I've been trying to find a good multiplayer rts too. Land Air Sea Warfare (i think that's what it's called) is one of the more popular RTS games on iOS and I talked to the developer who said that he probably won't be doing multiplayer simply because there aren't enough people playing the games to support an online multiplayer environment and the development effort for JUST wifi multiplayer isn't worth it in comparison to other requested features. This is the email he sent me:
I doubt I will add multiplayer, but it is still something I am considering.
I included my thoughts below which I emailed to someone else. I am adding a
campaign mode to the game, and probably a sandbox mode, and will hope others
make campaigns for the game which I will release.
I decided to add a campaign first for several reasons:
- much easier to implement and test
- brings in more new players to the game than multiplayer would
- widens the target audience of the game where multiplayer would narrow it
- it is unknown if the userbase of the game is big enough to support a
multplayer community that would have enough people so you could find a game
most of the time
- adding a campaign allows development of characters and a story to further
define the games world
- the poll showed forum members wanted each evenly! since the forum is
composed of the most skilled/dedicated customers that the game is going to
have, and multiplayer is known to cater towards those exact types of
customers, a campaign mode is definitely the way to go since the general
audience of the game isn't going to be nearly as skilled or dedicated.
- due to the nature of mobile devices, long game times with multiple players
will lead to frustration with dropped players and low battery much more so
than a campaign would where you can stop and save at any point.
> That's the main reason I've been very hesitant to implement multiplayer.
With such a small game one thing people don't realize is how many people it
takes to support a multiplayer community. Sure everyone wants multiplayer
because they think there is going to be 1000 people online all the time like
AAA games, but as people are finding out with Starfront that isn't the case.
It takes A LOT of people playing the game all the time for there to be games
available, and even then you need 10x that to support matching people of
similar skills, as playing a noob or someone a lot more experienced than you
isn't fun. So if Starfront doesn't have enough people online at release
when the most people are going to be playing it in its lifetime it never
will.
>
> I added multiplayer to one of my other most popular games and there is
virtually no one online ever, so I concluded for my other games which aren't
as popular there is no way there is ever going to be enough people online.
My games just aren't popular enough. Sure you can still do multiplayer
between friends if you both know you want to play, but this really limits
the scope multiplayer would be used, and add to that the fact that adding
multiplayer to LASW is very difficult I concluded it isn't worth it.
Sincerely,
James Bryant
Isotope 244 -
http://www.isotope244.com
Games for iPad, iPhone, Mac & Windows
Follow me
http://www.twitter.com/Isotope244
I also wanted to try command & conquer. When it first came out for the iPhone I was excited but you couldn't even play it. It just crashed constantly. Now looking at the reviews for the iPad version, even though it was just updated in february it still crashes all the time. Not something I really wanna deal with, which is unfortunate cause I miss the old tiberian sun games and would love a good one on the iPad.
