# Game Reviewing Rant

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-reviewing-rant/150281>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [January 22, 2003, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-reviewing-rant/150281 "2003-01-22T20:16:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2003, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-reviewing-rant/150281/41 "2003-01-23T20:59:15Z")

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Multiplayer isn’t for everyone. Some of us have no friends ☹

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**Author:** ![Kaitlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/73ab20/32.png) [@Kaitlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaitlyn)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2003, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-reviewing-rant/150281/42 "2003-01-25T05:36:30Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> To use Civ 3 as an example, yes, it was “the game” as released that it was single player. But in that case, the absense of multiplayer capability was a significant drawback to the game; it’s a game that conceptually lends itself to MP play, AND virtually all similar games have multiplayer. The game was a much weaker product without MP than it should have been with it.

This seems a strange claim to me. Which similar games are you referring to? I’ve never seen a turn-based strategy game that would lend itself well to multiplayer–they seem, like adventure games, to be almost exclusively solo oriented.

At the endgame of Civ3, a single turn sometimes takes as long as 5 minutes. If you have three players, thats 15 minutes per turn; a hundred turns would take days of actual play time. Unless you alter the gameplay into something other than turn-based, which makes it into a fundamentally different game, I don’t see any way to make it work.

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