Most publishers nowadays seems to force multiplayer onto their games, which more often than not, doesn't suit the experience.

Gearbox Software‘s president Randy Pitchford has recently voiced out his opinion regarding the recent trend in the video game industry - publishers and their multiplayer obsession. In a recent interview with EDGE Magazine, Pitchford said that many publishers are forcing multiplayer modes into their to games to compete with blockbuster titles like Call of Duty.

“Let’s forget about what the actual promise of a game is and whether it’s suited to a narrative or competitive experience,” he said. “Take that off the table for a minute and just think about the concept-free feature list: campaign, co-op, how many players? How many guns? How long is the campaign?

“When you boil it down to that, you take the ability to make good decisions out of the picture. And the reason they do it is because they notice that the biggest blockbusters offer a little bit for every kind of consumer. You have people that want co-op and competitive, and players who want to immerse themselves in deep fiction. But the concept has to speak to that automatically; it can’t be forced. That’s the problem.”

He continued: “When the publisher is thinking, ‘When I put my money in, I don’t know what’s going to come out, but I know what I want the low and high numbers to be and I want the high number to be as high as possible’, fundamentally he’s gambling,” Pitchford says. “He’s a money guy, he has no creative investment. He’s putting money on the table and wants a return. For him, the worst-case scenario is that he just gets it back.”

Using EA's Dead Space series as an example, Pitchford says: “It’s ceiling-limited; it’ll never do 20 million units. The best imaginable is a peak of four or five million units if everything works perfectly in your favour. So the bean counters go: ‘How do I get a higher ceiling?’ And they look at games that have multiplayer.

“They’re wrong, of course. What they should do instead is say that they’re comfortable with the ceiling, and get as close to the ceiling as possible. Put in whatever investment’s required to focus it on what the promise is all about.”

There was a time where multiplayer was a great addition to the single player campaign. Now, more often than not, it's the major selling point of the game. With the cost of developing games skyrocketing, publishers are desperate for new ways to add value on their games and adding multiplayer certainly fits the bill but in the process, they are also putting less effort into the stories and more time into the online mode just to try and get more sales. When there is a need for multiplayer, then do so, but if not, they should focused more on maintaining the quality of games that fans love. After all, there's nothing wrong with playing an 8 hour campaign if you know that the devs have poured all their efforts to make the single player experience worthwhile.

How about you guys? Do you agree with Pitchford's statement? Any games on your mind that you feel aren't suited to have a multiplayer mode? share your comments below or continue the discussion at the forums.

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