Tracing Trends: Multiplayer FPS

Conclusions and the future

What can we learn from this exposition, and what are the trends and factors that will drive the evolution of multiplayer shooters over the next couple of years?

Arcade v Tactical
My prediction is that arcade shooters will return to dominate the online and competitive scene. Battlefield 2 and CS are still popular, and they will retain a loyal following. However, not only is Quake 4 looking like a fantastic 'pure deathmatch' experience, but the new version of Unreal Tournament is out next year, as we've mentioned.

UT will sport the new Unreal Engine which will make it the best-looking game around. With many of the firms putting up prizes for professional gamers being hardware companies, games that push the hardware to its limits are bound to be popular choices for tournament games. Gamers will go where the money is, therefore I predict that UT07 will be a massively popular game, even if it's not actually that great.

I think that many of the highest profile professional gamers prefer to play games that highlight their individual talent, rather than working as a team - top pros like Fatal1ty prefer Quake and Painkiller to CS or Battlefield. With their high profile example, arcade shooters may be in for something of a comeback after sitting in the CS shadow for a long time.

Matchmaking
One of the big trends in console gaming is the increasing sophistication of matchmaking. In PC gaming, picking a server to join which is running the map you like or has the lowest latency is about the extent to which you can make an informed choice about the game you are going to be playing. The Xbox has made a huge improvement on this with Xbox Live, and the new version of this with the 360 takes this aspect even further.

Gamers are ranked across games based on their competence and their attitude. Quick games can be played that put you on a server with other people from the same region, minimising the chance of a language barrier and maximising the chance of everyone having great connections to the server.

Game types are getting increasingly sophisticated, and the tracking and logging of stats and players is going to mean an increasingly informed gaming population that is able to get the exact gaming experience it wants online. Halo 2 on the Xbox and Perfect Dark Zero on the X360 are perfect examples of the fantastic matchmaking abilities Microsoft have been working on.

This isn't going to be limited to the Xbox, either. Microsoft have already announced their plans to propagate a version of the Live service on the PC, using Windows Messenger as a foundation. The Integration of 'Windows Live' onto the PC could have a huge effect on the methods by which we find and play multiplayer games over the next couple of years.


Graphics
We've briefly touched on the fact that UT07 will be a huge game next year, based on the fact it will push computer hardware further than anything else. Aside from this release, there will be little to write home about from the other players in the graphics engine wars.

We're not going to see another iteration of the Doom engine: although Prey will be using it next year, we're not expecting anything tremendous on the multiplayer side there. Half-Life Source has already had a major upgrade in terms of the HDR add-on, and we're not sure that anything more significant is going to hit there, either. As far as we know, there are no licensing deals for the FEAR engine - it could be that the market for jaw-gaping shooters is rather smaller next year.

Final thoughts...
We hope you've enjoyed this whizz through multiplayer FPS. As I said, I was really struck by the snap back to Quake 3 gameplay in the new Quake title, and it really made me pause and think about where we've come from in terms of multiplayer and where we're going to go. With Halo 3 and UT07 next year, we could see a complete revamp of the current tournament system, which currently revolves around Painkiller and Doom3.

In the meantime, I'm going to stop writing this article and get back to fragging. w00t!

I've been fragging Quake 4 on my super-duper new spangly Shuttle rig, handily sorted for me by the bods at Udiggit.com. More details on the new bit-rigs soon.