Why big studios failed to transition into real-time multiplayer and open-world

Chris Hong, CEO & Chief Developer @ ChosmoUniverse, 24.Oct.2023

Today, we all live in the internet and online age.
Fortnite started as a game and has become a metaverse platform, and Minecraft has brought families and friends together across age groups in a virtual space. Roblox allowed even young children to create, share, and play multiplayer games together.

While there are still more games available as one-time purchases on consoles and mobile, many game companies are waking up to the commercial potential of real-time multiplayer games. Xbox and PlayStation have been subscription models for a while, proliferating.

Games that generate a steady income through activities like item sales in real-time multiplayer games have the flexibility to continue and improve through patches and updates, even if they initially make less profit than premium AAA games upon their first release. This allows for adjustments and enhancements to not only content but also monetisation targets and models in response to user demands and feedback. Furthermore, major game development companies have been actively undertaking projects to either redevelop or further develop their flagship IP games into open-world or real-time multiplayer formats due to the potential for consistent revenue generation.

I recently came across an article titled "Multiplayer Is A Studio Killer, And Naughty Dog Is Next" on TheGamer.com. It discusses the challenges faced by masters of narrative games like Naughty Dog in developing multiplayer games, including stories related to the multiplayer component of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us and Bungie. This article has prompted various thoughts for me.
Another article from TheGamer, "The Last of Us Factions 2's Failure Could Be A Win For Video Games," also warns about the risks of developing games without a proper understanding of what real-time multiplayer games entail, focusing only on the sweet business gains of live service games.

Why have studios that achieved enormous success in the world of single-player games, based on such famous and successful IPs, failed in developing multiplayer games?

Drawing from my extensive experience in developing real-time multiplayer games, I believe we can find reasons for the failure to transition renowned IP games into successful multiplayer experiences in the following areas:

Firstly, there is no one protagonist in a real-time multiplayer game. All the players in the game are the protagonists of the game.

The Last of Us and other games excel in storytelling centred around a protagonist. Players manipulate this protagonist to navigate predefined or possible actions and activities, solving given challenges and progressing the narrative. However, in real-time multiplayer games, there is no inherent method to move the story centred around a single player. A player's actions can influence others, and what a player has and can acquire may change based on the actions of others. Ultimately, a single narrative progression becomes unattainable. Everyone is crafting their own story, and while an overarching narrative exists in the game world, everything cannot be reduced to a single story due to their interactions.

Consequently, no individual can be wholly spotlighted, and someone else should not dominate the entire game world. Furthermore, given the nature of real-time multiplayer games, someone must still be able to start the play under the same conditions as others, and a player may be in a situation where a player needs to replay it. Ultimately, game design must focus on creating a playground where players can have fun rather than a singular story.

The flow of the game's narrative should be as flexible as possible, and likewise, the game's content, such as items and resources, should be designed to be freely utilized, shared, and reused at any given moment.

Of course, some items may be designed for one-time use or for a specific purpose. However, it is essential that these items be accessible to anyone within the game, regardless of the player's perspective, and they should be acquirable or usable without constraints. In real-time multiplayer games, determining when and how to acquire specific items and under what conditions to do so is challenging, as the progression of the game can't be confined to a particular sequence or process for each player. While the effects of using items may vary depending on the player's status or the game's progress, this is already a personalized situation, so it's acceptable that the results may differ. The key point here is that all beginnings must be fair and open.

Viewed in this light, the crucial aspect of real-time multiplayer games isn't the progression of the story but rather the interaction between players and the game world, players and players, and players and game content. If narrative games are said to focus on the development of the story and the passage of time, real-time multiplayer games centre around defining and setting causality for everything. In real-time multiplayer, the passage of time isn't bound by the user. The entire game world's time can flow, potentially leading to changes in the game's environment or conditions. However, all of this operates not as restrictions on every player but as causal relationships, creating a continuous interaction between players and the game world.

Additionally, through their interactions with other players, each player creates new causal relationships, perpetually generating the flow of new ones. Ultimately, like in real life, absolute time exists for everyone, but the concept of relative time and causality exist for each individual in the world of real-time multiplayer games. Designing and implementing this effectively becomes the essence of real-time multiplayer game design.

Therefore, I refer to the design of real-time multiplayer games not as game design but as service design. Our goal is not just to create a game for a single entity but to create a service that an unspecified number of people can use at any time. For instance, if making a remarkable and excellent car to sell to consumers was the traditional approach to narrative game development, real-time multiplayer can be likened to creating roads that cars can travel on, establishing traffic rules, pondering how drivers and pedestrians can safely move around, and determining what to do when rules are not followed. In the end, it's not only just about loading multiple people into the car that we've already made (multiplayer), but about understanding causality in every situation and with every person in absolute time and creating how they will interact with each other (real-time).

If you're planning to create a real-time multiplayer game in the future, I hope you'll approach designing your game from the perspective of service design, rather than the traditional game design we've been familiar with.