I dont think they should waste their time on multiplayer .
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The counter point to this (and I donāt buy the argument about MP lowering the score I think thatās a straw man argument) is that the most played games are all MP games. If MS and the imitative want PD to reach a wide audience then a compelling MP suite is the only way they can really do that. And an average SP experience but with a killer MP one will always commercially do better.
The resource argument is fair enough but Iād say that in reality there isnāt a huge mainstream clamour for a PD game so how they reach that wider audience is either through a completely revolutionary approach to SP or by adding in compelling MP.
There are in a year a lot of AAA SP games released. But relatively few NEW AAA MP offerings. So Iād argue that MP games are a less saturated market in this AAA price point than SP ones.
The hot takes on this partnership from usually solid sensible people Iāve heard over the weekend is a bit mad.
Iāve realised that a) even experienced podcasters and commentators have no idea what a AAA studio consists of or the size of a AAA studio needed to make a game and b) never bothered reading about the initiative.
Listening to the kinda funny xcast was frustrating - I listened on my drive in to work yesterday and they were just āinitiative is Xboxās AAAA studio and they need help? Thatās not goodā. And I mean they literally stated they have about 70 employees at the startā¦so likeā¦dudeā¦they are 70 people thatās management and design. And thatās small. Its not a studio thatās going to make a AAA game on its own from scratch. Even if you doubled it (and that takes years of recruitment) its still very very small for a AAA studio.
New and AAA price point are modifiers that donāt make a lot of sense in this context though. There are established players that are entrenched in the market and it will be hard to break in. Doesnāt matter if the games are new when they receuve continual updates.
On the score point, I think it holds up. If a single-player campaign is fantastic, itās not going to get marked down for not having multiplayer ā we can see this from many of the highest-ranked games offering nothing in the way of multiplayer ā but if a game has a good single player mode but there are criticisms over the multiplayer then the review will focus in on the multiplayer as a negative in the review and that will reflect in the final score.
It canāt not. If the review has a section where it is critical, the editor isnāt going to let the reviewer give it a ten as the score wonāt reflect the review ā even if everything in the review about one mode in the game was super positive. Remove the mode that there was negative feedback on and leave the mode that was glowing, and the review is now 100% positive and a higher score is justified.
For info, by the way, a āstraw man argumentā means misrepresenting your opponentās position and then arguing against that made up opinion rather than against what they were actually saying. It doesnāt mean āan argument I disagree withā.
On your other point, MSā first party is now in the Game Pass model. They donāt need to make a single game that people play forever, they need people to play Game Pass forever. That means that they can look at their entire first party offering as one product ā Game Pass ā and they have their multiplayer shooter in Halo Infinite, they have their MMOs in FO76 and ESO, they have their multiplayer adventure in Sea of Thieves and so on. They donāt need every game to do everything. They need the service to offer everything.
And the big, polished, single-player narrative game is an area they are always getting slammed for not matching Sony toe to toe on. If you look at the hiring they have done for Initiative, and the marketing, and the hiring of CD (specifically referencing their experience in single-player narrative games) everything points towards that being the focus.
As you say, and I already said myself, if they have some super compelling and unique idea for MP that would carve out its own niche in the playing field, then they should go for. If they donāt, there is no point in wasting resources on it and risking an āOKā multiplayer bringing down the review score of an exceptional campaign.
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It was a slightly dodgy use of straw man I concede but I was struggling for the right phrase. My point was that you were using (some dubious) takes on review scores to argue against a point that there is an āexpectationā of an SP and MP package for PD. Rather than refute that original point. To me the review score thing is just a red herring in the discussion. Yes red herring. Nobody knows what a game would score and I mean lets say Halo released without MP - but a brilliant SP - no way would that get 10ās - it would be marked down for not having an MP component. So its very very speculative at best.
Iām sick and tired of the whole Sony single player narrative game argument too. Those games exist both on the PS platforms but there are many across all systems. Just make good games whatever devs wand them to be and stop this absolute banal āit has to be a cinematic story game to competeā which has been debunked looking at GOTY lists and looking at sales. Good games no matter what style are good games and review and receive critical acclaim.
I agree they are in a gamepass model but they still want engagement with the title - so Iād say MP is a significant part of driving that. And a long played MP experience builds up the community towards sequels.
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There are indeed established games but I donāt think thatās a good reason to not introduce new games and ideas. PD is one where you can easily see a good niche that MP doesnāt really cover right now. Its not like its a WW2 game where you could argue that another FPS MP game would just be completely redundant. Like I say its down to the idea. Just an MP mode chucked in is irrelevant. If its good and innovative people will enjoy it.
No worries, Iām just anal about terminology. 
But, for the avoidance of doubt, you might disagree with my scores argument, but it is an honest opinion of mine. Itās not a red herring, itās something I actually think should be a consideration for developers. There is no rule that says I cannot introduce a new argument in a post and can only respond to the argument laid out previously.
