BioShock 2 Abandons LAN and Dedicated Servers in Favor of “Solid Game Foundation”
BioShock 2 Abandons LAN and Dedicated Servers in Favor of “Solid Game Foundation”
Posted 01/28/2010 at 1:13am
| by Nathan Grayson
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There’s always a catch. Rapture was an underwater utopia, created as a permanent getaway for the world’s brightest minds… but, the place quickly degenerated into a brainpower-bolstered battleground. Which is good for us, as it means BioShock 2’s packing a fairly robust multiplayer mode. But, again, there’s a catch: no LAN or dedicated servers.
“There is always a finite amount of time for the development of a game. Bringing Multiplayer to BioShock was a daunting task between the tech (there was no multiplayer support in the codebase from the first game) and the expectations of the community. Either you try to do everything and so nothing feels finished or you focus your efforts to do a smaller number of things really well like an accessible online experience. We chose to spend the time we had creating a solid game foundation and unfortunately that did not include LAN play or dedicated servers,” says an FAQ on BioShock 2’s official site.
Instead, a matchmaking system’s been put in place to decide who stuffs whom in Davy Jones’ locker. Of course, private matches and parties will be an option for those who’d rather not entrust their fates to the whims of a jumble of ones and zeroes.
Still though, with Modern Warfare 2, RAGE, and now BioShock 2, things aren’t really looking up for dedicated servers. But screw those guys. We’re going to make our own underwater utopia where every game supports dedicated servers and LAN. And also, we’ll install about 50 vending machines that sell guns for a nominal fee throughout the compound. There’s no conceivable way that this plan could possibly go wrong!
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edorsi
February 06, 2010 at 1:17am
It looks like they were forced to patch in some form of multiplayer to appease the accounting and marketing folks. They then hop on the bandwagon of "lets make it platform agnostic" instead of tailoring each release to the strengths and weaknesses of the respective platform. I think we're finally seeing the Hollywood blockbuster bottom line focused technique of movies in the game industry. PC gaming is nearly dead.
DBsantos77
January 28, 2010 at 8:32am
Lol, people over react so bad on MP.
Can You REALLY imagine playing Bioshock on Multi??
I can understand Modern Warfare 2, but Rapture?
Bioshock has an amazing single player experience. No need to jack it up with POS multiplayer. FFS people.
-Santos
nekollx
January 28, 2010 at 9:40am
Agree
And if you read the quite they basicly said "we could do everything half assed or a few things well" and even used "unfortunatly" unlike some other games which seem to loath LAN/DS *cough*ModernFailfare2*cough*
DS/LAN could be in a update...
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
Biceps
January 28, 2010 at 1:56pm
Yeah, you have to admire them for being honest... and when I think about Bioshock 2, MP is far from the top of the list in terms of things I consider important to creating an excellent sequal. Look at it this way, if MP on Bioshock 2 starts raising the roof, they can always add dedicated servers in Bioshock 3, right. Mmmmmm... Bioshock 3...mmmm.
D3lt4
January 29, 2010 at 6:41am
Honestly, i would much rather prefer them not even wasting time on multiplayer, but based on pure principal alone I won't buy it (right away anyways, since this isn't like modern failfare ) since this trend is disturbing.
I don't feel this, buy an over priced game and pay us more and more to play crappy maps we half assed.
I don't want sudo lan, I dont want console ports, i dont want some gimmicky crap that can't run dedicated servers.
All the code for all of this is there, everyone has it. You really have to go out of your way to not have those.
dmonkyking
January 28, 2010 at 8:30am
I'm not sure why every FPS that comes out needs to automatically have some kind MP support. There's already a lot of great MP games out there. I would rather them invest their resources into tweaking up a great SP experience and if the need arises to add MP they can later on. I think many SP games are ruined when they try to invest resources into MP tack ons. I thought that was actually the reason they didn't add MP in the first Bioshock.
Neufeldt2002
January 28, 2010 at 8:02am
What amazes me is that gaming on the PC was single player for along time. Then, multiplayer support was added for added gaming fun. Some games have weak single player modes and people complain. Now, some games have weak multiplayer modes, and people complain. Always with the complaining. If you haven't played the game, you have no right to complain. Try playing the game the way the developers intended, you might like it. If you only like multiplayer games fine, but don't complain when a game that only had single player mode couldn't come up with a multi mode in the sequel.
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I wanted a signature, but all I got was this ________
pcwizmtl
January 28, 2010 at 7:32am
I can swallow no dedicated servers but, no LAN?
that's just fail
LatiosXT
January 28, 2010 at 7:04am
Does Bioshock even need multiplayer? When I saw the pre-order commercial for Bioshock at Gamestop, I was thinking "really? multiplayer?"
I swear it's like game developers these days think they need multiplayer. But I guess if this is what it takes to survive in the gaming industry...
D3lt4
January 28, 2010 at 5:37am
Cancelling my pre-order now. Same like Modern Warefare, don't have it, don't want it and I am not going to waste my money on it.
ThunderBolt
January 28, 2010 at 3:20am
Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC Beta starts TODAY! Got 2 beta keys already :)
Screw you Bioshock 2 & Modern Warfare 2 for not having dedicated servers. I will just download your game for single player instead of buying it for multiplayer. Another $60 saved.
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