Is This the End of Splitscreen Multiplayer, Or the Start of Its Rebirth? 126
An anonymous reader writes "A new history of splitscreen multiplayer looks at how the phenomenon went from arcade necessity to console selling point, and eventually evolved into today's online multiplayer networks like Xbox Live. The article digs up some surprising anecdotes along the way — like the fact that the seminal Goldeneye N64 deathmatch mode was very much an afterthought, given to a trainee who needed something to do. It's also interesting to think about where it's going in the future, with 4k displays on the horizon and handheld screens making inroads to living room gaming. 'I think you’ll see innovations this year that let people use their TV and mobile device in very interesting ways,' says Wipeout creator Nick Burcombe. 'It doesn't even need to be complex to recapture that social aspect – it just needs to involve more than one person in the same room. ‘Second Screen’ gaming could be multiplayer-based for sure, but it can also be used for new gameplay mechanics in single player too.'"
The social interaction is HUGE (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I totally miss the art of staring at a wall while running so that the people you are playing with don't know where you are
Nowadays it's called "ducking behind cover". And no, I never played GoldenEye with "no radar"; our group reasoned that radar substitutes for being able to hear opponents' footsteps.
Re: (Score:1)
I did either this, or staring at the ground while I ran quite often. OR if I was sniping at someone (Original Halo) I would keep them off of my screen for as long as possible before I targeted and fired.
Re: (Score:2)
I truly miss the 4-player split screen fun I had with Warhawk for years on my PS3. I wish a lot more games would do full 2 and 4-way split-screen modes.
I can kinda see it (Score:5, Insightful)
I have really fond memories of playing C&C at my friends house on PS1 via link cable, as well as a variety of other games that we played via split screen (I even remember some being 4 screen using a "multitap").
Maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but there's definitely something about being in the same room as the people you are playing with/against, and proper lan parties are a pain.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That game actually supported the PS mouse, but it worked OK with a controller.
The biggest problem was slowdown, unlike newer C&C console games there was no unit cap so Skirmish games often turned into a slow morass.
Buggy unit pathfinding on harvesters often led them to get stuck on walls or buildings and that caused massive slowdown... using the nuke cheat to blow them up was a quick fix. :)
Needs GPU and Input Latency that don't suck (Score:2, Informative)
There are a few problems with split screen:
On the same device
* Needs a powerful GPU that can render 2x amount of work across 2 different monitors. 2Kp (aka 4K) is rendering 4x amount of detail !
Across multiple devices
* Needs to handle input latency
* Needs to make the rendering stays relatively in sync across varying framerates
Lower detail (Score:5, Informative)
On the same device
* Needs a powerful GPU
How so? Split-screen in a racing game or first-person shooter can use lower-detail meshes and lower-detail textures: four 960x540 pixel windows on a 1080p screen or four 1080p windows on a 4K screen. And because the pixel count remains constant, you can use the same pixel shaders to keep the same fill rate. Besides, not all same-screen multiplayer is split-screen. Fighting games, cooperative platformers, and shmups, for example, put 2 to 4 players' characters in one view.
Re: (Score:2)
On the PC, Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed [wikipedia.org] is a great example of this. The game runs smooth on modest hardware on single player or local split screen multi-player. It even supports 4k resolutions (though I have not tested this myself yet).
If the game uses lower detail meshes and textures when it goes split screen, it hasn't been noticeable.
Re:Lower detail (Score:4, Insightful)
GP is right, but for the wrong reasons. It's not because the number of pixels increases. A screen has the same number of pixels whether it's a single scene or multiple.
The simple answer is because you have two (or more) cameras, and thus, must fully render two separate scenes. That means chewing through your rendering equation [wikipedia.org] twice. Even if the individual scenes are smaller and less detailed, you still have to determine what objects look like from completely different angles, and that means you have to repeat a lot of the work. This is why you see so many games (Halo 4, Minecraft, Serious Sam 3) that have problems with split-screen multiplayer. Even though the resulting scenes have significantly smaller resolutions and significantly reduced detail, you still have to do much of the same work to produce each smaller scene before you start filling the frame buffers.
