Other genres and types of games can get away with having just a single-player game, says Crytek’s Nathan Camarillo, but FPS games can’t.
A strong single player game isn’t enough for most first person shooters to succeed, not unless it’s really strong. That’s according to Camarillo, Crysis 2’s executive producer, who believes that making a successful shooter takes an “awesome” multiplayer mode.
Camarillo didn’t think that every game needed multiplayer, but said that a lot of that came down to a game’s genre. For a shooter, he said, multiplayer was a must, unless a developer was making something really unique, and even then, only in the right conditions. Crysis 2, he said, would offer gamers a multiplayer experience that they hadn’t had before, as it blended elements from military and sci-fi shooters and put it all in an urban environment. The nanosuits that the players wore – with their muscle and speed enhancing capabilities – offered a great deal of maneuverability, as well as the ability to cloak at will. These abilities helped to differentiate the game from its rivals, he said, as well as offering a lot of different ways to play.
Historically, multiplayer has always helped elevate certain shooters – games such as Quake or Unreal Tournament – above the rest. Not only that, but downloadable map packs now make multiplayer one of the best ways to continue generating revenue from a game post-launch. Crytek is clearly taking Crysis 2’s multiplayer mode very seriously, as it has assigned its entire UK office – which used to be Free Radical Design, the team behind the TimeSplitters series – to work on it.
Crysis 2 comes out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on March 22nd.
Source: CVG
