Single Player Games Dying?

Community General Discussion
1

I keep reading articles and seeing videos speculating about the future of gaming, mostly in regards to story telling. Many are suggesting that in this age of social media and instant connectivity to friends online, that the single player experience in games is slowly becoming obsolete in that people simply don’t want to play by themselves. That popularity and what others are doing is what is driving people to play together. That spending time in the campaign lobby while the multiplayer area is full of activity and other players with which to interact creates a feeling of missing out.

We’ve seen the decline of story modes in games recently (i.e your Call of Duty’s and Destiny, etc.) where developers are focusing on the multiplayer experience and treating the campaign like a burdensome necessity they just need to slap together because that’s how it’s always been done. And the players just plow through them to get their achievement while retaining about as much of it as 9th graders plowing through The Great Gatsby just so they can fill out the questionnaire and get a passing grade.

There have been exceptions recently. Games like Halo 4 and Bioshock Infinite are mainly story-driven and do it exceptionally, although both are about as popular as I am right now for suggesting they have any good qualities at all.

I think Halo 4’s legacy shows that the focus needs to be on multiplayer. That’s what most people want, apparently. When that works, the game works, regardless of the quality of the campaign. I’m still not sure why everyone hates Bioshock Infinite.

I recently saw speculation on the ever looming Half-Life 3, suggesting that Valve couldn’t get away with creating it in the fashion of its predecessors by offering only a solid, well designed, well written, story-driven single player experience because that’s not how people play games anymore.

Look at the upcoming Fable: as far as I know, it is entirely online with other players; that it doesn’t even offer a single player campaign experience. If you’ve played the first (or even 2) that should sound ridiculous to you. But the fact of the matter is, not enough people want to buy a game that they have to play alone.

And Evolve (which looks very similar to Fable Legends in execution) … as far as I know, it’s “here are four friends fighting a monster also played by a friend.” / “Why? What’s the premise?” / “I don’t know, because it’s fun.” And that’s fine and dandy, but it’s of no interest to me for that reason.

This is distressingly unfortunate for me, personally. Not so much with Halo. Halo is far too established in what it is, and so rooted in its universe that it couldn’t possibly go the way of say, Destiny. But what about Half-Life 3? Will there ever be that game that will become “the next Bioshock” or Portal? Or are developers going to simply make every game a big party and community play-date? Or will Halo be the only franchise left where I get to put myself into the shoes of an interesting protagonist, explore a beautiful world, interact with smartly designed AI characters and enemies, all the while having a brilliant story unfold as I progress without a dozen random people running about ruining the immersion?

And don’t get me wrong, I love multiplayer games, but that can’t be all that the game is. What do you guys think? Are these trends unsettling? Or are you excited about the social direction developers are taking their games? Even at the expense of the story?

2

They are unsettling, however not all games will do that, and we can definitely see this trend dropping for the future generations.

Humanity changes constantly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the opposite years later.

But I can’t say that I’m a big fan of this trend…

3

I hope so. Fingers crossed it’s just a fad and will eventually settle into own niche. I guess my fear is of developers jumping on the bandwagon and ruining their once-great franchise (lookin’ at you, Fable!)

4

I think the main thing to consider here is replay value. It is generally accepted by gamers that a game’s multiplayer is what gives it legs. Part of the reason for that is variety; you are more or less guaranteed a different experience each time you play with other people, whether its PvP or PvE. The same can’t be said for single-player story modes; even in open worlds, there’s a limit to the number of missions and amount of variety that it can deliver.

Of course, some single-player focused games are better at providing replay value than others. Dishonored and Mass Effect come to mind. Both of these games give the player choice in how to complete objectives and shape the story, making multiple playthroughs much more likely. In my opinion, single player modes (including Halo’s) need to add more player choice to stay relevant. I don’t see single-player surviving otherwise.
Note: I’m not saying that Halo needs story-altering decisions available in its campaigns, but that player choice in terms of completing objectives should be a much more prevalent mechanic.

5

Does multiplayer give Halo legs? yes… Heart and soul? no.

6

Multi player and single player cannot be compared. They are two separate things.

There will always be single player because there will always be people who will pay for it. The world isn’t black & white. I play Call of Duty, but not for the multi player. I play it for the single player because I like the story and all the big piece settings. I play Titanfall however for it’s fun multi player. I spent over 300 hours in vanilla Skyrim and hundreds of hours in the three Mass Effect games. I’ve spent thousands of hours playing Counter-Strike. I play Halo for the single player and multi player both.

With above in mind, if I was to ask a publisher what type of player I am, would they be able to give a definitive answer? No.

