Total War developer Creative Assembly believes it would be “really stung” by reviewers if multiplayer – still a relatively new addition to the game’s turn-based campaign mode – was removed.
“Reviewing is important,” studio director Tim Heaton told Gamasutra, “it’s still important.”
“And there are some hygiene factors that perhaps you need for some reviews that maybe aren’t as strong for players. At the moment, Total War is primarily a single-player game, and we have talked about how valid multiplayer is in the way that we’ve sometimes done it in the past.
“We actually feel we’d be really stung by reviewers if we just took multiplayer out. It would maybe be a tick box feature that would disappear.”
Those first five or 10 minutes playing Total War (and presumably taking in all of the options) are “super important” for some reviewers, acknowledged Heaton – “not hardcore reviewers, but more mainstream reviewers”.
Scoring high on Metacritic – 90 per cent – is incredibly important for Creative Assembly. That’s why the studio does “Metacritic Analysis” during development. This involves breaking down the game’s features and looking at them from a player’s and reviewer’s perspective. And then scything the chaff.