"If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game." Really?

[Joshimodo]

I think the thing is, multiplayer is inconsistent. It's not a guaranteed thing. If you connection is bad, or the internet in your area is, or the developers don't fix bugs/issues/glitches, servers get taken down, etc., you're stuffed. A single player or co-op campaign is what a regular game needs to stand up.

 

[archvile93]

I see the main problem with Multiplayer being Yahtzee's other quote about joining an online game being like 'walking into an aviary full of nitrous oxide and trying to play scrabble with the cuckoburoos while they fuck your mum'
Ie: Multiplayer communities on Xbox Live (the most likely place to find multiplayer-focused games) are some of the most anti-social things ever. Therefore, no matter how good the multiplayer is technically, many will still hate it due to what comes with the experience.

That's a legitimate complaint, but it's rather console centric. On a PC game, anybody doing that kind of thing on a server not made for douchebags by douchebags would get kicked pretty darned quickly, if not banned outright. I can count the number of times I've run into that kind of troll while playing online on the fingers of one hand, and I've been playing online multiplayer since 2002.

No it really isn't. I've played both X-box live and PC dedicated servers, and I've found just as high a concentraion of assholes on both. Hell in my short time with TF2 (on PC) it seemed like every single other player was either an idiot, an asshole, or both. I've lost count of how many times half dead teamates ran right past me, the medic, into the heavily defended room beyond and them blamed me when they died for not healing them.

OT: While I do agree with Yahtzee on several things, this is not one of them.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

I've never liked the "If you don't like it, don't play!" line that people spew so often.

If there is a problem with a game, running from it by telling people who point it out to leave won't fix it.

I think games should be able to run on single-player but I understand that multi-player is important to some people (not me though). I think Left 4 Dead is probably the best counter-example against Yahtzee's argument, as I dislike PvP in general and 90% of multi-player seems to be made of PvP, but L4D has a team based style which seems to do what single-player does better. But such examples are rare and overall I agree with Yahtzee in that single-player should be able to hold up a game on its own.

 

[Ravek]

I've had hours of fun with Team Fortress 2, which has no singleplayer mode whatsoever. How could I possibly think it's a bad game?

 

[Chibz]

For discussion value, who all agrees with me, disagrees with me, or has something related but not directly answering that question to say?

I view it a little differently than *Cough*The-Absolute-Fucking-Retard-From-Australia-That-Should-Be-Fired-By-The-Escapist*Cough*... Erm, that cough was a little longer than usual. I mean Yahtzee. I believe that a game should work (and be at least "playable" out of the box.

This means...

1. Default settings.
2. Default controls.
3. Entirely unmoded.
4. Single player.
5. Completey unpatched.

The more I have to adjust any of these things out of the box to make the game at least adequate the worse the game is overall.

For example:

Morrowind's default settings are pretty awful. The default controls stink too. Unmoded the game is generic & uninspired. I guess it's single player, but unpatched it's an incoherent mess. It's a bad game.

 

[Samwise137]

It really depends. The simplest answer I can give is that I prefer co-op campaign play over all else. If a game has that feature, and it's done well, I'm all for it. If it doesn't, and has single player, I still might play it. If it ONLY thrives on multiplayer, I'm not very likely to play it. I don't like playing games with random people but if a game is good enough, I'll buy it to play with my friends.

 

[suitepee7]

1. Sometimes I don't want to put up with the annoyance of dealing with douchebag players.

2. Eventually, every game's multiplayer community will die.

this is pretty much my response. i have nothing against games being released as a MP exclusive, but i feel single player is far too important to leave out of some games. sometimes multiplayer works fine, but a lot of the time it is rushed and messy. no game should be released with lazy sections on either side, no matter what reasons they have. if it ain't as good as it can be, drop the idea. gamers don't appreciate laziness when they just bought a game.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Why do they even bother with a single player campaign if they eschew it in favor of a multiplayer thingy?
I've no opposition to a dedicated multiplayer game, but would TF2 be any better if it had a 4-hour single-player game with a ludicrous story?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I've never liked the "If you don't like it, don't play!" line that people spew so often.

If there is a problem with a game, running from it by telling people who point it out to leave won't fix it.

