Blog FeedKeep it Simple Stupid
The year was 1999 and we, PC gamers, were widely choosing sides on the great debate that raged on the internet. Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament; and while both sides had their partisans it certainly appeared that UT was more highly thought of than Quake 3. Combine that with the Counter-Strike craze and I now have a name to my pain - and it is complex multiplayer. By 2004 I was just about to leave multiplayer for dead on the PC when at the end of the year Blizzard rode in on an Epic Mount and got me playing with human beings again. And it didn’t do it by being the most complicated; or as they like to wrap it up as the “deepest”, but by getting rid of the fat and reducing everyone to a relatively basic set of classes cooperating towards simple goals. So I come to the game industry with this plea; while I certainly don’t expect that you stop making complex multiplayer games please make some simple ones. Really it won’t hurt, there are people out there who are into this stuff - throw us a bone.
PC multiplayer gaming still really starts with First Person Shooters. In the beginning we had deathmatch; and it was good. People shot at each other, for no other reason than because blowing someone else to bits was an intrinsically fun activity. It was like tag, or chase, or some super basic activity which can be explained inside 30 seconds. If it moves - shoot it; if it doesn’t move - pick it up. That’s deathmatch for you. Then we started getting mods and such things like CTF, 3-Wave and Team Fortress. Again these were fun and they were relatively simple. The rules such as they were could be explained in a few moments. Capture the flag, capture the flag with different types of guys to choose between. And a bit after that it really started to explode. These games got more and more complex and where you once had something akin to tag with Quake, try explaining the conditional rules of a BF2 match to someone in 30 seconds. Ranks, command structure, squads, VOIP, spawn points, vehicle spawns, map intricacies like artillery, and how to do all this stuff. And no real way to be eased in to any of this. You’re thrown to the wolves from day 1 with people trying to kill you way before you can have all this stuff down. Frankly as much as I enjoy shooting stuff on my PC, I just don’t have the patience to learn this, only to be mowed down tons of times in the first few minutes as I’m getting my feet wet. While I tried the game and thought it was pretty good I just didn’t want to have to go through the learning curve. Unreal Tournament is alright but it spends a bit too much time trying to be all things to all people for my liking. Something a bit more focused I’d like to see in the works.
So what do I want? Well, a real spiritual successor to Quake 3. A game with lots of great deathmatch maps designed for a few people (not 64 or 32, 8-16 tops). Simple weapons you know how to use the second you pick them up without silly alternative firing modes. Fast paced gameplay that’s fun for it’s own sake. Beautiful graphics that scale well, spot on controls, and above all a game that’s fun as an activity that doesn’t need a grand ulterior motive. A spiritual successor to Team Fortress (Classic or for Quake World) would be nice too. A team based game that isn’t a pain in the ass, that isn’t realistic and is just fun. A handful of classes with distinct roles and advantages over other classes, guns and weapons as cool as a heavy weapons guy gun, scout caltrops or MIRV Grenades. Graphics that don’t make everyone look like a real soldier would be nice too. I hear 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 keyboards about to tell me why they prefer BF2 or CS:S to something simpler and to that I say I believe the market is big enough for more than one kind of game. The presence of Serious Sam didn’t affect the fact that Operation Flashpoint came out in the same calendar year in terms of single player games. If that can happen I don’t think it such a big imposition to ask for some simple multiplayer shooters that are fun to shoot other people in. It’s been 7 years now since Quake; I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we see another game which is first, second and last about deathmatch once every 7 years. Sure there was too much DM on the market in 97-99 but talk about over correction. I haven’t seen a game with better pure run-jump-shoot action in almost a decade.
