Are Single Player Games Dying?
So, firstly i want to preface this with a small admission. I personally despise the source of this story, namely IGN. I find them to be pandering idiots and are part of the problem with games journalism.
Anyway, moving onto the story. This was prompted by the developers of an upcoming game, Titanfall, saying that there would be no single player aspect of the game. His argument for this is that the development studio, Respawn, consists of only 60 people. Given a single mission that is completed in 8minutes can take six months to develop. If he’d left the statement there i would have accepted this, since it makes sense. However he also goes on to state than only 5% of those that start a Single Player campaign will finish it.
Personally i want to know where they got their facts. This for me is a big thing, if your going to state something as fact you have to back it up with sources. At no point in this article is there any mention of sources, which is typical of IGN, state something as fact and don’t back it up.
“Really, you split the team. They’re two different games. They’re balanced differently, they’re scoped differently. But people spend hundreds of hours in the multiplayer experience versus ‘as little time as possible rushing to the end’ [in single-player]. So why do all the resources go there? To us it made sense to put it here. Now everybody sees all those resources, and multiplayer is better. For us it made sense.”
This statement just cries excuses for making a multiplayer game and abandoning the single player. Over the past decade there have been loads of games that have more than adequately mixed multiplayer and single player aspects. While i do agree that they’re balanced differently (or rather most multiplayer games just don’t seemed to be balanced). However once again he throws out a statement that people spend 100’s of hours in multiplayer but as little time as possible in single player. Again i don’t really agree with this, on the one hand the 100’s of hours in multiplayer is true. However the comments regarding single player aspects just doesn’t ring true. For example Battlefield Bad Company, for me I’ve gotten over 90hours into the single player game, I’ve played it through multiple times. Yet I’ve only played the multiplayer aspect for a total 20 minutes.
Most of the games i play in fact are single player games, only a bare handful are multiplayer games. Even those few have single player aspects that frankly outweigh the times I’ve played on the multiplayer. The only game that I’ve played of late that’s truly multiplayer would be Defiance, but even that plays as a single player game (though that game fails so bad in and of it self).
I’ve also played StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 and i don’t think I’ve even bothered with the multiplayer aspect of the games.
Time and Resources are spent on the single player game because that’s the introduction of the game. Many criticise the shortness of the single player games of games like Battlefield 3, but these single player campaigns do fill a purpose. They introduce you to the various functions of the game, such as flying and combat. Which in reality is all it’s supposed to do, because games like Battlefield are primarily a multiplayer game.
However the reverse is also true, a recent game, Spec Ops: The Line is actually a game that is predominantly single player game with a tacked on multiplayer aspect.
I get they wanted to make an amazing multiplayer game so that’s where they focused their development. I just don’t see the point of them trying to make excuses for them. Had they came out and simply said, “We didn’t make it a single player game cause we want to make a multiplayer game”. I’d have actually have just said “go for it guys!!”
While i do think Multiplayer games are on the rise and are fun to play, yet i don’t think only 5% of people complete single player games. i don’t know the number, but i think it’s a lot higher than 5%.
Actually, I hope that multiplayer games are dying. Seeing the trends of MMO’s today, it certainly seems to be changing. Sometimes you just reach the point where you can’t put up with trolls and i***** on the internet. Ah the joys of single player 🙂
I’m in your camp for this one. Singleplayer is usually my first stop when I take the plastic wrap off my games. Of course I do play the multiplayer and tend to enjoy it, but if the developer is up to snuff, it’s the campaign that get remembered fondly down the road, not the passing thirty-to-one killstreak I got that one time.
As for Respawn’s comments, I doubt that the stats are that low (5%). About three years ago Bioware, one of my favorite studios, did post statistics on Mass Effect 2 that said about half of players who started the game didn’t finish it (http://www.destructoid.com/mass-effect-2-player-choice-statistics-are-surprising-188362.phtml) which for a singleplayer-only game, and a sequel, seemed a little low.
Hopefully not the end of singleplayer, but the rise of multiplayer is unstoppable with Internet speeds as high as they are now.
Yeah, it certainly dosent help when companies force the single player game TO be a multiplayer one. just look at what’s happening with the need for speed franchise. I love single player games and hope to see more of them, though without the tacked on multiplayer (i’m looking at you spec ops the line!!)
Adam Sessler said something very interesting about the New Tomb Raider and its multiplayer. Game Companies are in it for the money, profit margins, if the player sells his game their profits shrink even futher down the line.
So Multiplayer, DLC and addons, offer an additional longevity to the game that will prevent you from selling your game which in turn forces other consumers to buy the game from it’s original packaging which translates into a bigger profit to the game companies.
So yeah in short we will see single player campaings shortened, and probably with a somewhat acceptable storyline just for you to jump into its multiplayer a lot sooner than later.
From a business point of view it sort of makes sense but as a gamer it just sucks…