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.
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