Multiplayer focus is killing singleplayer games why add multiplayer to games that don't need it like mass effect 3,bioshock 2,deadspace 2 and 3,Resident evil 6 etc.This tacked on multiplayer is bad for us that likes pure singleplayer games,what is the point in singleplayer if you need an ai partner like resident evil 5 and 6.This will probably happen with deadspace 3,or if they added a pure singleplayer mode,would be nice.God of war accension has tacked on multiplayer mode hopefully they leave the singleplayer intact,and no co-op crap.Games and multiplayer is nice when there is a firm and solid reason for it,by even adding it ontop during the deadline is why singleplayer one day will be gone,bit by bit multiplayer will take over the focus.and poof you will all play multiplayer games and have no other choice then going retro,to play singleplayer.Good luck gamers,and game company's.This singleplayer era is gone for good soon.

Side Rant:

Games in general has changed.i Feel that i can't catch up with gaming that i used to.Money has been a driving force for game developers in the past,but on another scale today.they use so much money on pr and commercials i don't even know how to see trough,what is pr bullshit and what is real.Because the big hitters: Call of Duty,Mario,Zelda,Gears of War,God of War,Forza,Metal gear Solid the list goes on.good games exsist,but when the marked is overflooded with other games,wich i really want to play i get confused easily,and then decide,not play anything at all.

PS! suggestions and discussions are welcome.Have a good weekend duders!.

Many companies try to make the usage of Internet relevant because that makes piracy harder (nearly impossible at least for that part of the game). IMHO.

If piracy is ever gone the "immunity of the group" and lack of piracy may make single player games profitable again. Either that or very closed and controlled platforms, as consoles try to be with different degrees of success.

@Trylks said:

Many companies try to make the usage of Internet relevant because that makes piracy harder (nearly impossible at least for that part of the game). IMHO.

If piracy is ever gone the "immunity of the group" and lack of piracy may make single player games profitable again. Either that or very closed and controlled platforms, as consoles try to be with different degrees of success.

The only way to decrease piracy is if developers take the Valve and CD Projekt route by improving the services for the consumer. Add the soundtrack, some cheap collectors edition, some free old games, maybe free DLC and not fuck over players with bad ports, restricted online services and DRM.

This won't completely get rid of piracy, mind you. But it's certainly something that most big businesses do not understand or are too cheap to undertake.

Sorry, but was this written on a touchscreen while running to catch a plane or something?

@Ascardon: No one is forcing you to play these multi-player modes and no single player isnt being run off by multiplayer. trust me SP is here to stay.

Pro Tip: Work on your grammar.

This all seems a bit dramatic.

This bandwagon is already miles down the road.

Kind of a tired argument, but it doesn't make it any less correct. I spent the last few days playing Silent Hill 2. One of my favorite games of all time, and multiplayer hooks and whatnot in the campaign would have ruined it. I don't have a problem with a separate multiplayer campaign. Hell, throw in deathmatch or something. Just don't build my singleplayer experience around the possibility of multiplayer, like Resident Evil 5 and 6, and from the looks of it, Dead Space 3.

EDIT: Mass Effect 3, too. Oh, I have to play multiplayer to get the good ending in my fucking singleplayer game? How about fuck you.

@Ascardon said:

1. Mass effect 3
2. Bioshock 2
3. Deadspace 2
4. Resident evil 6

Hmm.

1. Was actually really solid multiplayer content; made by a completely separate team (Bioware Montreal)
2. Made by a completely separate team (Digital Extremes)
3. Made by a completely separate team (uncredited?)
4. Capcom. I mean really...

What I'm trying to get at is that, in most situations like these, you maintain the same development team that worked on the previous entry and you hire a new team to throw multiplayer into the mix for quick cash. In Mass Effect 3's case, a lot of that multiplayer content was used to pad out the singleplayer experience--so you're actually getting more content (granted, it wasn't spectacular, but I had fun with it).

As many others have mentioned, connecting users to an online experience in a meaningful way is also a solid way to prevent piracy: a rampant issue in this industry right now. Moreover, there's the value proposition: singleplayer games end whereas multiplayer experiences last forever and a lot of people make their buying decisions in accordance with this philosophy.

(also, completely anal me: you're supposed to put a space after grammatical punctuations likes periods and commas)

@Tru3_Blu3: The only way to decrease piracy is to make your products more easily accessible and available than the pirated products.

The Valve route I completely disagree with as you have to always be tethered to the internet to use your products and the fact your products can be taken away and revoked by Valve even after you've purchased tons of products. (as in your entire Steam account, not just one game)

The proper way is to not punish or restrict your legally paying customers.

Also, Steam games are pirated all the time. So I dont appreciate having DRM on my legally purchased product or a corporation having the ability to take it back. Offline mode also never works reliably so I don't want to hear that shit from people either.

