Multiplayer Would've "Diminished" The Batman Experience

Batman: Arkham City

We've been saying it for a very long time: not every game in existence needs multiplayer.

Take the stellar Batman: Arkham City, for instance. What could be gained from having a multiplayer element? Perhaps even a higher level of greatness, if you choose to be an optimist, but Rocksteady game director Sefton Hill told CVG such an option would've "diminished" the experience.

"If we did multiplayer then we wouldn't have been able to deliver the quality of game that people wanted--that we wanted. We would end up delivering two watered down products."

It turns out that Rocksteady did try to add multiplayer, but the team simply wasn't satisfied with the result. "We tried some ideas out but it always felt like it was just there as a requirement," said Hill. And how many times have we at PSXE said that? That developers essentially add multiplayer because it does indeed feel like a requirement in this generation? Added Hill:

"You see games where you feel like they bolted the multiplayer on. But if they had taken that effort and put it into the single player, they would have had a better game instead of having a multiplayer that people don't play."

Yeah, that right there. This is exactly the mentality we wish more designers had; the multiplayer explosion this generation is great, especially in terms of industry visibility and popularity, but studios only have so much in the way of time and resources. Focusing entirely on an unbelievable single-player experience gets you...

Well, it gets you awesome games like Batman: Arkham City.

Related Game(s): Batman: Arkham City

Tags: batman arkham city, rocksteady, batman sequel, batman multiplayer

2/9/2012 8:56:27 PM John Shepard

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