I think games should be able to run on single-player but I understand that multi-player is important to some people (not me though). I think Left 4 Dead is probably the best counter-example against Yahtzee's argument, as I dislike PvP in general and 90% of multi-player seems to be made of PvP, but L4D has a team based style which seems to do what single-player does better. But such examples are rare and overall I agree with Yahtzee in that single-player should be able to hold up a game on its own.

The thing is, we aren't talking about a problem with a game so much as a game focusing on something that some individuals don't like, but many others do. As long as there are games that do focus on the parts you like, there's no reason to complain about something that other people like.

 

[nomis101uk]

"If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game."

...is a very stupid and incorrect statement, and not a valid opinion. Yahtzee does not like online multiplayer. Ergo is he going to trash any game that does not sufficiently impress him based upon single player alone.

His is not an opinion, but a bias. It's no different from not liking a particular genre and then asserting that every game or film in that genre is therefore bad by definition.

Why is it any more legitimate to focus on single player than it is multiplayer?

Here's the rule: If you're a single player man, then it's perfectly acceptable to want your games to be driven by the single player. That's your opinion, your preference, that's fine. Same goes if your a multiplayer man; You will buy and like games in accordance with your preference. What you cannot do, is say that your preference equates to some absolute law about what is good or bad.

Personally I love the well crafted campaign of HL2 but I'm also loving (Steam sale) the compelling and addictive nature of the Borderlands online componant.

 

[Signa]

Spoiler: snip

The way I feel about this is I agree with Yahtzee's very incomplete thought. A game is crap if it can't stand on its own as a single player game. BUT if that game is centered around a multiplayer experience, then there is nothing to complain about. TF2 is possibly the best Multiplayer game I've played, and yet playing by yourself only recently became an option.

Then you have games like UT3 where the game is meant to be a multiplayer game, but they tacked on a cheesy but challenging campaign mode. I didn't buy UT3 for it's campaign, but I did play the hell out of it.

THEN you have games like Halo 3 and MW2 (I'm pretty sure the quote everyone is getting from Yahtzee came from one of these games). I've not played either because of the warnings of a poor single player experience, but had I bought either, it would have been based on the expectations of CoD 4 and Halo 1/2. Both games had a great single player with multiplayer as an added bonus. It was only after those games became a mad success in multiplayer that the companies that made them decided to ditch a worthy single player experience and just give people more multiplayer. This is where the problem lies because it has nothing to do with making a game good and everything with making a game fun.

Fun games are plaguing the industry right now because everyone can make a game fun, but no effort has to go into making a game good. Compare the effort that has to go into making the games Bioshock and Team Fortress 2. I love both games to death, but Bioshock has a great story and well written characters. TF2 just has some well drawn characters, but we are left to fill in the blanks ourselves (TF2 may be a bad example here because I enjoy this about TF2, but I'm trying to highlight the lack of writing. Other MP games aren't so attractive or deeper than "shoot other team"). If all games go the TF2 route, we might have some fun games for a while, but as others pointed out, gaming communities move on to the next hottest thing, and then this "fun" game is left in the dust. Nothing about these MP only games are good, just fun. Giving game makers a pass based solely on great MP and shallow SP is poor judgment because they are going to just keep doing it. If they want to make MP games, go ahead, but then they need to spawn a different "Deathmatch" series instead of bastardizing the Single Player line (Which is something I give Quake 3 crap about to this day. What the hell was wrong with calling it Quake Online?).

Are you seriously arguing that a fun game is not, by definition, a good one? Or for that matter, that it's possible for a game to be good, but not fun? Because that's a load of hogwash. As for people moving on quickly, you do realize that that doesn't happen on the PC unless the multiplayer isn't very good to begin with, right? I'll never understand why it happens that way on consoles, but it's rare for a PC game to completely lose its user base before the 10 year mark.

That is EXACTLY what I'm saying. Games like Bioshock and Metro 2033 have shown me that it is entirely possible for a game to not be the epitome of fun while still being amazing games. Then you have all these other extremely shallow games (examples: Halo, CoD, Sports games) that I refuse to play, but the masses eat them up like $60 candies. The only explanation for that is they are merely fun and none of these masses care about deep. Fun can be a good game, and a good game can be fun, but some of my recent "fun" games like TF2 and Borderlands are hardly the deep enjoyable experience I get from other games like Deus Ex and Thief. And while I consider DE and Thief "fun" the fact is TF2 and Borderlands are much easier to dive into and just enjoy for hours on end without anything meaningful happening in them.

