{"id":327,"date":"2010-06-18T01:04:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T01:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/?p=327"},"modified":"2010-06-23T23:03:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T23:03:19","slug":"the-multiplayer-bubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"The Multiplayer Bubble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s a &#8216;South Africa&#8217; thing, or just a &#8216;Gaming Group&#8217; thing, but there seems to be a bubble around the multiplayer aspect of a new game. The bubble is fragile, and can be burst by a number of things &#8230; and as with real bubbles, the longer it goes on, the higher the chances it will burst.<\/p>\n<p>Now I know that there&#8217;s generally a large community playing a game even after my particular friend group has abandoned it, and even though some of my friend group will still be playing it, it&#8217;s not the entire-game-list-consuming multi-fest that it is during that first bubble. I must also admit that few things give me as much joy as playing a game and having the entire lobby filled with my friends.<\/p>\n<p>Now there are a few things that seem to be able to burst the bubble.<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A new multiplayer game. Something that almost everyone has picked up, so everyone is playing it.<\/li>\n<li>No multiplayer progression. Since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare popularised persistant multiplayer leveling, any game that <strong>doesn&#8217;t<\/strong> offer that kind of thing seems to fall out of favour faster.<\/li>\n<li>Glitches\/Exploits. If some players start abusing the rules of the game to get ahead, it turns off tons of normal players<\/li>\n<li>In the case of sequels, any perceived difference from previous game mechanincs seems to turn people off. Probably the very same people who complain that most sequels don&#8217;t have enough fresh content\/gameplay to be worth while.<\/li>\n<li>A map pack is released. Often the price you pay compared to the content you get is pitiful, so some people will buy it, and others will pass, fragmenting a game&#8217;s community.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sometimes the bubble lasts for months, sometimes, it&#8217;s a few days. With more and more games being released that have roughly <strong>half<\/strong> their content in multiplayer, choosing which games to spend money on becomes very difficult. With the rising price of games not helping the situation either.<\/p>\n<p>There are notable exceptions, but they are very different models from the norm. Like Team Fortress 2. It has consistently had new, <strong>free<\/strong> content added after launch, drawing in a bunch of new players every time, and bringing back lapsed players back to see what all the new stuff is about.<\/p>\n<p>No matter how it&#8217;s done, everyone seems to be trying to push the bubble to the limit, and prevent the burst for as long as possible &#8230; but in the end &#8230; it always pops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s a &#8216;South Africa&#8217; thing, or just a &#8216;Gaming Group&#8217; thing, but there seems to be a bubble around the multiplayer aspect of a new game. The bubble is fragile, and can be burst by a number of things &#8230; and as with real bubbles, the longer it goes on, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.qcfdesign.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}