s an equal number of people who play multiplayer who never play single-player. But, I don’t care about that today. So, if I could advocate for multiplayer, I’d say to these people, “Hey, you can come and try this out, and let us know why this isn’t working for you, and then give us an opportunity to tell you what you need to do to make this awesome for you.”