He brings out this old game called Moonbase Commander and says "Let's Play!" and I'm like "What the?"

Recently, it was announced that Microsoft would drop dedicated support for multiplayer on the original XBox. This doesn't affect me in the slightest, but it does make me wonder how long a game which is designed for multiplayer can last.

I have a computer on which I can put old dos games. I love some of those games, such as Master of Orion 1, various Infocom games, the Commander Keen series, and I've been wanting to try Elite sometime. These games are really old, but with the right equipment or an emulator, you can still play them the way (or close to the way) they were meant to be played. When something like Call of Duty 4 becomes old and people stop playing it, it will be difficult to play the multiplayer component without making a special gathering for it. Similarly, someday there will be no one around who can play Street Fighter 2 (or whatever is the best version of SF2) to the same level as those crazy pros who know all the combos and the tips and tricks and so on.

And you can forget about MMOs.

Jason Rohrer made a game called Between. It required the participation of a random player on the internet. I tried the game, starting as any other player by waiting for a partner. This took over an hour of waiting at a black screen. Finally, the player arrives and we start. You can never meet the other player, but I could see the effects of what they did. It was pretty cool, and I attempted to work together with them to fulfil a goal. They, it seems, got bored really quickly by such an arty game, and after a while I realised that they had left, leaving me with a task impossible to finish alone. I'm sure it was a good game, but I guess I'll never know.

Right now, I'm making two multiplayer games. One offline and one online. I can't help but wonder how they'll hold up. I guess it would be a good idea to create some AI for them, as they are much more competitive than arty. It will be interesting, because I've never made complex, player-like AI before, and these games are both rather unlike the rest of the games in their genres (RTS and fighting). I suppose their closest game relatives are Defcon and Scissor Paper Rock.

I guess I don't play many multiplayer games, and I never play MMOs, so I wonder if my worries are founded. I just want people to play my games.

By the way, Moonbase Commander is awesome.