Depends on whether an engine is PVS-bound (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dynasty Warriors has this as a problem. It's a rendering issue with the number of objects that need to be drawn and tracked. When playing it as a single player you will get far more soldiers around. When playing split screen the number of soldiers rendered would be practically halved. They're also still present albeit unable to hit you but you can't hit them either. So you can chew through individual groups of soldiers far faster playing by yourself compared to split screen.
Re: (Score:2)
There are a few problems with split screen:
On the same device
* Needs a powerful GPU that can render 2x amount of work across 2 different monitors.
Are you talking about something else when you say "split screen"? To me, that term means one screen, split. Not gameplay split across multiple screens.
This whole thing seems like an ad for the Wii U (Score:4, Insightful)
While pretending like the Wii U doesn't exist. Yes, I'm sure 2014 will be the year where having a second screen off the TV is a gaming essential for the next generation of gamers. Unlike 2012/2013 when everyone hated that idea and thought Nintendo was stupid for trying it.
Re: (Score:1)
Not to mention that Nintendo did it right, the display on that big controller is simply amazing, it really is a secondary display big enough to game on and not just a small one that's only good enough to display a player's stats.
Re:This whole thing seems like an ad for the Wii U (Score:4, Interesting)
We have the WiiU and love their "tablet" screen. Split screens can often be confusing (being distracted by another player's screen portion and missing something on your screen portion). As a bonus, the tablet screen means that I can play a game (with headphones on or sound off) while my wife watches TV.
The only thing I'd do to improve the WiiU would be to allow for multiple "tablets". Right now, they only allow for one tablet. All other controllers must be classic Wii controllers (or other supported non-tablet-controllers). It would be great to have two (or more) people playing on tablets, seeing just what they need to see, and either not needing the TV at all or using the TV as some kind of "group view" screen. For example, in a Mario Kart-type game, show each person their own cart's view on their tablets and use the TV for a top-down view of where racers are as well as the current race rankings (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc).
Re: (Score:2)
Split screens can often be confusing (being distracted by another player's screen portion and missing something on your screen portion).
And that's why I will always regard split-screen console gaming as overrated and hopefully to never be resurrected.
"Hey, dude, where are you going? You're stuck on a wall!"
"Bullshit, I'm running my ass off. No, wait, I'm looking at the wrong half of the screen."
So I despise split-screen because I'm terribad at it.
Re: (Score:2)
I played hours and hours of 4-way Warhawk with friends. Everyone did that at least once, and then memorized which corner of the screen they were in. Its not that hard.
Re: (Score:3)
There were several Gamecube games that used the Gameboy Advance as multi-player screens. This is old hat.
Or an ad for Xbox SmartGlass? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Split/shared screen isn't really the same thing as Wii U, though. And the article barely mentions the idea of dual screens.
Every console supports split screen right now, because Shooters have it. And fighters have shared screen. It isn't anything the Wii U is leading the way at.
The article was interesting to me, because personally I gravitate towards RPGs and an occasional quirky type game. I'd love to do a shared/split screen game, but they're all shooters & fighters. The only real exceptions I've
Re: This whole thing seems like an ad for the Wii (Score:2)
Try Diablo 3.
Re: (Score:2)
Baloney.
Oh, I'm sure it will eventually be sold that way, but if you're already looking at a 60" mega-screen, what possible advantage is an ipad on the coffee table over a picture-in-picture?
This whole thing sounds suspiciously like a marketer's press release. Somebody's trying to sell something that they weren't able to sell before because nobody wanted it the first time.
By
networking gaming is anti-social (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, not really. But I was just lamenting last night how because of Xbox live/PSN, people don't get together to game as much.
In the dreamcast/early xbox days, my friends and I would get together at one of our houses (all young adults without real adult responsibilities yet other than feeding ourselves and paying the rent) and play games all the time. A couple at a time on the couch playing while the others in the group joked, watched, BSed and did other things. My wife participated in the discussion of those games even though she never played, just because of the environment.
Now, its net games and while 2 of us may talk about it, the 6 or so of our little click no longer has the conversation we once had. People not playing the game are simply not part of the game. And yes, my wife could pull up a console/laptop and 'watch' me play ... but thats pretty lame.
