I have basic idea for multiplayer game, I also learned PUN and I can make Google Drive webplayer, so technically I can make multiplayer shooter, but I’ve seen a lot of small unity multiplayer that are just empty (no-one plays- nothing to do -no one plays) and I don’t know how to avoid it in my game.
So, my question is how to make people play my multiplayer game?
Make it really good, make it cheap to play, spend squillions on advertising, & consider bots to boost online interactions (theres a good forum thread about faking online players & whether it should be down & how).
You would increase the chance of success the lower the number of players needed to make it work. A multiplayer that just needs 4 people has a better chance than one that needs 10,000 concurrent users to make it interesting & playable.
@tedthebug Thanks for reply.
I asking more about how to get people that want to spend their time on my game. Should I look for pages for fans of games similar to mine or send my game to people making gameplay videos on YouTube? YouTube can bring me a lot of players but i scared that they might be just swearing kids. Especially in Polish youtube community. What are you think about it? Where should I look for players for my game?
For a commercial level game you can’t get by without youtube casters. They’re the gatekeepers of a lot of eyes. On top of that visibility on one of the major portals. Steam or Kongregate or something like that can bring millions of eyes. Without these kinds of large scale bringers of people on board you simply (statistical outliers aside) will fail. Even with Steam it isn’t enough, you need to be really busting your ass to increase visibility every day.
I dunno anything about google drive webplayer, but I do know that Unity’s move to WebGL is a freakin nightmare for anyone developing on Web Player. Not sure if that is related
There’s still that issue of having players online concurrently. Sending out free access to youtubers is fine but if there are only 3 players online & it needs a couple hundred to be functional then you will be caned in the reviews. It’s that whole chicken & egg problem, people won’t play if there aren’t enough people online & people won’t go online if they’ve never heard of it & people won’t hear about it if no one plays it.
My guess is start aiming for smaller numbers initially so the game works really well but is scaleable. That lets you have a quality product that people will play & talk about & hopefully encourage more to play, & allow you to scale it as more do. If it works well with smaller numbers then send out the invites but employ friends etc to play so there is always others online for when the reviewers try it.
So I should make game that is good in singleplayer, but also with multiplayer functionality , something like "don’t starve ", and then send it everywhere I can. If the game have small download size and it’s free to play players will invite their friends to game and it becomes more popular.
Is it good idea?
Well, usually the problem with good single player and multiplayer is if you focus on one, the other suffers. IE: It is harder to make a game that has both good multiplayer AND good single player to the extent that the single player gamers will want to find multiplayer games. It’s a great idea if you can execute on making them both excellent.
I dont think finding a decent size audience is hard if you are making a quality product and making it free with some kind of later-payment model (either by being in beta or by freemium etc)… but I happen to be very good at promoting games so maybe it is hard and I don’t recognize the difficulty as well. Making the product good is way more difficult than finding people to play it
Want the honest truth? It’s F’n hard, there is no single-solution, and it’s highly likely you will fail. You might be inclined to dismiss these truths, and yet, you knew this when you said, “I’ve seen a lot of small unity multiplayer that are just empty (no-one plays- nothing to do -no one plays) and I don’t know how to avoid it in my game.”
Since you “don’t know how to avoid” this problem, you might consider another path. Build a smaller product, that does not require multiplayer, and work to get people to play that. You will: 1) be more likely to finish something, 2) side-step the complexities involved in multiplayer, and 3) learn a ton in the process. This will give you more experience that you can eventually apply to your multi-player concept.
If you persist despite this, you may find benefit from my chapter, “Believable Dead Reckoning in Networked Games”.
Gigi
So, here is my game page:
http://gamejolt.com/games/voxel-based-multiplayer-shooter-very-early-prototype-placeholder-graphics/84404
After reading your posts I decided to make it voxel based (it’s now very popular tag in searching) and using Web player, its download size is very small, (3 minutes on slowest Internet I have found) I also added zombie bots and now I’m trying to integrate it with Gamejolt score api to make singleplayer have sense. I didn’t make all of this multiplayer menu with empty list of servers, instead I using auto connect. Of course it’s empty but I have around 15 plays for day. What do you think about it?
I launched a pre beta for my game at the start of this year, got it on steam greenlight and got a shed load of good reviews BUT I couldnt get any people to play at the same time! At the time of this release I didnt have AI in the game. Now I do and I am going to do it all over again. I think the AI will this time keep people more interested. I got right up to just before greenlight 100% then removed the game from steam as I didnt feel if I really let it out that it was ready at the time. My game is a completely different game now strangely. Its much more fun with bots running round - infact i play it my self allot which I never expected to do…
A large pile of money to attract an initial set of players for multiplayer never hurts. If your abandonment rate is high (people play then quit your game quickly with short play sessions and low return rates) it means you’ve failed. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, just that is the measure of success for online games. Long play sessions, high rate of return logins. Before you spend a large pile of money you need to make sure those two metrics are in place.
You know you can make your game popular without paying or ads, simply by posting an gaming related sites and having your game reviewed by people who have a lot of followers on youtube and other social media.
Basically if you make a good game people WILL play it.
If you make a shit game, but you’re rich so you pay for ads then people are going to play it anyway, simply because everyone will hear about it.
What specific gaming sites do you mean? Only what I know is steam, indieDB, tigsource and gamejolt.
So, the best thing I need to do now is making more items, quests and everything what can keep player for few minutes until someone else join.
I’m also thinking about adding weekly events like bosses or custom maps.
You’re mixing up content (which is important) with understanding why someone stays or why they leave. It may very well be a lack of content as to why they leave, in which case you’re spot on. More likely it is something more fundamental, ranging from their first 60 second experience of the game to the very design of the game its self. Improve metrics. IF that is content, great, but if not, be ready to overhaul large sections of the product to get your metrics right.
So true! Well said Ryan.
Gigi