Rare is the game in the triple-A space that eschews a multiplayer mode. Especially so if we're talking a shooter–in fact, I'm having a hard time thinking of a purely single-player shooter released recently.
It doesn't take an idiot to understand why: there's money in multiplayer. Naturally, publishers are very adamant in insisting that developers include a multiplayer mode in their games even if they didn't initially plan on it, or even if it wouldn't add anything to the game.
At worst, this can suck precious development time and resources toward something unnecesary, as was the case in Bioshock Infinite. Not all games cut out a mode that isn't up to par with the main game, though. So at worst, it can result in a half-baked multiplayer mode.
This is where Spec Ops: The Line comes in. Speaking with Polygon in an in-depth interview, lead designer Cory Davis let the public know how he felt about the inclusion of multiplayer:
"The multiplayer mode of the Spec Ops: The Line was never a focus of the development," Davis said, "but the publisher was determined to have it anyway. It was literally a check box that the financial predictions said we needed, and 2K was relentless in making sure that it happened – even at the detriment of the overall project and the perception of the game."
The result? A poor Call of Duty clone that did nobody likes. Actually, Davis sounds kind of angry when he goes into it a little more, judging by his word choice and tone:
"The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package – it's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating."
Unfortunately publishers are unlikely to stop pushing for multiplayer whenever they can: their job is to try to ensure that a title does as best as it possibly can, financially. And multiplayer is a great way of doing that–now if only the proper time and investment was put into making these modes worthwhile!
Perhaps that's an inevitability, as more developers learn how to better create multiplayer games. But ideally, they don't have to–mutliplayer should be reserved for titles that neccesitate it.