And I am not alone, most people play different types of games, from single to multi player, from RPG to FPS to RPG/FPS-hybrids. There is no way for publishers to ger rid of single player entirely.

Another thing to consider is emerging markets in Asia and Africa. Not all of these countries have a stable internet infrastructure. To be able to sell games consoles in these markets, single player is a must.

7

To be honest, best stories I’ve ever seen in video games are in games release in last few years. Spec Ops: The Line or Bioshock Infinite are absolutely beyond anything I’ve ever played before. Even now, when I look at collection of my PS4 games I see Wolfenstein: TNO and Metro Redux (both single player only). I will also buy Thief (when I find it at good price) and Far Cry 4 (when it comes out).

Even when Halo 4 came out, everyone was like: “OMG! It’s online population dropped! This game is sooo doomed!” But then this game kept selling and selling as good as it’s predecessors. For me it clearly shows that Halo fans nowadays are mostly campaign people and they’ll buy Halo games for it’s story rather than for shooting BR 4 times, time after time.

Single player games doesn’t seems to be dying at all.

8

I definitely tend to agree. I have almost a 40,000 gamerscore, so I’d like to think I play a fair amount of games, but even in that vast collection, the only games that stand out to me as having outstanding single player stories are as follows.

Alan Wake
Heavy Rain (PS3 only)
Bioshock
Dead Space
Bioshock Infinite
Mass Effect 1
Red Dead Redemption

Games like the Batman Arkham series, Assassin’s Creed, Shadow of Mordor, even Grand Theft Auto are fantastic single player experiences, but they aren’t terribly deep.

Halo’s a bit of a different experience as well. I wouldn’t put its campaign on nearly the deep or immersive level as the games I listed above, but at least it gives you a large universe and mixes the FPS genre in well with the sci-fi story. The reason I bought Halo 4 was strictly for the story, I’m of the belief that Halo 2 was the pinnacle of multiplayer experience in Halo (circa 2006).

It is an unfortunate trend that is happening though. Of the XB1 games I own/will own, I’m going to go ahead and say that none of them will have a deep single player story. Currently, I have Titanfall, Destiny, CoD Ghosts, BF4, NfS Rivals, and Shadow of Mordor. I plan to get Assassin’s Creed Unity, Sunset Overdrive, the MCC, and CoD AW, but none of those games are purely storyline driven. They’re either open world playgrounds, or linear stories that exist because of their multiplayer.

I do remember back when multiplayer HAD to be a part of everything to sell a game. Remember Bioshock 2’s or Dead Space 2’s awful multiplayer? Even the ME3 co-op (which was horribly broken), and Gears’ Horde mode, were in direct response to the sucess of CoD WaW’s -Yoink!- Zombies. Now the trend seems to be that a game is purely multiplayer, an online only game that will only exist in its current time and space, such as Destiny, Titanfall, even Sim City. Will those games be remembered? Perhaps. But you can’t fire up your console, and at the very worst LAN with them in ten years. They’ll be remembered, but those memories will never be able to be accessed again. Imagine playing StarFox, and still owning a copy of the game and the console its own, only to realize that on that rainy Saturday morning you want to play it, that you can’t anymore because it’s simply impossible.

Thankfully, studios woke up and realized that no multiplayer > shoddy multiplayer (as evidenced by Infinite and Dead Space 3). Hopefully they’ll do the same with these “online only multiplayer” games that seem to be all the rage as of late.

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> 2533274820093296;7:
> To be honest, best stories I’ve ever seen in video games are in games release in last few years. Spec Ops: The Line or Bioshock Infinite are absolutely beyond anything I’ve ever played before. Even now, when I look at collection of my PS4 games I see Wolfenstein: TNO and Metro Redux (both single player only). I will also buy Thief (when I find it at good price) and Far Cry 4 (when it comes out).
>
> Even when Halo 4 came out, everyone was like: “OMG! It’s online population dropped! This game is sooo doomed!” But then this game kept selling and selling as good as it’s predecessors. For me it clearly shows that Halo fans nowadays are mostly campaign people and they’ll buy Halo games for it’s story rather than for shooting BR 4 times, time after time.
>
> Single player games doesn’t seems to be dying at all.

Much of my above speculating was actually from an interview with one of the developers of Far Cry 4. He was the one saying Valve couldn’t get away with doing Half-Life 3 in the style of its predecessors … or something of the sorts.

