Multiversus Future Online Fighting Games: Fighting games are both a massive industry and a distinct subculture, and this paradox creates a basic tension within the genre. ‘MultiVersus’ raises the question of whether or not “free-to-play” or games with simplified gameplay can bring the genre to a wider audience.
At first, MultiVersus was very popular. Less than a month after its release on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, the Super Smash Bros.–like platform brawler had more than 150,000 concurrent users and over 20 million players. In just a few short months, the number of active players has dropped dramatically.
Its current player count is on par with that of classic fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken shortly after release, although it lags behind Brawlhalla, another online brawler that came out in 2017. However, MultiVersus’s early days have been a strange success story, providing an encouraging look into the future of MMORPG fighting games.
Behold Mortals, he has arrived. #MultiVersus #BlackAdam pic.twitter.com/ZAuZ2yKUKH
— MultiVersus (@multiversus) October 31, 2022
Multiversus Future Online Fighting Games
MultiVersus, released by Warner Bros., features a roster of IP crossover stars, including Batman, Arya Stark from Game of Thrones, and LeBron James, who received top billing in Space Jam 2. To mixed reviews and little interest, Nickelodeon released a similar title last year called Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, which starred SpongeBob SquarePants and Helga Pataki. MultiVersus was successful not only due to the familiarity of its pool of characters, but also due to its much lower price tag of $0.00 when compared to Brawl’s initial release price of $49.99.
However, in the five years following Fortnite’s release, several other successful online multiplayer games have appeared, like MultiVersus. MultiVersus, like Fortnite, is available at no cost to the player. That is to say, there are no costs associated with playing MultiVersus, downloading it, using any of the four demo characters (out of a total of 22 for the time being), grinding matches, or spending in-game money won from those matches on additional characters, costumes, or flairs.
There is also the option to purchase one of three “founder’s packs,” which range in price from $40 to $100 and grant access to a number of features immediately upon purchase. But the free-to-play model means that MultiVersus makes its most money off of players who stick around and buy bundles of “Gleamium,” an in-game currency that is significantly more valuable than gold but can only be acquired with real money. These are the so-called “microtransactions” that get you in the end.
The advent of the free-to-play model sparked a never-ending debate on the morality of in-game purchases, especially given the games’ primary audience of young people. Blizzard made Overwatch and its recently launched sequel free to play last month, but locked select heroes behind paywalls and received criticism for being too similar to the original game’s occasionally controversial but generally relatively benign loot-box system. While not all games featuring microtransactions are free to play, free-to-play games rely on them most decisively. There are various ways a publisher may transform a game into its own storefront.
In-game currency, microtransactions, and paid downloadable content for new characters and combat arenas have been added to recent editions of classic fighting game series like Street Fighter and Tekken, as well as Smash, although they have resisted full conversion to the free-to-play model. Proponents of making the upcoming Street Fighter 6 free to play argue that doing so will attract a player base large enough to rival that of the MultiVersus.
Although there are some similarities, the analogy is more complex. Even though MultiVersus debuted with a bang at the Evolution Championship Series esports competition in August with a $100,000 prize pool for a 2v2 event, the game hasn’t shown to be as consistently competitive as its forebear, Smash. For better or worse, this is a casual game for the time being.
A really competitive free-to-play fighting game has not yet been developed by the video game industry. It’s not for want of effort that this hasn’t happened in recent years. Project L is a 2D team fighter (in the vein of Marvel vs. Capcom) under development at Riot Games. The game will feature characters from League of Legends, Riot Games’ flagship multiplayer online battle arena game. Early reports have painted Project L as a genre superweapon, a blockbuster product that will attract a new audience to the fighting game genre.
While the release of Project L has been met with unprecedented excitement in the fighting game community, some have expressed concern for the genre as a whole. According to Riot, Project L, like MultiVersus, would be free to play, and it is said that the game will do away with, or at least downplay the importance of, motion inputs like the forward-down-forward motion for Ken’s Shoryuken, which was made famous by Street Fighter II in the 1990s.
This raises yet another important question about the future of combat games: are they too difficult? The fighting game community has been perplexed by this issue for years. Although it’s possible to “button smash” one’s way to the top in the lower ranks, I don’t think it’s worth it. It may take a novice several hours of practice before they are comfortable stringing together the inputs into larger combinations under the pressure of a live match. But even if a player were to master all the possible permutations for a single character, there would still be a vast array of additional personas and archetypes to study. This requires a significant time and effort investment.
Until a player master these basics, they are likely to misunderstand the game’s central mechanics, perform poorly in online matches, form undesirable habits, and eventually abandon the game in favor of something more immediately satisfying. The publisher doesn’t have as much to lose from a higher-skill floor if the player has already paid the retail price, but a free-to-play game does. Even the most casual of entrants must be kept interested in the free-to-play game, thus it can be tempting to lower the most visible barrier to entry for competitive games: the difficulty curve.
*burp* We asked and MVP’s showed us what they got, Rick and Morty have never looked so good. #MultiVersus pic.twitter.com/w6rtsCL900
— MultiVersus (@multiversus) November 4, 2022
Contrary to popular belief, free-to-play games can be quite complex. After all, Fortnite was the first free-to-play smash hit, and it’s not exactly a cakewalk, what with the game’s trademark building concept being difficult to master and even more so to counter for novices who just want to loot and shoot. The battle royale genre was being remade from the ground up by games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
In contrast, the fighting game community has been holding its own set of conventions since the early 1990s, thanks to its notable developers and competent communities. There’s an inherent contradiction here since fighting games are both popular and somewhat uncommon. The survival of the genre depends on attracting new players, but even the most naive newcomers are unlikely to stick around for a free game that is too thin to keep their interest for more than a few hours, regardless of whether it supports motion inputs.
Must we have a price tag attached to Street Fighter 6? Should Project L completely abandon the terrifying square? Assuming, of course, that Capcom and Riot are willing to temper anticipation: It may be counterproductive to make entry easier for new players if you don’t also give them the tools to master the game’s more advanced mechanics. After a promising beginning because of its free-to-play model and impressive cast of characters, MultiVersus has fizzled out due to its simplistic gameplay and overloaded servers. It’s instructive as well as inspirational.
Final Words
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