So for a while now the trend has been towards the dominance of multi-player experiences, from MMOs to Halo these are the titles that are at the top of the industry right now. Even games that you couldn’t imagine moving towards a multi-player stance, like Dead Space or Assassin’s Creed, are having success with integrating a multi-player component. We’re at the point now where EA are on record as saying they don’t see a place for single player only games going forwards. So the question is simple, is this the end of the single player experience?
As someone who rarely plays online I feel like I should say I really hope not, but then again my two biggest picks from last year (Halo: Reach and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood) had compelling single player campaigns that were simply expanded by multi-player experiences if you chose to logon. I didn’t do that much, or at all with Brotherhood, but I didn’t really feel like I was missing out on anything by focusing on the solo experience. I still loved the titles; even without Brotherhood’s multi-player I still invested a good twenty to thirty hours in it.
I am, however, perfectly aware that my attitude to multi-player modes certainly makes me an outlier in modern gaming, the number of hours that players are now putting into multi-player games makes that pretty clear. Gamers collectively invest tens of millions of hours into multi-player gaming, so even though I bare no real love for going online with my games I can certainly understand why it’s cropping up in more games.
The real question is why do developers want you online with their games? Most titles are free to play from the developer’s point of view; although you may pay Microsoft for an Xbox Live Gold account that’s not being channelled to the developer or publisher when you play one of their titles. Of course the obvious answer is multi-player DLC. New maps, costumes etc… can easily be added into online modes without needing a huge amount of work put into getting it to fit with the single player campaign. Rather than writing a new story and making it work with what already exists, you simply slot in new content without worrying about how it interacts with the rest of the title.
The other reason, one that may actually be more important but is often overlooked, is to do with the “long tail”. Developers and publishers want you to still be playing their title months or years after release, even if you’re not giving them any money for the privilege. Why? Well firstly even if you’re not paying them anything, you’re helping to keep the game thriving and others may well buy something. Secondly it keeps the game fresh in your mind, and makes it significantly more likely that you’ll buy another one of their titles in the future.
Given these factors it seems logical for developer’s to focus on multi-player content over single player content. However I don’t think single player gaming is dead quite yet, more that it’s going through an evolution. It started with titles like Gears of War implementing drop-in, drop-out co-op throughout the game. Now titles like Mindjack and Brink are taking it a step further, with other players able to become not just your comrades but also you’re enemies.
This integration of multi-player into single player modes seems like it’s the natural next stop in gaming. Not abandoning single player altogether, but just pulling multi and single player experiences together into one cohesive experience. I don’t think we’re seeing the last hurrah of solo play, we’re just starting to see hints of what may come next.
Aquastyle
Multiplayer have certainly added a whole new layer to gaming as of lately, it has come to stay, without a doubt. It’s lots of fun and has great longevity, but when it comes down to it, it’s the singleplayer experiences that stays with you. If they were to die out, so would gaming for me personally. I can’t really see that happening though, think we’re safe.
Tuffcub
Every review of Dead Space 2 has raved about the single player but the Multiplayer just gets one line of “Yeah, its, ok.” No one seems to be interested in that.
teflon
I don’t think SinglePlayer is going anywhere. I mean, it was 1998-9 when we saw Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament turn up, both singly focussed on multiplayer. I’m sure back then people were also wondering if that was the end to story based FPS’s.
Simply, though, there’s no way that MP can give you a big engaging, complex story. Not to the extent that single player can. We’ll see plenty games focus heavily on the MP side, because there’s a lot of money there, and that’s where a lot of the hype comes from for games like CoD and Battlefield, but the SP is going to stick around.
asparagushunter
Multiplayer has its place, but it does seem completely shoehorned into a lot of games where it doesn’t belong and as such the main game is a lot shorter than it should be to cater for it.
My main concern though is that a games company’s idea of multiplayer involves online and not offline (I’m looking at you NFS: Hot Pursuit) and this just takes away from the experience, especially in racing games.
Serebii.Net
I’m not usually a multiplayer fan because it always feels the same..
That might be why I love AC:B’s multiplayer though, because it is more unique than any other experience I can think of =D
beeje13
Single player only games, or games which the main feature is single player (e.g. GTA, red dead) generally have the best single player experience.
Where single player is put in for the sake of it (e.g. CoD) the single player is usually either dull or short.
imo. :P
iamtdogg
have to agree with a lot of what’s been said already about Co-Op being the way forward … games like Brink looks like they might be doing that pretty well too.
I’m a huge fan of single player and have actually set myself a challenge of doing 52 single player campaigns this year (which when fitting around a family life and work is quite a challenge for me) and i’d like to continue doing more of them.
I tend to play little bits of online (Black Ops, Killzone, Battlefield BC2 etc) but then my favourite game ever was UC2 and i’ve never played with Drake online :)
Lord_Gremlin
I don’t like this trend, really. Just prefer singleplayer games. Although if a game has a substantial multiplayer component I usually check it out (like in Killzone 2 or upcoming Killzone 3).
plutoniumdragon
Whilst I accept it’s probably just marketing, I wonder if it’s also about piracy? After all, online multiplayer usually requires a genuine copy and (especially recently) unique codes. People have made noises about the dislike of online checks in single player games, but no-one complains if the checks are part of MP online play…
XisTG
I’m all for both modes in the games . I loved uncharted 1, loved even more uncharted 2 and I was surprised to see how fun the multiplayer is for the game :)