I don’t think it’ll happen. Again, I think it’s a trend. And thetimewarptrio had a good point about being able to play these games years down the road for the same reason I can’t play Team Fortress 2. It’s dead and there is nothing else to do. That’s what had me worried about Spartan Ops in Halo 4 (pre-MCC), they’re online-only … so when I want to play through everything Halo years down the road when the servers are gone, I won’t get the story of the Janis Key, Halsey’s betrayal, any of the CG cutscenes, Requiem’s destruction, etc. Here’s to hoping when they put it in the MCC in December, we’ll be able to install it all and have access on or offline.

10

That people nowadays have no interest in proper single players anymore is absurd in my opinion. It is rather that (some) studios/publishers would like it to be it that way because multiplayer and online gaming is just much much more profitable.

I mean the effort you have to put into the design when wanting to deliver a good Campaign stands in no relation to that of designing a good PvP multiplayer.
You don’t have to write story and characters, you don’t have to tell that story via gameplay or additional cutscenes, you don’t have to write and record music, you don’t have to create an immersive world in which the story gets told in, you don’t have to design AI, etc. etc.

However, the trend that is mentioned here is actually nothing new and I’d even argue Halo has kind of followed it as well.
Halo’s single player experience might be exceptional in comparison to other highly popular fps but in comparison to some less popular fps (Metro series comes in mind) and especially outside of said genre it is really not.
A point a poster touched on before and with what I would agree is that Halo’s Campaigns lack depth, and breath actually as well.
I think Halo 4’s story was the best a Halo game has had so far but it was still scratching way too much on the surface, especially when you have such a rich already established lore. It could have been way more deepened and when a studio is even claiming to be really dedicated to the lore I actually don’t understand why it wasn’t.

Secondly, even though the story is overall quite good it was really not told in a good way.
I don’t mean with that that some things were left unexplained, personally I haven’t had an issue with that even though I did not read the Kilo-5 and Forerunner trilogy before H4 but after it, but that story and gameplay lacked a proper connection and didn’t really formed one, the worlds lacked immersion, believability, atmosphere, life and scale, the story lacked a proper pace and was often awfully hectic and hounded, mission design boiled down to filling the gaps between the separate story parts (cutscenes) with thoughtless and monotonous tasks/corridors/room/places mindlessly filled with enemies to shoot instead of telling the story throughout the entire game, during the missions, and not just in the cutscenes for the most part or giving the missions at least a proper relevance in regards to the story, etc.
So, even though I think the story itself was really enjoyable, 343i failed to make it truly enjoyable to play, what in the end resulted in a mediocre Campaign experience for me.

Anyway, the point I actually wanted to state is that I think people would very much appreciate and welcome a high quality fps single player experience but many studios/publishers, especially the big names, simply do not deliver that but instead have drifted into selling us more and more superficial stuff when it comes to Campaign/PvE, with Destiny likely being the new pinnacle, and focus more and more on multiplayer because that is where the big profit is at.

To once more relate back to Halo’s Campaigns, what is for example with the controversy of ONI’s and UNSC’s policy, the intergalactic conflicts between alien races, the moral controversy of the Spartan programs, the cultures of the various alien races? Where have these deep themes of Halo’s universe ever been properly touched on and incorporated into a game?
The depth of Halo’s lore has been pushed aside in the games for the superficial big, yet short actions and central theme “evil alien wants to wipe out humanity”, “earth under attack” and “hero saves the day” and for the gameplay theme of “shooting things”.

Personally, I’ve always thought that Halo’s true potential lays in its single player experience, its universe, its stories, as a shooter, yet the potential has never really been unfolded.
I just hope 343i/MS sees it like that as well because like I see it what will eventually remain from a game and what will not drop in value and quality is its story, not its online multiplayer.

> halojunky117G said: In my opinion, single player modes (including Halo’s) need to add more player choice to stay relevant. I don’t see single-player surviving otherwise.

Adding x alternative options and endings does in absolutely no way guarantee or add high replay value to a single player. A good movie or a good book doesn’t change either when you watch or read it once more, yet you enjoy watch/reading it over and over again. The same applies to a good game. It is really just a matter of quality and entertainment value.

11

I always play sp first before playing mp. Sp is big for me.

12

> Adding x alternative options and endings does in absolutely no way guarantee or add high replay value to a single player. A good movie or a good book doesn’t change either when you watch or read it once more, yet you enjoy watch/reading it over and over again. The same applies to a good game. It is really just a matter of quality and entertainment value.

It certainly helps. I’m not saying that fun campaign missions are impossible without this, but which has more replay value: a linear Call of Duty campaign or Mass Effect’s story mode? The former can have fun missions, but the general gamer is only willing to replay the same experience so many times.