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

correct me if im wrong, but games have had multiplayer options for about 20 years now.

Gaming has changed multiplayer is taking over will tomorrow hamburger-style like a soldier when it take shits and marzipan.

@Irvandus said:

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

Your Boom Boom Pow reference is so 3008.

@Ascardon , you just need to look in places outside of the general blockbusters to find the single-player experiences you're looking for. I've played probably 50 or 60 games this year, and only 10 or 20 games were primarily multiplayer-focused experiences. Others, like Mass Effect 3, only had multiplayer hooks that really didn't affect the experience in total. Also, Dead Space 3 is confirmed not to include an AI partner in the single-player mode; the secondary character just won't be present as often outside of multiplayer. It can be a bit overwhelming to know what to look for, but that's why things like reviews, Quick Looks, or the Bombcast exist to sum it up for you.

Disregarding financial and business reasons for the use of internet-connected multiplayer, there's nothing wrong with games moving towards being a multiplayer-focused medium.

You like singleplayer, so you see multiplayer development as crippling your singleplayer experience. While there may be some truth to the shared resources of money and developers to produce that side content, more singleplayer would take those same resources as well. I've never really been someone that has played games singleplayer very often. I've grown up playing games in multiplayer, be it on a couch, hotseat-style, or now over the internet as we all do day to day. I don't mind playing games alone, but I don't like to play singleplayer. This coming from someone who lives practically like a hermit and hates most people and social contact. That said, playing games singleplayer is just so... lacking to me. That sense of fulfillment that I'm sure you have, I simply do not share when playing on my own. I can appreciate a game for what it is in its singleplayer, but that does not mean I have fun playing it. The only way for me to reason with enjoying a game solo is by having people next to me on the couch watching, or if it's in preparation for later multiplayer activities.

To take a recent game as an example, though, of where I have been disappointed, Assassin's Creed 3 has been a blast to play. I've been playing it in the living room for everyone to watch and enjoy together, and it's made for a much more fun and intimate experience with friends and family. My friends and I, throughout the game's development, have hoped for a cooperative mode for the story, even so limited as only working in the Animus when at the appropriate time in the story (say, when you have your compatriots to call on). Their multiplayer in Brotherhood was a great step, and the assumption was that the numbered sequel would see great improvement and iteration and expansion on the ideals of multiplayer Assassin's Creed, especially considering it had proven itself to be so fun. Instead, they have done little with it and still that huge open world feels so empty because no matter what I do, I'm not doing it with anyone.

Open-world games are especially at fault for this, with the success of GTA4 and Red Dead free roam modes being great examples of the fun to be had in those worlds. Everyone knows of the crazy stories of stunts pulled, or stupid things done because they were hilarious. If you're doing that only in service of your own eyes seeing it, though, it is so much emptier to me than sharing those moments, sometimes unforgettable for a lifetime, with others who might rejoice in the fun as well, only amplifying the happiness and fun to be had.

When I see games coming out with only singleplayer components, I do not demand that they remove all of that and focus on multiplayer, as some who don't enjoy multiplayer seem to do in the hopes of "saving" singleplayer. My hopes, instead, are for the developers to implement a way for me to enjoy the game with my friends through multiplayer, adding to them and making something better in the end. Just because you want your fun doesn't mean that we shouldn't have ours. We want something added to the game, something that is a new bonus in the game's favor and well thought out. Guess what? We don't like half-baked multiplayer setups, either. A bad design is simply bad, and appeases no one.

You talk about multiplayer through a very narrow view of both its potential and its impact on gamers. Just because I love multiplayer doesn't make me someone who will always jump on a cooperative mode, or serially buys Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Halo games so I can "pwn some n00bs." My friends and I that play multiplayer enjoy the same experiences that you do, only we like to go through them together and come up with new ways to enjoy the game that the developers may not have even intended. There are good cooperative games out there that tell amazing, impactful stories. There are open-world games that immerse us in a whole new place and time. There are competitive games that bring finely-honed balance and design to the fore in heated matches against one another or as a team.

tl;dr Just because you don't like a feature doesn't mean it should be excised from a game developer's litmus of what makes a game. Broaden your horizons and you may find, like I have, that multiplayer can be just as substantial and deep as singleplayer, and can bring people a whole lot closer together.

Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 3, and Resident Evil 5 all did not suffer from having a multiplayer mode. In Mass Effect 3 the multiplayer was extremely fun and deep, not tacked on at all. In Resident Evil 5 both the coop and Mercenaries modes were also excellent. I never played it purely single-player for any length of time but if you ask me, there are actually far too FEW games that offer an extensive cooperative multiplayer experience.