The fun part of gaming to me was when my friends and I got together, same physical location, and played. It was really just like board games. Something cool would happen, like a cool trick in Tony Hawk, or that really smooth Top Gun like 'put on the brakes and he'll fly right by me' move you pulled off in Descent, and everyone, winner, loser, and non-players would get excited. It was like a mini sporting event.
Hell, even finding out why you just not beat one of your friends time after time is because he kept looking at your half of the screen was 'fun' as you all laughed about it afterwords. Wall-hacks don't have the same pleasure after the fact when it comes out.
You don't get any of that with net gaming. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE net games, but split screen, 5-6 of your friends sitting on the couch TOGETHER playing ... THEN eating together or something ... You don't see that anymore and that was just freaking awesome.
Re: (Score:3)
With life in general, people don't get together as much, because friends scatter to various states and countries over their lifetimes. Thanks to online gaming, I can get together to game with friends that I haven't seen IRL in years.
Stranger matches avoid time zone problems (Score:2)
friends scatter to various states and countries over their lifetimes. Thanks to online gaming, I can get together to game with friends that I haven't seen IRL in years
Even friend matches are reportedly hard to arrange when the friends move to different time zones. This is why a lot of people rely on pickup matches with strangers. (See CronoCloud's comment [slashdot.org] and Meg Wolitzer's article [nytimes.com].)
Re: (Score:2)
Note that I said "Play with whomever, whether they're in your friends list or not." Remember that you can "friend" instantly, and if your game time is fairly consistent, the same people will be online. Think of pick up games as an "introduction".
For example I'm involved in Second Life, and I tend to see certain people...a lot. Because of "when" I play my SL friends list has a mix of people, people from the UK, SAHM's, west coasters, telecommuters. Doesn't really matter who or where they are, we just ten
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So I guess friend matches are for people you know from outside the game, and pickup matches are for people you meet on the inside
Not quite, because you can make friends INSIDE the game.
Re: (Score:2)
There's less of an excuse now to not bring your own box, what with non-wimpy laptops being common, and with displays not being boat anchors like they were ten years ago. I'd also like to see some two-room team-vs-team LAN play, like the Artemis folks can do.
I guess kids these days are just too lazy to go outside with their computer and get on my lawn where I can shout at them to get off my lawn.
Multiplayer between owners of different games (Score:2)
There's less of an excuse now to not bring your own box
If one player owns a copy of Counter-Strike and the other a copy of Unreal, they can't play multiplayer despite the games being so similar (both first-person shooters) that basic skills will transfer. Back when 2D fighting games were popular, you might have a Street Fighter game at one house and a Mortal Kombat at the other.
Besides, to what extent can households with more than one gamer afford multiple copies of each game?
Re: (Score:3)
But you were 24 then, naturally you would hang out with friends doing silly crap more than when you're 39. You probably go to bars less now, as well. Just the way life works.
Kids game too (Score:3)
No more Xbox Live for original Xbox games (Score:2)
No, not buying new games means you don't have to stay on the upgrade treadmill (assuming you didn't buy a game that has stupid DRM schemes)
Online multiplayer usually "has stupid DRM schemes". For example, Xbox games no longer work online after Microsoft made a patch to Xbox Live that was incompatible with the original Xbox.
Re: (Score:2)
Luckily the guys at my old employer still throw a little LAN party every 2 months or so at the office: games, b
Riptide (Score:1)
Who cares about social? It's about money! (Score:2)
Splitscreen: 4 people want to play, so they buy a copy.
No Splitscreen: 4 people want to play, so they have to buy 4 copies.
Guess what's more interesting for the company making the game.
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, it's a good way to advertise games to other parties.
I was first exposed to a lot of the games I bought as a kid by playing them at a friends house. I imagine the inverse was true of my friends. We all kinda had the same game collections, some we discovered on our own, some we were introduced to. I can't think of any games off the top of my head that we played and I liked but I didn't have my own copy of eventually.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh please, peer propaganda is so 1990s.
Today, everyone has access to the internet and various "test pages". It's far easier to influence those than your peers. There, you'd have to actually make a good game, with the test drones it's just throwing a bone at them from time to time or threatening them with not being in the fold of the "early access" test goons that makes them crank out good reviews for your turd.
1 vs. 4, or 1 vs. 0? (Score:2)
No Splitscreen: Our household buys no copies, knowing that the game will be useless at family parties.
