I touched the surface of this topic earlier and wanted to hear some more experiences about what you guys like in online gaming.

What I like
To me, the one-timer experience is certainly a thing I look forward, but I also enjoy doing great passes to others that might shoot the puck in the net. In Zombie Panic I liked the collaboration in building defenses and shooting out zombies (or protecting other people). In L4D I liked to bandage others or get them up (or shoot zombies near them).

Some memorable moments
Not sure if these were actually so fun, but there’s 3 memorable online incidents that I really remember well.

First one happened in Zombie Panic. In this game, one side (humans) does barricades, while the other side – the zombies – try eat the freaking brainz until all humans are dead (or time runs out). Well, once when I looked forward to starting to play a round of zombie survival some guy started telling Michael Jackson jokes via the microphone. This was so unexpected that it sure was memorable. Reminds me that giving players a way to communicate can help them bring memorable moments.

Second recollection comes from NHL ‘10. In one game, there was 12 human controlled players (6 on each side). One of the opponents left the game for a moment and his player was standing in the ice without nobody controlling him. Well, one brainiac from our side got this idea and moved the idle player to our defense area – meaning the opponents couldn’t attack because it would have caused an offside. It was pretty interesting to see how a game of ice hockey turned into “move the player on one side of the blue line” when couple of guys started pushing the idle player. (This reminds me that NHL ‘10 sure needs some sort of “I’m idle” button, and it also means that when given tools to people, they find truly creative ways to change the whole gaming experience).

The third experience comes from Left 4 Dead. In this game, players are supposed to protect and support each other and make it to the next checkpoint. In one game, there was this one guy who constantly kept running solo and ended up beaten by the zombies – which made us 3 (the rest of the team) constantly helping him, and it was hindering our progress. It was pretty hilarious moment when quite near the end of the checkpoint this one guy got once again beaten up by zombies (and he was lying in ground) one of our teammates started shouting “leave him! leave him!” (since without him we could finish the map if the zombies killed him). Well, I pondered for a second and thought it was a sensible move. We run with the rest of the team to safety while you could still hear one guy shouting “leave him! get to the checkpoint!” – so much for cooperation…

Tell your story
Now I’d really be keen to hear what kind of multiplayer experiences have been most memorable to you?

What kind of multiplayer experiences you really enjoy?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Indie Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.