Titanfall may be an always-online shooter, but Respawn doesn't feel always-online is right for every game. According to the developer's community manager Abbie Heppe, there's still "plenty of room" out there for offline gaming, and developers shouldn't feel obliged to add features that don't play to their strengths.
"The plan was always online for us, so it was an easy answer for us when people say 'well how do you feel about that' - well we were always an online-only multiplayer game anyway. It doesn't have the same impact on us as necessarily would have on somebody else," Heppe told XB1 at a recent hands-on event in Japan.
Many so-called single player games are now designed to be played online, she added. "It's such a weird one, I think about the way I play games now, even when I'm playing single players game I'm 'always online'. I'm always seeing that this person popped up on my friends list, it's this very social and online even when I'm playing by myself. Unless you turn off all notifications and ignore the world.
"Even when I play on my phone I'm always online. I travel so much I tend to play a ton on mobile devices. It very much is [always online] even when you're not playing a multiplayer game, because we've made the social experience so much of what gaming is now. I get very frustrated when online features aren't up to speed, I think it's really just expected."
But that's not to say that developers should be expected to add such features. "We have the easy bullet dodge, 'we're an online only game'. But I do think there is room for the a single player experience, and for stuff that isn't necessarily online. I think you're going to see more of [multiplayer]. Even when they're a single player game, [developers] want to have a multiplayer component, which is sort of silly because I think developers should do what they are best at, and I hate the idea of somebody being forced into adding something into their game that they don't want to do.
"I think there is a lot the future generation is going to be able to do in terms of matchmaking, in terms of connecting gamers that's going to make that social experience not feel forced."
A fast-paced shooter that mixes ninja parkour with mech shooting, Titanfall will be exclusive to Xbox One forever.
http://www.oxm.co.uk/67077/titanfall-developer-doesnt-believe-in-forcing-people-to-go-always-online/