That said, you can't simultaneously complain that there are too many games for you to play and also complain that there aren't enough single-player experiences. Can you honestly name me a single-player campaign from any game that was made worse simply because of the existence of a multiplayer mode? These multiplayer modes almost always developed by a separate team or separate studio altogether. The funds for this extra development wouldn't magically roll back into the single-player if it weren't for multiplayer, they're only allotted specifically because of the extra sales a multiplayer mode could potentially add and the number of trade-ins it could help prevent.

@Dagbiker said:

BG2 is designed around having featureless mutes filling your entire party now?

@Terramagi said:

@Dagbiker said:

BG2 is designed around having featureless mutes filling your entire party now?

No but having a "tacked on Multiplayer" has always been a thing.

Pong is multiplayer. Multiplayer gaming is not new. Dead Space 3 does have a single player mode. The game. It's drop-in co-op. Unless something has radically changed from the last time they demoed the game.

You can't already be blaming Dead Space 3... If anything, the developers were smart about it and changed all the sequences slightly for both co op and single player. They showed this in one of the many walkthroughs they have shown so far. Yes everyone can agree with the RE games, at least they sort of tried to make it better with RE6, but it seems like its still mandatory to have a player controlled partner. Another game that I felt that had no business having multiplayer in it would have to be Bioshock 2. I liked the whole concept of it being before the fall of rapture and stuff, but it didn't quite feel balanced or "tight" as other games are. As far as multiplayer changing the experience of the single player aspect of a video game? I don't think so. People seem to think that there are a bunch of people writing gaming code in a room still and that the big bad people from upstairs come to tell them "Hey, put multiplayer in this somehow." When in fact, the developer has a whole separate team that works on the multiplayer aspect.

@tarvis: Pong is an interesting analogy. However typical modern games, unlike pong, require internet access which means the multiplayer aspect will eventually become redundant. And Pong unlike modern games was solely based on this multiplayer aspect, while the OP's concern is that multiplayer is affecting the quality of the singleplayer experience, through development time but more importantly retroactively effecting the games singleplayer when the online is discontinued. (Imagine playing Journey or Dark Souls without the player interaction.)

@Dylabaloo: I feel the real issue is that poor design affects a single player experience. The door that requires two players to open is an easy example. But there are plenty of examples of games intelligently designed around the player's preference for single or multiplayer. Doom, Sonic 2, Baldur's Gate, Saints Row, System Shock 2, all the random arcade shooters and brawlers.

Franchises, I think, is a whole other more complicated topic.

Edit - Sorry. As to Journey and Dark Souls. There seem to be plenty of people that prefer to play the latter solo and co-op actually ended up detracting from my experience in the former. In the case of Journey, it was because I was just running around looking at everything and everyone it paired me up with wanted me to go to very specific locations. Like trying to show me where an item was, but I was busy just running around the area. So it ended up bad for all involved.

Growing pains.

Publishers are scrambling to find large enough audiences to buy their super expensive games, and today, the winning belief is that multiplayer extends both the life and reach of your product.

But all hope is not lost. We are nearing the time when publishers and developers will learn that it is more fortuitous to capture a river than drown in an ocean.

@living4theday258 said:

@Ascardon: No one is forcing you to play these multi-player modes and no single player isnt being run off by multiplayer. trust me SP is here to stay.

Pro Tip: Work on your grammar.

Like you've really got room to complain about someone else's grammar.

Anyway, I would, just once, like someone to make the argument that modern games are "failing" in some manner without even hinting at the titles "Call of Duty", "Gears of War", or "Halo". Once. Not twice, just once.

So I clicked on a couple threads in the past minute, and y'know what GB people? I'm just gonna go back down stairs and play some games.

@Ascardon: FYI if you want someone to read this, try punctuation marks so it doesn't look like you took a giant steaming shit on your keyboard about 3 words in.

i agree, some games just don't need multiplayer. some of the games that do have it seem like they're just thrown on.

@Irvandus said:

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

albeit for me to question Big Bo

@Little_Socrates said:

@Irvandus said:

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

Your Boom Boom Pow reference is so 3008.

You are both monsters.

@TheSouthernDandy said:

@Little_Socrates said:

@Irvandus said:

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

Your Boom Boom Pow reference is so 3008.

You are both monsters.

Finally someone accepts me for who I am.

@Irvandus said:

@TheSouthernDandy said:

@Little_Socrates said:

@Irvandus said:

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

Your Boom Boom Pow reference is so 3008.

You are both monsters.

Finally someone accepts me for who I am.

I do. BIG BO!

@TheSouthernDandy said:

@Irvandus said:

@TheSouthernDandy said:

@Little_Socrates said:

@Irvandus said:

This topic is so 2000 and late. Yeah I just made that reference, what of it?

Your Boom Boom Pow reference is so 3008.

You are both monsters.

Finally someone accepts me for who I am.

I do. BIG BO!

Maybe we're just on the next level.

I know Im'ma be rockin' over that bass treble.