Re: (Score:2)
No Splitscreen: Our household buys no copies, knowing that the game will be useless at family parties.
What, no one plays single-player or online-play at your house?
Re: (Score:3)
Online multiplayer: Same taking turns, and COPPA limits communication in pickup matches to which under-13 players have lawful access.
Split-screen: You get to play for all 90 minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
Single-player: You get to play for 45, 30, or 22 minutes.
Who says?
Online multiplayer: Same taking turns,
Who says?
and COPPA limits communication in pickup matches to which under-13 players have lawful access.
No, it doesn't. Not in practice anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Who says?
Time between completion of homework and bedtime says. The limits are nowhere near as strict from June through August.
Re: (Score:2)
Home work? Isn't that what you crib in geography class?
Re: (Score:2)
homework? You do realize that majority of gamers are adults, right? You focus far too much thought on the after school market.
The 18 percent are why E-rated games exist (Score:2)
You do realize that majority of gamers are adults, right?
True, only 18 percent [theesa.com] of gamers in 2011 were under 18, but I'd guess a not insignificant fraction of the other 72 percent are gaming with their kids. And if the majors continue to tailor their first-person shooters and gangster simulators to the M-rated market, this leaves the E, E10+, and T markets open.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember toy add from the 1980's.
The trick to advertising the toy was to show the child playing with the toy with either his friends or with his family.
Gi-Jo even with the Aircraft carrier (which every kid wanted) isn't that fun alone, you want it, because then you can get the other kids to play with you, and if it is your toy you can play the game with your own rules.
The real key is if all your friends had a different toy of the same product line, and then they can have a real adventure with them.
Now thi
Re: (Score:2)
It requires real hardware. (Score:1)
The PS4 and Xbone are both jokes. they dont even support 1920X1080-60 resolutions, with 4K this year being as affordable to the poor people ($120K a year or lower) it was completely boneheaded that the Xbone came with hardware that was already 2 years out of date before it even hit release day.
The best thing was when you and friends could all play local lan, but game developers are too damned lazy to add that in anymore. split screen gaming will suck even at 8K resolution because you are still squishing
Re: (Score:2)
It requires real hardware.
We had splitscreen before the 360 and PS3, let alone the Xbone and PS4.
Holy hell (Score:1)
Can you tell me which fairy land you live in because in Canada, under 20$K is poor.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You've summarised the hardware purist argument pretty well. However, Sony and MS both had good reasons for pitching their technology at the level they did.
First, they'd waited more than long enough already to replace their old hardware. The 360/PS3 generation was the longest console generation on record and almost certainly ran longer than was good for either Sony or MS's business. It gave PC gaming (remember when that was dying) a shot in the arm to the point where it started eating the consoles' lunch and
Early 8-bit consoles (Score:2)
The 360/PS3 generation was the longest console generation on record
Was it longer than the second generation, which started with the Atari 2600 and ended with the NES?
Re: (Score:2)
Yep.
From the Atari 2600 to the NES was six years (1977 to 1983). From the Xbox 360 to the Wii U was seven years (2005 to 2012).
Regional delay (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. The TurboGrafx-16 was indeed the first of the fourth generation, but from the TurboGrafx-16 to the Atari Jaguar was still only six years (1987 to 1993).
Re: (Score:3)
The thing is that it is already starting to bit them in the butt. a LOT of 4K Tv owners are already bitching on forums how their gaming system, or worse the Xbox "media center/gaming system" is useless to them on their shiny new tv (that they cant watch anything at all on as there is no 4K content)
But the complaints and bad press start with the videophiles, and will infect the affluent people that buy game systems. it will actually cause PC gaming to get a better foothold, because you can build a gaming P
Is there a law for headlines with two questions? (Score:2)
Yes and the answer is "no and no"
The only problem with split-screen gaming... (Score:2)
Are the inevitable people bitching about another player watching their screen.
Guess what? We can all see each other's screens. No one has an advantage here. Learn to use the information at your disposal, and learn to minimize what the other players can get from you.
Beyond that, today we have both the screen size and the resolution to allow each player to have more size and pixels than they'd have had with an entire screen to themselves just a few generations back. As long as your friends aren't the afor
Co-op solves screen peeking (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Coop is boring.
