Multiplayer games are hard to make, but those of us who are capable of pulling them off need to be aware of one critical mistake that far too many indie developers make. We don’t have the marketing reach that some of the big boys have, so we need to design for the growth stage of our game. I didn’t when I released my first indie multiplayer game and, sitting on Game Tunnel’s Monthly Panel, I see this same mistake being made by different developers every month. This could be the difference between your game flopping or building the momentum necessary to becoming successful.

Multiplayer games are Multiplayer!

The biggest mistake most indie developers make when they are building multiplayer games, is that they force the game to be multiplayer.

The developer thinks to himself “I can rely on the dynamic nature of PvP to keep players entertained.” The developer doesn’t bother building an AI. Tutorials aren’t necessary as everyone’s starting off on the same footing. There doesn’t need to be a lot of content as players will keep coming back to fight it out in PvP.

The reality is, if there is nothing but PvP available, your game will not be sticky. The first player who arrives at your game will see no one to play with and he will leave. If this cycle takes 10 seconds, you could get 6 new players per minute but no one will ever play your game. You have to give people a reason to stick around and play, whether that be a meta-game, bots, singleplayer missions, or whatever clever solution you come up with.

The reality is that the most important part of a multiplayer PvP is the community that plays it. If you don’t have that community before you release the game, you need to design a game that will encourage that community to form.

If the core of your game is PvP, make sure you address the reality that until your game is popular, people need something to do. Make bots. Make survival arenas. Do whatever it takes to give people a reason to stick around and play, even if there is no one to play against at this moment. With a little bit of luck, they’ll stick around long enough to actually get a PvP game going, and after a few weeks you might actually have the critical mass to start building an active community of players. Think about the first thing a new player sees when they first enter your game. An empty server is going to signal to them that the game is dead (even if it is not) and that they’re better of spending their time elsewhere because there is nothing to do here.