And for those who think there isn’t a market for an exceptionally polished game that doesn’t really do more than it’s competitiors, explain to me the international phenomenon of World of Warcraft. They clearly believe strongly in “keep it simple stupid” as part of there design mantra at Blizzard. I mean seriously every single phase of their development is significantly simpler than most other MMORPGs. They have less classes, less races, less customization options, less gameplay options. But in truth less is more as everything in the game works to a tee. On an average molten core run I do about 9 things over and over again. Shield, dispell magic, Abolish Disease, Flash heal, greater heal, renew, drink, fade, Shadow Protect, and Fort makes up the overwhelming majority of what I do in the game, and yet it’s one of the biggest games in history with Blizzard raking in monthly revenues from over 5 million subscribers around the world paying localized rates. I’d tried some other MMOs before WoW; FFXI, Asheron’s Call, Everquest and Planetside and they all struck me as esoteric, as such I couldn’t ever get into them. WoW on the other hand kept it simple—pick a race, pick a class, pick a name—and go. And it does a wonderful job of holding your hand and slowly getting you into the game. Further it’s so easy to figure stuff out. According to my Xfire profile I’ve played 47 hours of WoW in 7 days. I do believe they’re on to something—just maybe.
Again I want to reiterate this. I’m not for taking people’s more complex games away. I love single player games that are complex and/or deep like the total war series or what have you but for crying out loud gaming gets bigger and bigger but everyone assumes we’re following some linear progression of games and going backwards is some kind of sin. Just because there is standard rules in NBA basketball does that mean families shouldn’t play by house rules for 1 on 1 games? Please please please, keep it simple sometimes though.
19th February | Reply
Yeah, I’ve been getting back into the simple stuff lately.
I played the BF2 demo and I loved it, but I didn’t get it because my video card wasn’t quite up to par and I was low on cash at the time. But now it does seem that with games such as BF2, the demo is important for letting people know just how complex these things now are. And it shows in their filesizes. We have demos now which are well over a gigabyte. And it’s not all just textures.
So, I had a small LAN event with 3 friends last week and the entire time we just played some simple WarCraft 3 scenarios and Soldat - a platform shooter which is a bit of a mix between Worms and Counter-Strike. I hadn’t played it before about a month ago and now I’m hooked.
I also decided to download GTA2 the other day - now that Rockstar is giving it away for free. That said, it doesn’t have simpler multiplayer than GTA3, as GTA3 had no multiplayer…
Simple rocks, and it is out there. Just gotta know where to look. Then again, much of it is me playing old games I suppose.
19th February | Reply
This may be a remarkably stupid question but here goes:
“You are seeking simple run-n-gun games with small numbers of players, simple weapons and great action. In this regard you cite Quake, so my question would be, how about playing Quake 3?”
Seriously, I only want to see a new game if it does something different and, as far as I am concerned, I don’t consider increasing the graphical detail as being “something different”. Given this and the still undisputed king of Deathmatch, Quake 3, I wonder why we would want it again. The game still plays great, will run on just about anything and looks fine, so maybe we don’t need a new game after all.
20th February | Reply
The trouble there Kelmon, is that most PC gamers refuse to look backwards, and will only move on to the next big game when it comes out. While that might not be a problem in itself, as there are of course still people playing Quake 3 now, it does mean that those people left playing the older games get more refined and skilled at the games in question. So if you then want to go back and get into Quake 3 again, you’re going to find yourself at the harsh end of a very steep slope, and it’s going to take a lot of perseverance to work your way up it. And with that, you begin to lose the simple “pick-up-and-play” nature of the game in the first place.
As for the original post itself, it’s funny, because this was something I was thinking about not that long ago. It seems to me that FPS games in particular have over-indulged themselves in realistic or vaguely realistic gameplay so much recently that to go away from realism is almost considered a step back. Yet almost every other genre out there is capable of having realistic and ‘arcade’ types of game within them. For every Forza there’s a Burnout. For every Pro Evo, there’s a Mario Soccer to balance it out. Where are the arcadey FPS games to balance out the BF2s, the Call of Dutys, the Couter-Strikes?
