Personally I think it's over-rated to. I've played a few games online, the only game I thought was better online than in single player was Burn Out 3, every other game I was done with the online part in less than two hours.

But I know enough people who only buy the game if it has online, they even skip the single player mode if its possible.

If I read a game review and it says "great multiplayer but single player isn't well-developed" I skip it. Video games have always been a private time-wasting meditative event for me. It's "me time". As a father with two little kids that becomes more and more rare so I don't want to have it spoiled by some tween Ritalin junkie with a personality disorder.

That's not to say I don't like XBOX Live, but I mostly like it because I can download things, not for the multiplayer.

I guess if you truly hate online multiplayer then you should get a Wii!

People who actually want to play will go to whatever the common platform for competition or casual entertainment is.

The two other dudes who commented seem to be the type of guys who probably would drop any game after a few hours no matter what it is. Developers arent targetting these people. But the problem is that they are the majority. For a game to get a solid hardcore following it really needs to be a massive hit. So maybe the solution could just be for all smaller titles to just drop multiplayer support. I dont know how many random niche games ive played that have multiplayer support and I go to check it out and there is like no one on(I remember getting Worms 2 like 6 months after it came out and it was a ghost town, though still possible to get a match). So just drop the feature, its not serving anyone if no one uses it;]

Umm...Multiplayer is more important the the single player many times. Look at Halo2...the single player was pretty weak, yet the multiplayer had me playing the game for almost 1 year. 1 year! I get sick of games after a month usually. If all games just had single player, you would beat the game and be ready to trade it in after a week or two.
Great multiplayer is the only reason many people buy games these days.
All the systems are upgrading their multiplayer capablities, nintendo just came out and said they are serious about making their multiplayer better...You have to be pretty dim not to realize that multiplayer is becoming more popular than the single player game.

I definitely wouldn't call online MP overrated. No one is saying it will replace actually seeing your friends. But, you just can't always be near the people that you might want to communicate with, hence devices like telephones are needed. I greatly prefer talking to someone in person than over the phone, but try getting by in the modern world without using one.

Online MP is here to stay. To pass it off as unimportant is just foolish at this stage.

"The two other dudes who commented seem to be the type of guys who probably would drop any game after a few hours no matter what it is."

Where did I state that I drop every game after a few hours? What I said was every online mode I've played besides BO3 online - which I played 800+ hours - weren't worth my time and that includes BO4. I do think that racing type of games ect can be better online you get pretty much the same game only the NPCs get replaced by real players, even with those games you get pretty much always a watered down version compared to offline (Midnight club removed the traffic in online. Burnout 4, all it takes to get a takedown is touch the other car while it was possible in BO3 to have a fight till the finish flag drops). As for those battle arena types of games or MMORPGs I just don't waste my time on those I rather put something like Godhand in my tray or Ikaruga which till this day I still frequently play. btw why should I as player care about the majority? It's not like a game improves once a lot of people are playing it.

Yes, multiplayer is important as shown with games like Halo.

But how many games are like Halo? There are only so many gamers, with so much time, and there are a lot of games with multiplayer.

Only a few games will be major successes. Some more will be moderate successes. The majority will have niche support at best, and some will have no support.

"Multiplayer" is mostly a selling point. Games get docked if they don't have multiplayer because everything is expected to have multiplayer. Even while gamers will likely spend at most hours online in many of their multiplayer games.

From that point of view, online is over-rated.

Sure, there's nothing more genuine than playing in the same room with real people, but there are a lot of people who take the time to master Halo 2 or Gears of War and don't have friends who do the same.

Online multiplayer provides a niche experience for people who want to play on a higher level with many people at the same time. Unless your friends are all dedicated gamers who love LAN parties, it's not going to happen in your living room.

Baines has a point, Halos and Gears don't come along too often, and online play is probably even less relevant for indie games, which is probably why Russ was inspired to write the essay in the first play.

Still, that's a problem with gamers that only flock to a certain kind of game, not a problem with the online system in general. I certainly wish I could find more people to play Phantom Dust. None of my friends have ever even heard of it.

I think it's important to distinguish between PC-based online multi and console. On the PC, well executed multiplayer can give the game a huge boost in terms of fun and lifespan. On consoles, though, it's horrifically overrated. There are only a very, very small handful of console games people continue to play online in any great numbers beyond about a month or two after their final release.

Online play = Extended game length = More value.

I like to get more for my money.

I know I'm oversimplifying it, but personally I VERY rarely replay single player games. So getting a game with multiplayer (online or not) tends to be a better way to spend my money. That way once I beat the single player it won't just be collecting dust.

I am also disappointed in the multiplayer aspect. Besides enjoying storylines, I just played GRAW2 singleplayer demo & loved it, even when getting killed... the game simply rocks! Then I played GRAW2 multiplayer demo, & it doesn't even look good graphics-wise... & I realized this is almost run & gun & I don't have teammates to command around. This happened when I bought SWAT4 too. I am thinking of buying a headset, but I gotta see how clans go first. Basically one reason people like multiplayer is cos they can kill a real human via gaming. Those same multiplayer fans would still say the game rocks if multiplayer was never invented. Changing the difficulty level is competition enough, but they won't admit it. And of course the immaturity of people online really turns me off.

... & some people will say singleplayer was weak, and you would beat the game and be ready to trade it in after a week or two. I bet 90% of those people saying that have never challenged singleplayer on ADVANCED or HARD level... as if everyone on multiplayer si so damn good, c'mon, please don't insult other people's intelligence.