I agree on Halo not releasing with MP, but that is about expectations from a long-running franchise. If every Halo game launches with a campaign and a multiplayer suite, then it is falling below the expectations the franchise set to release without one. Perfect Dark is a reboot of a game that most younger gamers wonāt even remember. It has a blank cheque as to how it defines itself this time around. [Edit: have edited out the ātake Halo 4 as an exampleā out of the previous post as I accept the off-th-cuff example is probably confusing the issue].
On narrative games, I go back to my point: in an ideal world, MS first party on Game Pass would offer something for everyone. I certainly donāt want every game to be a cinematic narrative-driven game. I find Sonyās offering boring for leaning way too heavily into just one flavour of game. But that doesnāt mean that MS shouldnāt do it at all. They have Hellblade with a third-person puzzle/hack and slash in that space, adding Perfect Dark as a stealth first-person FPS isnāt too much.
What they need is variety; for Game Pass to offer something significant and high quality for every gamers tastes.
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Or the simpler - itās going to be 3rd person and CD are good at those, good working relationship established with CD during RotTR production, connections from MS back into CD via Darrel and you get to outsource the majority of your outsourcing to one single studio for the game.
They should only have multiplayer if its going to be something with some longevity or depth put into it and that feels unique, thereās far too much competition these days to be able to release some half assed multiplayer that got tacked on to every single player game in the 360 era
If itās just some tacked on thing then it will do the game more harm than good but making a solid MP obviously that takes a lot of planning and resources, not to mention we dont even know how different this game is going to play to the originals
People cant just expect the original Perfect Dark style MP if the single player is going to play very different to those games
That being said, I think thereād be a lot of potential in some kind of parkour/stealth/shooter MP mashup but in my head it would be something closer to Splinter Cells Spy vs Mercs rather than OG Perfect Dark
Its 1st person
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Theyve already said it 1st person and hiring a company known for 3rd person games doesnt mean anything
This isnāt directed at you but people need to stop acting like going from 1st to 3rd person and vice versa is some massive challenge that only a top level dev could do, its literally just a camera change
All the same things a dev has to deal with are there, enemy a.i, animations, level design etc if a dev can build a great game in one camera, they can easily do it in another
On thisā¦I actually grouped together a lot of research. Due to bad headaches that lasted a few days, I couldnāt get it out Monday. Might be a little late but Iāll try to have something out within a week. Deeper dive on The Initiative. If you line up interviews from Darryl Gallgher from 2018, 19 and 20ā¦thereās been a consistent message. This is an ambitious projectā¦yet his studio will stay small and agile. Nothing about bringing CD in when going from pre-prod to full-prod contradicts what Darryl has been saying since 2018.
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Not gunna lie, Iāve not been following PD very closely at all, played the original when it first came out and have practically no memory of the experience so it never made much of an impression on me. So thanks for the correction. Even without that point I still think my others are more likely reasons than a lot of the more out there ones in this thread. Occamās razor and all that.
Yeah I agree with those
The partnership makes perfect sense imo
I think people are worried far too much about what reviewers think over what would constitute a good PD game. Im not looking at things from a "hard nosed strategy " point of view , Iām looking at it as a gamer. Granted i get many here didnāt play the original and look at things with modern day gaming sensibilities. It is what it is. The thing for me is there really are no games today that are quite like the original PD even in its day the only thing comparable was Goldeneye and PD was superior in nearly every way. PD could be a really unique game today as well compared to other MP games out. The whole hook is cyberpunk spy fiction , if the devs have any imagination they can leverage that easy in a MP mode. I look back at Splinter Cellās āSpies vs Mercsā , that wasnāt tacked on and fit in with the theme of the game and is looked back on fondly.
Itās weird how during the 7th gen games could seem to easily balance mp and sp. Gears and Halo managed to do both well. Hell even Uncharted 2 and TLOU had fairly decent MP. But now all of a sudden people (on forums at least) have thisnaversion to multiplayer. Iāve even seen some attempt to argue that Halo and Gears some how "donāt count when it comes to single player games on Xbox because they have mp components. This attitude seemed to crop up around the start of the 8th gen and I canāt imagine why.
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Excited to get some actual reporting on this. The crux of the issue is clearly getting a large influx of talent quickly during a time when its difficult to hire. This only means we get Perfect Dark sooner.
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You mean to tell me Grubb has done actual journalism instead of relying on his gut feeling and his āknowledgeā of how games are made lol.
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Yeah, good find. I guess Iāll move over the Halo content and post everything else here. lol
One thing Iāll add, they hired some key positions late last year. Had another key position posted early this year. Itās a studio that started off on a strong hiring spree but was likely slowed by the pandemic.
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Nobody has an aversion to MP. People are making these observations based on the market trends of F2P games as well as the perception that tying the SP and MP together puts limitations on the evolution of the SP.
Edit: Well, there are people with an aversion to MP. But that is not what the discussion here is based on.
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