Is local multiplayer on PC something you do? Thread

For PC games, is meeting up with friends to play local multiplayer games something you do? Or do you only play online multiplayer? I'm a dev and we're making a multiplayer game. At the moment it's local only. We do want to add online multiplayer but we're not sure when we'll be able to do that yet. We'd like to start building up a community around the game to get feedback which will influence our design decisions. Do you think that's even possible without having online multiplayer yet?

If you want to see the game I'm talking about the demo is on IndieDB, it's called BFF or Die.

Many great local multi PC games, port and otherwise. Samurai Gunn, Nidhogg, basically console development is a hurdle for indie devs so PC is the place for those games to start life. I just launched my own: Ruckus Ridge

Can't find any suitable option to choose here. ;-) Here, the situation is more complex - it is online multiplayer with some friends on PC, while local multi/co-op on PS3 with real world friends when visiting hometown.

Or like many years ago, LAN parties during IT lessons on school's potato PCs. (Yeah, they were able only to run AoE I and Quake II iirc.)

Hmmm... in retrospect, on PC, played only HoMM III hotseat mode.

So in the end, not sure how all of this would count. Guessing PC local multi is really something to revive and glad to see some indies having their jab at it. Well pretty much PS4/X1 local multi is needed as well, because it seems everyone forgets that situation of local multiplayer on newest generation consoles is not any better... so it may be a hurdle for you indie devs, but there is significant demand for local multiplayer games on PS4/X1 too.

I pretty much only do social gaming these days as I enjoy playing with friends. So we lan, do local multiplayer and occasionally online

No and I don't want to. I prefer online multi or 1-player. We were addicted before in local multiplayer games especially 10yrs ago during my highschool days. Now I'm 23 so I prefer playing RPGs on my playstation while I play online games on my pc or mobile phone. Another reason is because my friends can't usually come to my house anymore to play with me locally with my fighting/sport games on my PS3.

In today's age, local isn't often a good idea for commercial projects, but an easy way to circumvent this is by allowing players to easily open and access their own servers(Such as Minecraft, Starbound and Terraria) if you guys don't have the budget for your own. This could include easy of use for local multiplayer if you guys already have it built in. I speak from experience.

I guess it is old school but still a pretty good convenience. For example, large MMO games can often remove you of personal space, lag on slow connections and some people prefer playing with nearby friends. Sure you can play with your friends in a gigantic Minecraft server but sometimes, you just want to play with a few people without the strangers running around. So my message is, LAN should still be installed and integrated. It's a massive convenience for many groups of people, a valuable part of history and overall, you're not gonna loose anything much from integrating it in your game.

Also, Kids (or anybody you can consider a "kid") will benefit nicely to it. It prevents them from reading, seeing any unnecessary content that may be because of thousands of online players in a server. Also gives them better social experience especially if they are playing with their friends instead of playing with people who you dont even know and will probably forget after a year or so . Unless you're like friending him/her using FB or something in which case you will constantly remember him/her but still, you will never be really "playing" with him/her because of many unknown details.

Nice to hear some people are still playing local multiplayer But i completely get that as you get older and move away from friends it can be harder to meet up, so online is sometimes more convenient.

In our case we wouldn't need to add LAN support as it's a single screen game, it's been designed for that.

We just passed Greenlight so are a step closer to being able to release it properly. Still gotta make more content though and ideally we'd launch with online multi in place.

I find I do more local the older I get. My friends like to socialize and play games at the same time.

Sadly, local multiplayer is a dying art as connection speeds get faster for the end user.

Not only is this not reasonable for smaller studios, as they must do things like pay to maintain servers in several geographical locations, but the online multiplayer model isn't even right for every game. Imagine Mario party played online.

Deciding how the game is played is all about figuring out what supports the experience you want to convey. You don't see much local co op on PC because

A: The control scheme of mouse and keyboard is better geared towards FPS or strategy games (which work best when a player gets a screen all to themselves) and B: Most computers are connected to the internet all the time anyway.

Now that said, I still believe there's demand for such games on the PC; this is evident by Jackbox games and Gang Beasts being available on Steam. People, like myself, who don't have consoles still want to play couch co op.

This is actually an issue I'm tackling with my own project, as I plan to have local multiplayer, but I'm still weighing the pros and cons of just opening it up to LAN or having it work both ways.

TLDR version: I like the idea of local multiplayer, do what's right for your game. There is no such thing as a dead genre.

Usually tough to setup, and a majority of gamers don't do local coop on PC anymore.
Online multiplayer is a way safer direction imo.

I can still remember I have played Need For Speed Most Wanted using LAN. That moment was awesome.

BD_Gamer_Plus I'll have to give it a go... haven't played NFS lan in forever

INtense! It's not too bad. It was about 4 years ago.

My definition of local multiplayer would be a single human player in a game mode against one or more human and/or computer players. If there are multiple human players, then they would all be in the same room sharing the same screen. Worms would be an example that comes to mind.

Usually I just see local multiplayer as an added bonus when a game first comes out. But as time goes on, when community and support drops off, local multiplayer can allow you to continue to play a favorite game forever. I find it heart breaking when you go back to a game that you love years after it's release and you find that the master servers have been taken offline leaving you no way to play.

"46% yes a lot" - sorry by by no mean I believe this is representative, I'd expect MUCH less.

What do you mean by local multiplayer? Do you mean games over a LAN network or split-screen/hot-seat/multiple-controllers-on-one-PC shenanigans?

Lately, I only have played CSGO and LOL out of duty. There are a lot of work and I haven't time for it)