That’s kind of why, being a DS owner, I’m excited by the look of the new Metroid Prime: Hunters game, as it looks like it could be a great back-to-basics simple deathmatch game. Jump around, get different guns, shoot the other players, done. Can’t wait.
20th February | Reply
Silly vermouth, FFXI is not a food…
As for a game, why not Quake IV my friend? It got a lot of heat for not changing much about its simplicity. However, it seems like you’d love it. It has great map design (The Edge my friends!), great graphics, and “simple” gameplay.
However, I would also like to look at “what is simple”. Because I really do not consider Quake 3 to be a simple game. Quake 3 is very very deep. As is the UT series. However, its complexity is not immediately visible on the surface.
Someone in BF2 might stomp on your ass because he knows to repair his tank, or avoid mines or how to guide missles. However, someone in UT might do the same because they know they can dodge-jump up those panels in DM-Rankin and get to the lightning gun before you.
The skills in BF2 might be more crucial to the overall gameplay than UT, but it sounds as if your largest complaint is the learning curve and getting utterly destroyed before you tackle it. Try and play in any UT or Quake 3 Deathmatch server right now and you will really get to know the meaning of being beaten. In all these years the players have made the games complex, perhaps more than they were intended. The actual gun to gun combat in BF2 is very simple so while a new player may be totally lost in the greater picture of the battle, he can still shoot people with little fancy knowledge. In Quake 3 or UT though, you have to train more than just remembering what to do. To get good at Quake or UT takes time and “training” since everything has to be processed so much faster.
The fundamental aspects of Quake 3 and UT seem simpler than these broad games like BF2, however, excelling at any takes time and patience, even more-so in the twitch skill based titles of the past. Honestly, it is much easier for me to get #1 in BF2 than it is in UT2004 or Quake IV, and I love highly complex online games.
20th February | Reply
In Reply to #4:
I was actually really good at Quake 3 years ago Doc. Yeah i know it takes a lot of practice I was in a lot of Q3 tournaments and those sorts of things. I’d never win because I just wasn’t quite good enough. But conversely I could log on to a Quake 3 server and butcher people without the need to have a whole team doing well with me. I could just get on and no amount of unbalanced teams, or people who bomb the spawns with planes or siege them with artillery could make my life miserable. If i was doing poorly I needed to just look and the mirror and say to myself do better. Quake IV has a problem that it’s simply thin. It’s only got 9 maps, no bots, some of the maps are recycled from Quake 3 so I was getting tired of them.
20th February | Reply
In Reply to #2:
Because I want new maps that are in regular rotation and more than just the hardcore players who’ve been playing the game for 6 years solid. Quake 3 is still one of my 2-3 favorite shooters on the market but at the end of the day I’ve played these maps for so long I did get tired of them. Plus it’s harder and harder to find people actually playing the game at certain hours because it’s 6 years old and you have lots of private servers and people running all kinds of crazy custom stuff etc.
20th February | Reply
Is it me or does it sound very dumb to need new games that effectively reinvent the wheel simply to get more maps (which you can build yourself) or get more lower-quality opposition? Don’t get me wrong, I understand what you are saying but something here just sounds fundamentally wrong. In this respect I believe that Otis is correct in that gamers are too fickle and always have to “moving on to the next big thing”. As far as I can see it, if you find a game that suites you, you might as well keep playing that rather than moving on to new games that you don’t like.
It’s this sort of mentality by gamers that mean that you need to replace your gaming system once every few years to play new games that, usually, aren’t as good as what was made before. If we don’t stop and continue playing the games that we know we love and contribute back to their community then we’ve only got ourselves to blame.
21st February | Reply
As soon as you mentioned Quake 3, I remembered this interview that US PCGamer had with John Carmack in the latest issue (March ‘06). This one question they asked is quite germane:
Just sort of going to leave that there, but in response to what Kelmon said, there is a pretty decent problem when going back to an old game. When I picked up say Soldier of Fortune 2 a while after it was released, it was a great game and all, but the rather small learning curve for mutliplayer was multiplied by the fact that I was going against hardcore clan guys that had been playing since the game was released.
