Multiplayer games on iOS

So do it if you are doing this for fun, or would be happy to see any kind of revenue from your product.

In all likelihoods, you would have to port your multiplayer only game to all the different platforms as people tend to have different cell phones. Not an issue with most games, but in the case of your multiplayer only local games, all the four to ten gamers must be willing to gather together, must have the same phone and buy your app...

Among the people I know in real life, I see a mix of iPhone, Samsung Galaxy Note II, cheapo Android, Windows 7 Phone and Nokia featurephones. Then I would need to somehow gather them in one physical place long enough to play, and convince each of them to shell out for a multiplayer game that they will need a few other people to gather around to play.

My favourite multiplayer game of all time is Counterstrike, and modders added bots in really quickly because you know...

 

Never limit a game to only those with friends.

 

Knowing the fact there is two kind of multiplayer landscape

- Local multiplayer

- Internet based multiplayer

Ideal multiplayer games would allow players play locally as well as on internet. If you restrict only on local games, we are loosing the opportunity to make people play online restricting the game to the rare moment when several people are likely to play together (and own the application).

The fact is : if the game is both internet and local there is server side version (for internet play) and a local version of the game. So you have to rewrite your game on iOS, equals creating two games and it's very heavy to maintain two game codes in two different programming language.

Then we have to think if having a local multiplayer game will worth the effort of creating 2 games in one. In other term if you are going to sell 2x times more to cover the expense of this feature. Or if you could invest this effort to make your game 2x better.

I agree with basil

So if your the main value of your game is multiplayer make it Internet based, keeping of course the ability to connect easily when people are together.

If the main value of your game is solo then make it local and allow people to do local multiplayer if they want knowing that this situation will be pretty rare.

That's my opinion

 

I never bother with multiplayer games, always go for single player. Lots of my friends have different games and as an older gamer i'm not really bothered about playing online against friends etc

 

Johnny no mates is a hater and will quickly destroy your chart position with one stars. I wouldn't dream of releasing a mp only game.

 

I'm a 29 year old guy who plays mobile games in bed while my wife reads. I'm sure there are others out there like me and you would exclude all of us right away. Most people I know don't play mobile games (or at least enough to stay on top of more indie releases on mobile) besides angry birds and without someone to play with I wouldn't pick it up.

Try to find a way to offer a multiplayer mode second, but a single player mode first. Maybe meld the two together somehow.