Essential Linkage: LAN play excluded from Command & Conquer 4, StarCraft 2.
Most of us have experienced the buzz and thrill of bringing a roomful of like-minded gamers together with their trusty custom-built-and-modded cases to play games for hours at a time, but for the future it's looking like something we won't have for much longer.
LAN play, or the art of connecting computers to a Local Area Network to frag each other, has been a staple of PC gaming ever since the original Doom game was released in 1993, and definitely one of the best ways to experience multiplayer. However the devs behind Command & Conquer 4 seem to be ignoring this long-held tradition, removing local play and making the player sign in to an online service - even to play the singleplayer component of the game.
While this must make sense to someone in the accounts department (after all they get to monitor every bought copy of the game), it's a huge oversight to completely remove something that would in fact help drive sales of the game. Many people pick up games that they played at a LAN and had a blast with, but with internet connections often being an afterthought if included at all, the restrictive online logging in system would mean that LAN play would be difficult - if not impossible.
Electronic Arts are adding in a class-based tracking levelling system, and a ranking for even the singleplayer campaign that needs to be followed by their stats servers, but this is an offensively powerful strike at the heart of traditional PC gamers everywhere. Sure every single kill you make, unit you produce and match you win in the game ever will be recorded, but what's the use if you can't even play the game you paid for without also paying for the internet? MMOs such as City of Heroes obviously need it, but why does singleplayer require it?
This is painful news to hear, since even Blizzard have crippled their LAN play and restricted players to an online-only Battle.Net experience. If both Command & Conquer 4 and Starcraft 2 remove support, two of the biggest RTS franchises out there, will this cause all other titles to follow suit? Will it eventually mean that you can't even buy a FPS like Crysis and play it without the Internet?
There are too many questions at this stage to definitively answer the whole issue, but Atomic isn't glad to see this popular pastime disappear - and we're definitely not alone. Head over to the petition to Blizzard to put LAN play back in Starcraft 2 (at time of writing 62,702 signatures had been added) if you're of the mind to sign, but hope seems dim at this point.
Issue: 107 | December, 2009