OT, galactic civ II

[Endoperez]

NTJedi said:
Any great singleplayer game should always move towards adding multiplayer because that will increase gamers in the community, which increases word of mouth, which increases sales and this increases sequels. Not to mention the games increased replay value with multiplayer.
Considering the GAL_CIV_2 game already has a funky working hotseat it should be a minor thing to make hotseat and PBEM available.

Word of mouth can also be negative. A good SP game might be awful in MP, unless it was changed enough to become a totally different game. The original players will say it has changed too much and isn't fun any more, and new players will find it either bland (it does nothing new, because it copied other working MP games) or too wierd and strange (it is too different from other MP games and doesn't work, because it was originally meant for SP).

Some examples: Morrowind/Oblivion. They are SP games. The closest things in MP games are MMORPGs - very different. Then, there are the games like Solitaire, and e.g. roguelikes, where the player competes against himself, honing his skills in the game. Games in which one mistake can kill you COULD be made into MP games, in theory, but usually people prefer to die their own mistakes instead of higher-level players.
In some games, the ability to compare high scores is enough. What GalCiv might be able to do is to allow players to create race-templates. It won't be Spore-like dynamic and automatic, constant up/downloading, but it could give AI very weird and complicated ship designs.