You’d be hard pressed to find any game these days that doesn’t have some modicum of online play. Sometimes it’s brilliant. sometimes it feels like a tacked-on experience that cheapens the single-player, but like it or not, multiplayer is a direction the industry has been towards for quite a while, and that’s a path that Insomniac’s Ted Price can’t imagine straying from, as his studio works on Fuse, formerly known as Overstrike.
Talking to Gamespot, Price explained that while Insomniac won’t be ditching single-player for some online-only action, crafting a game without such a function would be madness. “I can’t imagine that any game we’d do from here on out will be single-player-only,” Price said.
The [industry] has changed. As gamers, we have always been social, but thanks to the way technology has evolved, it’s much easier for us to play together. And it’s much easier for developers to create experiences where you can play together. So we want to encourage that with all of our games because ultimately, in my opinion, it’s often more fun to play with a friend.
We understand that a large portion of players are interested in that single-player experience. A lot of us gamers are interested in both. I love single-player games but I also love multiplayer games, and I think that Fuse offers you the opportunity to do both without having to skimp on either side.
And the man has a point. When done properly, online interactions can really add to a game, and give it some longevity, justifying the price tag that we pay for such experiences. It can be subtle and ego-stroking, like in Sleeping Dogs, or reckless and worthless, like in Call of Juarez: The Cartel. And at the end of the day, isn’t value the one thing that we want to take away from a game?
Fuse currently has a March 2013 release date for PS3 and Xbox 360.
Last Updated: September 13, 2012