@living4theday258 said:

@Ascardon: No one is forcing you to play these multi-player modes and no single player isnt being run off by multiplayer. trust me SP is here to stay.

Pro Tip: Work on your grammar.

Mind me being off topic, but what the hell was wrong with the grammar in my post? Please tell me, for I do desire improvement in my writing.

@Tru3_Blu3 said:

@Trylks said:

Many companies try to make the usage of Internet relevant because that makes piracy harder (nearly impossible at least for that part of the game). IMHO.

If piracy is ever gone the "immunity of the group" and lack of piracy may make single player games profitable again. Either that or very closed and controlled platforms, as consoles try to be with different degrees of success.

The only way to decrease piracy is if developers take the Valve and CD Projekt route by improving the services for the consumer. Add the soundtrack, some cheap collectors edition, some free old games, maybe free DLC and not fuck over players with bad ports, restricted online services and DRM.

This won't completely get rid of piracy, mind you. But it's certainly something that most big businesses do not understand or are too cheap to undertake.

Exactly, those services for the consumer are usually related with Internet and multiplayer. DLC can be another option, if it is frequent and important, but in the end many people will pirate games if they can, no matter what services you give, because those services may be cool but if you compare free to play games and "free" pirate games, the latter may still be better.

I think the only real way to finish with piracy is making games that are free to play. Then in a few years the OP will write a post about how he doesn't like how "free to play is taking over".

You're absolutely right: gaming has changed. However, you forgot to touch on the fact that gaming is still changing. The "tacked on" multiplayer to once-singleplayer experiences will be phased out, simply because they don't work. So either they're going to make more fully-featured and polished multiplayer, or they'll go down the other road that's opening up: free DLC incentives for people to buy their game and keep it on their shelf. 
Then there's also companies that are making fantastic use of asynchronous multiplayer, in giving you a leaderboard to compete with your friends and the world in a good (well, maybe not Most Wanted) singleplayer game.

I'm thoroughly disappointed by the lack of a decent single player experience in NFS:MW, as a person whose mates don't like that style of game I have no incentive to really play online without any sort of speedwall or anything

"Gaming has Changed Multiplayer is taking over"

Best thread title that I've ever seen on Giant Bomb.

@Ascardon: Resident Evil since RE2 has had weird bonus content that is separate and has the same potential to take away from people working on the main campaign, But no one complains that 4th survivor or Tofu made RE worse.

At the same time is it really a big deal that you have a partner in RE 5 and 6? Its worth noting the partner AI in RE5 is some of the best in games. Think about how annoying having an AI controlled partner with health is in most games. Sheva is actually capable of helping out while being just a frail as the player. How is it any different that one of the best single player games ever made, RE4, where you had Ashley with you? The only difference is that Sheva has better AI, she doesn't have to be hidden in dumpsters and can she hold guns. Just think of it like that.

Another reason that I think your point is moot is that sometimes you can have solid multiplayer and single player. Take Assassins creed, great single player, surprisingly great multiplayer. Look at Halo, it has a great single player campaign, nothing feels missing when you play it alone. It has jump in co-op, great, it's a bunch of fun. It has muliplayer, some of the best you'll see on consoles.

I think your point doesn't make sense because multiplayer is not a new concept, and some of the best games recently, that have sold many copies, are single player only.

As for the followup statement you should wait for games to go on sale, or hear from reviews or people on forums for what is good. Theres really no absolute way for you to know if you like a game until you've played it but that is the best to go on.

Thank you all for your opinions and comments. This has been a learning experience.

it is very hard for me to blog, because if i say something wrong, or stupid i get afraid, and just go back into the shadow hiding.This a instinct i had even online playing multiplayer games,filled with people who makes it unbearable to even play online.Singleplayer purist that is me to be 100% honest.

unntil next time, see you duders take care all.

You can't fool me Sonic_The_Hedgehog...I'm onto you.

@Trylks said:

If piracy is ever gone the "immunity of the group" and lack of piracy may make single player games profitable again.

Why people insist on parroting this nonsense is beyond my comprehension. Your premise doesn't have a leg to stand on. Piracy cannot be counted as lost sales. A pirate never intended to purchase the game, therefore they were never a real customer.

More to the topic, multiplayer is clearly used as a vehicle to promote a game and increase profitability. I was dismayed when I realized that Mass Effect 3's single player outcome depended on the multiplayer component. A troubling precedent to say the least. If you want to sell more maps, whatever, but don't go tacking multiplayer onto single player like that.

If we had internet like today back in the day I am sure Pac Man would of had a multiplayer mode.

@QuistisTrepe: if people can't pirate games the craving may take them to buy those games, eventually. Pirates are not actual customers, but potential customers, in the absence of piracy some of those potential customers eventually become actual customers, some don't.

@s10129107 said:

This bandwagon is already miles down the road.

Yet, you can hear their sorry-ass tune from miles away.