Get a fox to guard it.
Re: (Score:2)
Guard the flag... from the other team. 2fort5, coop against other people.
The problem with coop games is you need strategy and organization or it's just boring. One person can assess all the stuff going on around him and learn to react efficiently; but if you need 4 people, you need it to be easy enough for 4 people to just blast their way through. If they're all together, they need to communicate--which is really fucking slow--and if they're separate and doing all the challenging things, they can come t
Re: (Score:2)
n., a cage or pen for confining poultry.
"A chicken coop"
synonyms: pen, run, cage, hutch, enclosure
*whoosh*
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I started the patent application process for using modified 3d glasses to split a screen between multiple player back in 1996, basic prior art search came up empty, but I didn't have the money to follow though with it, and what with the Pokémon flickering light seizures and the fact that console add-ons rarely sell well, I gave up on it. But I do have the paperwork describing it, and communications between me & patent attorney if proof of prior art is needed.
Re: (Score:2)
For the PS3, Sony calls it Simulview.
Re: (Score:2)
One of the reasons I like split view is because more than just the players can be in on it. You can have a party with almost a dozen people watching the match (sometimes switching off on death) and everyone can cheer, praise, etc the players they are watching. With each player using 3d glasses to watch their own game, everyone else in the room can either watch 1 player (if they have glasses) or gets to see a nauseating blur the whole time.
I miss split-screen, it seems like almost every company is dropping i
Summary of previous Slashdot arguments (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Why focus so much attention on split screen multiplayer? I mean why? There have always been single player games. I know you were once a babysitter who babysat kids with an older console connected to an SDTV but you aren't doing that anymore. That is in the past.
So rather than saying:
"Waaah Nintendo/Sony won't give me a devkit to do a local multiplayer tetris clone" you should be thinking. "I should do a flash/java/pygame prototypes of various games and genres for a portfolio and apply for a job at an
Re: (Score:2)
Why focus so much attention on split screen multiplayer? I mean why?
Right now? Because it's the subject of this Slashdot article.
tetris clone
I moved on years ago from that...
pygame prototypes
...to that [pineight.com].
Ah, you kids. (Score:2)
VR Headsets (Score:1)
If stuff like the Occulus or Sony's new headset catch on, it may supplant single-split-screen multiplayer with single-console-multi-screen gaming for a lot of purposes.
I wonder how many headsets your average PC/console could drive.
Use for all the 3DTVs out there (Score:1)
They should make split screen games that take advantage of 3D screens; each person wears only one type of lens allowing them to see just their screen.
Re: (Score:2)
Already been done, Sony calls it Simulview
Re: (Score:1)
Cool!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because that in the US, multiple TV households are common.
Re: (Score:2)
Multiple cable boxes (Score:2)
I'm still amazed that no TV manufacturers have offerd this capability to allow multiple people to watch different shows at the same time.
Unless by this you mean one HDMI program and one ATSC program at once, the subscriber would need to connect multiple cable or satellite boxes to the TV. Viewers would need to wear Bluetooth headphones in addition to the 3D glasses. Another TV is probably more practical.
Re: (Score:2)
A good use for 3D? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Everyone seems to have glossed over important tech (Score:1)
http://us.playstation.com/ps3/... [playstation.com]
Sony SimulView allows you to view two different HDMI sources on one 3D display. PS3 (and eventually the PS4) has a few games that support SimulView... It splits the 3D source so one angle is one player and the other angle is the other player, both 1080P. There are some fantastic options out there.
Real Social Gaming on The Voxiebox (Score:2)
If you're interested in developing games for The Voxiebox you can sign up for our early access Developer K [google.com]
PIP on the Vizio VX32L (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
HDCP (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Quite a few of my friends used to get together and have Halo bouts in split screen during high school, and we would even link up 4 xboxes and TVs in the same room to have 8v8 matches.
The key statement being "high school". We see a lot of "I did goldeneye/halo at college" comments over the years, but then you realize that once you're no longer in school and share schedules and living space with lots of people in the same age/interest bracket, it becomes harder to do.
Next generation of gamers, not just games (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are way way too obsessed on splitscreen, just like you were about SDTV.