Gnizmo said:
I have not once said that having online play present is automatically a benefit. I have been, and continue to argue the opposite. I said it is not better to have no online. There is a world of difference there. If online were added via patch to Wii Sports tomorrow I would not like the game anymore than I do now, but I also would not dislike it more. It is a feature that can help a game. I love your assumption that development resources are infinite. Putting in online play requires non-trivial additions to the code and bug testing process. It is possible that the developers simply cannot afford to put online play due to budget and time constraints. Every time a game is made certain aspects are left out because there just isn't time to put them in. That does not automatically make a game worse. I do like that you conceded one very important point. Not all games need to have all features. By that arguement you can defend the lack of high quality graphics, sound, and single player in casual party games. You keep harping on a lack of features not essential to the gameplay and saying thats why these games get low reviews. Clearly you understand that not all games need all these features to be amazing. There is no reason for party games to have many of the features you listed, so there is no purpose in critisizing them for lacking those features. Again I will put forth the heart of my arguement for you to ignore. You are looking at this backwards. You cannot ask "what could they add to make this game better?" beacause that list is infinitely long. What you should ask is do the games suffer greatly due to a lack of those features. If a game is a smash hit without it then the answer is clearly no. Tell me why party games are not fun without online play and I can take your assertiong seriously. As for the online multiplayer tangent well that is just me explaining my take on it. You questioned why I don't like online play and I explained why. My friends and I do usually gravitate around the same skill level in games we play often. When one of us starts to pull away from the pack the others almost always step up their game to match it. If I want to play with some random people I throw a party and break out the consoles. Friends of my friends will show up and I get new blood to play with. I get no more joy out of playing a game online against a person than I do against a computer. For me, it is just playing against the computer with possibly improved AI. That is just my opinion and experiences though. |
Just because it costs more money to make a game with online is not an excuse to be cheap and not include it in the first place. Leaving out features because developers don't want to spend the money does make the game worse.
Not all games need all features, but they all need most of them. You only need a car to get from a to b, why do you need a roof, why do you need comfy seats, why do you need a radio, why do they need to be painted a colour, why do they need a boot? You can get away with having the bare minimum but what you fail to grasp is just because some people are ok with the bare minimum doesn't mean that adding more things won't make things better for them. Just because something sells alot doesn't make it perfect, how do you know given the choice people won't want more, how do you know that by adding more features the game will sell worse or the same? The answer is you don't have a clue. Nobody is saying these games aren't fun but they would be more fun with more options and features, and until they have a decent amount of options and features their reviews will continue to be low.
