Why do some games have multiplayer? Because the executives demand it, even if the developers don't want it. As explained in a recent account of goings on at Midway.
In the middle of last month, ex-Midway producer John Vignocchi was a guest on the Giant Bomb podcast, managing to share some wild tales about his adventures at Midway. I just caught up to listening to it today.
Past stories of sending porn to NBA stars and before a story of people hitting on the sister of a famous music producer, comes this bit from Vignocchi about the value of multiplayer modes in games that might otherwise be single-player games.
You can find this at about the 1 hour, 22 minute, 51 second mark of the October 13 Giant Bombcast:
We were having this battle all the time, talking about, "OK, is a totally amazing single-player experience, the most important thing? Or should it be an 80% single-player experience and then a pretty cool multiplayer. Stranglehold when through that exact same problem. I think if you ask every single person that worked on Stranglehold whether or not multiplayer was a necessity for that product, they would all say, 'I wish we never did it.' It was the worst part of the game, and it was something that executive management had said, 'This has to be in the game.' And no one wanted it, and it turned out the way it turned out. That's something every game developer goes through.
Vignocchi segued his story into some talk about our own Michael McWhertor's story about the diminishing presence of single-player-only games. And there's more. Check out a particularly juicy episode of the ever-entertaining Giant Bombcast.