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> 2533274876456769;12:
> > Adding x alternative options and endings does in absolutely no way guarantee or add high replay value to a single player. A good movie or a good book doesn’t change either when you watch or read it once more, yet you enjoy watch/reading it over and over again. The same applies to a good game. It is really just a matter of quality and entertainment value.
>
>
>
> It certainly helps. I’m not saying that fun campaign missions are impossible without this, but which has more replay value: a linear Call of Duty campaign or Mass Effect’s story mode? The former can have fun missions, but the general gamer is only willing to replay the same experience so many times.

When the linear story is highly entertaining to play people will play it over and over. When the story a la ME is not really entertaining to play people won’t play it over and over, no matter how many alternatives you provide.
I assume you think that CoD’s basic Campaign quality is not on the same level as that of ME’s, so it is a question of basic entertainment value when playing the game for the first time and on which you will decide if you are going to play it again or not.

Plus, the intention behind adding and implementing alternative stories/outcomes/etc in RPGs is not to encourage people to play the game again but to give your choices and acts a personal impact in the game.
Sure there are people who want to experience every possible ending and outcome what is then a (additional) motivation for them to play again but there are also people who will make the same decisions again when reloading the Campaign, except when they “regret” one in their former play-through.

14

> When the story a la ME is not really entertaining to play

I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t just say that…

Anyway, you seem to be focusing on the story-altering aspect of my argument and not the general player choice aspect. Features as simple as optional/secondary objectives also do wonders for a story mode’s replay value. Dishonored is the perfect example of this.

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> 2533274876456769;14:
> > When the story a la ME is not really entertaining to play
>
>
>
>
> I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t just say that…
>
> Anyway, you seem to be focusing on the story-altering aspect of my argument and not the general player choice aspect. Features as simple as optional/secondary objectives also do wonders for a story mode’s replay value. Dishonored is the perfect example of this.

I did not mean to say ME plays bad, I meant to say imagine a story/campaign that is structured like ME’s that overall plays bad though, because of AI or level design or whatnot. Would you play it again because it provides some forms of alternatives? I guess not.

And I did get that you were more aiming towards things like for example saving a squad of marines which then would later support you during the mission.
But such side objectives like that doesn’t encourage to play again, give the game any amount of significant replay value, when the Campaign is just not much fun to play/experience in the first place, what was basically my point.

Such side objectives are more like chocolate splits on the top of ice cream. They aren’t the reason why you want more of it or rather why you can’t get enough of it nor do they help when the ice cream doesn’t taste good. They just refine it a little.

Now excuse me because I have to get me some ice cream :stuck_out_tongue:

16

> Now excuse me because I have to get me some ice cream :stuck_out_tongue:

Damn, me too. This is why I hate food analogies :confused:

And I see what you’re saying now, and I agree. Fun is obviously the most important thing, but giving the player choice (and thus making everyone’s experience unique) would only add to that, and thus the replay value.

Like I said, it’s the difference between Call of Duty and Mass Effect. Call of Duty’s overly linear campaign modes couldn’t stand alone as well as Mass Effect’s. Variety and choice are key to replay value, and the aforementioned features (open worlds, optional objectives, etc.) are significant aspects of that.

17

You hit the nail on the head when you said that the campaign seems to be just some burdensome necessity that needs to be in the game. I myself was just thinking about that the other day. You don’t really see any quality in campaigns and story line anymore. Destiny is a perfect example, there isn’t any story, it’s fighting bigger enemies narrated by a wooden-sounding Peter Dinklage in the worst voice acting performance ever. The story only picks up when you speak to the Awoken in the Reef, but that’s only two cutsceneses that build stuff for DLC. The levels are retracing your steps for every level and are only mildly exciting encountering a new planet/faction for the first time (pretty much only three times).

Titanfall’s campaign was multiplayer, and a recent survey in Gameinformer showed that 40% of the players of COD: Ghosts didn’t every play single player (the survey was based off how many got a 10G cheevo for killing their first campaign enemy, which was three or four in).

The single-player genre is shrinking, and I honestly think is because of the new console generations and advancements and changing interest of gamers. Everybody always wants to be part of the action now. And with performance advancements in console, why should so much dedicated work go to an experience that could be done offline while the you have multiplayer that can run on dedicated servers and at insane speeds?

I honestly think story is part of what makes a game a game. But so many people jump into MP, and that’s all they ever do. More and more gamers are doing this, and when devs see this, they think why should they invest time into what the minority is going to even try instead of improvising on the majority’s main interest. :\

18

Here’s how I’m going to analogize it, without using references that’ll make me hungry. Somebody paralleled it to books earlier, which was perfect.

