The Crossing: cross-player gaming.
Another interesting feature on the season premiere of The 1Up Show (Episode 61) is a bit of an interview with the folks from Arkane Studios behind a new game they’re working on called The Crossing. It aims to solve two big problems with games today in an eye-opening way. The problems are:
1. A.I. enemies are never good enough. Humans will always beat them.
2. Multiplayer skirmishes are meaningless.
How they propose to solve this is the hook behind the game. Basically, it’s a cross between a single player game and a multiplayer game. When possible, the game will bring in live players to play the enemies in your game, and those opponents will have their own set of goals. Each side will have different goals, and there may be multiple sides competing within the same game. Players would be picked from queues waiting to enter. There’s more to it than just this, but the basic premise of people taking over for A.I. characters is the common thread.
The name they give it is “cross-player”, replacing single-player and multi-player with a single game mode. The 1Up staff talking about it seem to see it as a possible major leap forward in game evolution — if Arkane Studios can pull it off.
That’s a big IF, and while it would definitely make me sit up and take notice if it works, there are a zillion things I could see going wrong with it, almost all of them having to do with their choice of platform, engine requirements, and game type.
We all know that the Source engine still has sizzle these days, but the load times just trying to get into a Half-Life 2 Deathmatch are long. Add in overhead from lag and the idea of merging in players as you go and you have to wonder if it really can be done and run well enough to work. I am not optimistic.
What do you think?
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I think for the amount of asset loading and synchronization of clients and server that the load times aren’t that unruly with half life 2 at all. When I do play multiplayer, it is Counter-Strike, so I might speculate that a person who would opt for deathmatch might be looking for a quick fix. Even still, there are deathmatch configured CS:S servers that I play and I don’t feel like the wait isn’t worth it for even a second.
This game idea is awesome. I’m studying game programming right now and I am fascinated with the prospect of a single player endeavor with other people playing their own endeavors at the same time. What seems to me to be the most interesting element is how they’ll make a player feel like they’re playing a single player game instead of a multiplayer (or even a small multiplayer). I envision if it isn’t implemented well enough it will look either like a game of tag, a game of bunch of people with conflicting fetch quests, or something in a not-so-well thought out vein.
Fingers crossed. This actually woke me up this morning thinking about the application of this sort of game play and how I could implement something akin to it in a project I’m working on.
1. Your long load times are hardware related. I’ve seen the game on a high-end rig and it’s fine.
2. The premise is great but it quickly becomes a bad idea in many ways. While it may prove more challenging and interesting every once in awhile, there’s no way they can control the single-player experience in a way to make it engrossing if a 12 year olds gameplay has to act it out.
Now your gameplay experience can be ruined because some idiot bounces a grenade off of a wall killing everyone on his team or maybe he just wants to jump up and down repeatedly. Wow, now that’s exciting.
I don’t want someone else controlling the storyline or gameplay of a single player game. There’s a reason why MMORPG’s really haven’t let player interaction directly effect everyone else’s experience. One bad egg could be catastrophic.
James, I was talking the same thing (#2) over with my gf. I think that without severely limiting the experience for other players, you can’t give the main player a special experience. You absolutely won’t give the “enemies” the same level of freedom.
If you do, then you have yourself a deathmatch. You would have to restrict the secondary players (if there are any) to certain areas, certain duties, etc. Essentially, you’d be begging them to role-play through the experience.