You might say deathmatch is deathmatch, but whenever a game of any complexity matures and you’re left with mostly hardcore players, multiplayer can be a lot harder then when the game first came out. Even Quake III had rocket jumping…
21st February | Reply
In Reply to #7:In principle I agree with you Kelmon it would be nice if i could just play Quake 3 ad infinitum because in all honesty I’m not sure it’s ever really going to be topped. However I’m more of a pragmatist than that and I want an infusion of fresh blood, maps, content etc.
21st February | Reply
Quake IV shipped with 9 MP maps. They released a 4 or 5 booster pack around Xmas as well. There are also a decent amount of well-made fan maps that receive play. There is plenty of content there for the playing, it just has bad word of mouth because people got all erect over F.E.A.R.
22nd February | Reply
I’ve always been a fan of the Unreal Tournament series as far as my (limited) muliplayer experience goes.
I tended to avoid team games (I knew I’d let the side down) and just concentrated on fun deathmatch games which I inevitably lost but always enjoyed.
I don’t think the Unreal Tournament games have ever overcomplicated anything (although they have suffered some dud game modes; Double Domination was not a patch on original style domination and Bombing Run is a pretty poor game). There’s lots of well designed maps and simple guns and if you’ve played an FPS before you can just jump into the fray.
As far as keeping multiplayer simple goes I think one of the next games to succeed at this is a very different type of game from the FPS. Defcon, the next game from Introversion (the developers behind Darwinia) is focusing on simple games of Global Thermonuclear War which will be over in around 45 minutes.
It looks to have a simple interface and style and will probably be one of those games which is easy to jum into but hard to master.
I think it’s games like Unreal Tournament that manage this in the FPS market (and presumably Quake multiplayer - though I admit to having never played it).
I’ve had a few shots at Battlefield and Day of Defeat and for a muddler who just wants a quick blast of action they don’t hold the same appeal for me as a simple Deathmatch or even capture the flag style game.
22nd February | Reply
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory would be a good game to look forwards to. if it’s anything like Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, then it’s really up to you how complex or not the game is, pretty much based on what class you pick. I always used to play as a medic… the game was just so streamlined and cleverly designed so as to make players reliant on other players, that team work just kind of magically happens. basically, the classes range from the simple point and shoot of the soldiers, to the complicated work of covert ops and field operatives.
also Prey is looking to keep it’s gameplay simple, yet looking kind of deep and imaginative too. the complexity is more down to the map designs being highly interesting (using portals, wacky gravity, and such) to make for gameplay that’s very 3 dimensional… but without giving the player a bunch of whole new buttons to get their head around.
23rd February | Reply
Just to add a quick thought or two.
In the article is mentioned the theme of quick and painless initiation to multiplayer and the value of this slimmed down version of play over the more intricate controls and concepts in some modern games. While the concept of play may rise or fall in difficulty from title to title, I’d submit a new player will be among the wolves — and subsequently mowed down on a routine basis — regardless of the experience (particularly the examples of QIII and UT).
On the other side, I don’t think being confronted with all the rigors of Battlefield 2 or some other game is necessarily a bad thing. To use that specific example in the article, it’s made to sound like a player can’t have fun or compete in any way (in B2) until all the details are understood and veil has been lifted on the minute aspects of a technical game. This certainly isn’t the case, taking from my own experience and those of whom I’ve introduced the game to. I taught them and myself the controls on an “as-we-go” basis, and the concepts of play fleshed themselves out over a reasonable time. Then strategy and cooperative squad play started its development, and so on and so forth.
Point is, I was having fun at each individual step along the way towards “complete understanding”. The same can be true of my experience with Planetside or jumping into a Civ game for the first time. Perhaps its a preference with different people to desire to know what they’re getting into beforehand, but so far I haven’t found a game that didn’t make the probationary experience fun, enjoyable, and educational in its own right.