You have three different books. An immersive short story, that is gripping and provides a good twist. Like “The Most Dangerous Game.” Then you have a short story that is basic, rather predictable, and goes in a pretty straight line. Normally this story doesn’t change too much from its successors and predecessors. Like “The Cat in the Hat.” Then, you have a story where you choose your options, and each time you make a choice, it causes a different effect, and you get a different result. Aka, “Choose Your Own Adventure.”

I’m pretty sure you can figure out what’s what here. In order, we’ll say it goes “Dead Space”, “CoD Black Ops II”, and “Mass Effect”.

Which one has the best overall value? It all depends. If you love the simplicity and free rolling entertainment that the Cat in the Hat offers, then by all means play through it multiple times.

If you like a deeper meaning, and a gripping tale, then choose “The Most Dangerous Game.”

And if you like controlling your own fate and multiple endings, then “Choose Your Own Adventure” is the way to go.

Which one offers more replay value? I think the answer should be obvious. The more options you have, and the more of an emotional attachment you have to a story, the more you’re going to go back and explore it more than once.

19

Huh? I really liked bioshock infinite, the ending was kind of weird but nonetheless I thought it was stellar.

To be honest, when I’m looking for story, I read books. When it comes to movies, I find that 90 minutes isn’t long enough to flesh out an interesting plot. This is why the hobbit a book of 300 pages is being split into 3 movies.

I feel the same way about video games. I don’t find them to be that great of a medium when it comes to telling stories. I was much more gripped and invested in the novelization of halo CE than halo CE itself. Halo CE is my favorite campaign but if I’m looking for story ill reread the book. With halo 2, I was very excited to play this game because of the whole invasion of earth. Well from a story telling point I was wholly let down. But halo 2 is still a great game to play and lots of fun. Then with halo 3, I completely overlooked or missed all of the problems with the story because I was always having so much fun playing it. Halo Reach was my favorite campaign until I read the fall of reach. Halo 4 was more story oriented but I wasn’t really intrigued by it and I felt the gameplay partly suffered and the campaign like 3, was very short.

and then with cod, I played the campaigns of MW2, black ops, and MW3 and yeah I enjoyed them for the most part I couldn’t tell you the story to save my life. Once I got on the internet and read a detailed explanation of bioshock infinite’s campaign I really liked the story. Red dead redemption is my all time favorite video game because of the story, the gameplay wasn’t as enjoyable but I feel it had a good balance of both and I’ve never once touched the online multiplayer for that game.

halo is unique in the way that it has great, memorable campaigns and great multiplayer. This is what I believe separates the great games from the good games. Titanfall might have fun multiplayer (I don’t know I’ve never touched it) but it’ll be dead in a couple of years without some sort if story to grip people to the franchise.

to wrap up my thoughts, I hope we get a novelization of the invasion of Earth although I doubt it, any story in a game will always be better as a book, and when it comes to video games, gameplay trumps story. If its not fun to play, the chances of the average player finishing it is minimal no matter how good the story telling is. Buy the game for the story, stay for the multiplayer.

20

> 2533274974457747;17:
> You hit the nail on the head when you said that the campaign seems to be just some burdensome necessity that needs to be in the game. I myself was just thinking about that the other day. You don’t really see any quality in campaigns and story line anymore. Destiny is a perfect example, there isn’t any story, it’s fighting bigger enemies narrated by a wooden-sounding Peter Dinklage in the worst voice acting performance ever. The story only picks up when you speak to the Awoken in the Reef, but that’s only two cutsceneses that build stuff for DLC. The levels are retracing your steps for every level and are only mildly exciting encountering a new planet/faction for the first time (pretty much only three times).
>
> Titanfall’s campaign was multiplayer, and a recent survey in Gameinformer showed that 40% of the players of COD: Ghosts didn’t every play single player (the survey was based off how many got a 10G cheevo for killing their first campaign enemy, which was three or four in).
>
> The single-player genre is shrinking, and I honestly think is because of the new console generations and advancements and changing interest of gamers. Everybody always wants to be part of the action now. And with performance advancements in console, why should so much dedicated work go to an experience that could be done offline while the you have multiplayer that can run on dedicated servers and at insane speeds?
>
> I honestly think story is part of what makes a game a game. But so many people jump into MP, and that’s all they ever do. More and more gamers are doing this, and when devs see this, they think why should they invest time into what the minority is going to even try instead of improvising on the majority’s main interest. :\

Sometimes in the matchmaking lobby in Halo 4, I’ll look at peoples’ service records (just to be nosy and creepy) and earlier today, there was an SR130 who for campaign had only 3 enemies killed. No completed missions whatsoever. It blew my mind.