The way I see it, you can have them both, but they really don't make them that way.

Edit: I was going to point out somewhere in there that if all games meet this minimum requirement of being "fun" then they are all going to seem quite average. BL and TF2 are more than just meeting that "fun" requirement, which is why I'm able to go back and play them constantly. If they were just another shooter, it would only take a new clone to come out to dislodge me from playing the older one.

Actually, that does make a pretty good sales tactic. Just keep "upgrading" people and they will keep buying the same game over and over. No need to make a game super fun if everyone only buys that game once and then nothing else.

 

[Iron Mal]

I believe I made a point in the thread referenced by the OP about how I have been disappointed more often by single player games than I have by multiplayer games for the sole reason of if a multiplayer game is bad (as in soul-crushingly bad, not just 'it's got CoD in the title so I'm gonna hate on it for being so...ok') then no-one will play it.

Multiplayer games are somewhat self regulating in terms of quality control, if a game is terrible, no-one will play it, the servers will die and shut down.

I love singleplayer games, all of my favourite games and gaming moments have come from singleplayer (except one incident in Halo 3 Oddball that shall live in infamy) but I like and understand them enough to know that it isn't the lack of other players alone that makes them good.

Being black and white about 'single is better than multi' just sounds like narrow minded stupidity to me (so yes, I will call Yahtzee out on this one, it is sad to see that so many people take his opinion as fact).

 

[zombays]

Battlefield 2.

That's basically it.

Instead of writing a dull speech about how Yahtzee's incorrect in saying that every game should stand on its singleplayer, but I'm not going to.

I'll just say "Battlefield 2" and leave.

I don't understand...battlefield 2 was a fucking awful game...both single player and multi-player.

You sure you're not thinking of Bad Company 2?

No, he means Battlefield 2, which is a billion times better than bad company 2

 

[Wolfram23]

Personally I disagree with it. Some games are meant to be a multiplayer game more than single player. I think it really depends on what they do for both. I mean a game like CoD is definitely trying to have an epic single player AND a great multiplayer. Fine. But the SP better be awesome. On the other hand a game might be mostly focused on MP but still have some SP stuff, but that doesn't mean the SP HAS to be awesome. It would be fine, to me, if the SP was more like training/practice to get you used to the gameplay so that you can quickly get into MP with a good feel for the game mechanics.

A game like BioShock 2 is meant to be an epic SP game, but they added on MP. The SP is definitely really good, I liked it more than the first game although I know a lot of people disagree with that - I just felt that the gameplay itself was better and therefore it was a more fun experience even if the story wasn't quite as "amazing". Anyway, the MP for that game was to me extremely generic. Yes it featured Rapture and Big Daddy suits but otherwise it was pretty standard deathmatch type stuff, add a few player-choosen weapons and plasmids. Basically a very small version of what we see in CoD. I think it was ok, but not really all that entertaining after a few hours. Just too bad they went and made some trophies require maxing out the MP rank.

An epic example of SP/MP integration, just to throw it out there, is Demon's Souls. And also, now that I've started playing it, Gran Turismo 5. The former because you're always online and can join or be invaded by other players at anytime, but it's also entirely possible to play completely solo. The latter because you can bring your career earned and upgraded cars into MP. That's cool.

 

[UltraDeth]

I wanted a single player campaign on Team Fortress 2, or failing that how bout multiplayer with AI bots?

 

[itsnotyouitsme]

Personally, i play games for single player. Half life 2, medal of honor, bioshock 2, homeworld 2, all single player for me. Once i beat it i forget about it normally. If i want to play a multiplayer, I'll multiplayer. Personally, the whole problem, i think, of why yahtzee hates multiplayer with single players attacked is summed up in his age of cannon review. In a single player your the only competent person in the world and are the lone hero of the landscape. Meanwhile in a multiplayer your one of millions of players and you being the solo hero is laughable since there is always always someone better then you. That's why in half-life 2's multiplayer you don't get to be Gordan freeman, instead your one of the other npcs.
If it's multiplayer alone then your one of millions but if you tack on a single player you set the player into the mindset of "I'm the one and true hero" which doesn't world in the multiplayer world.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I wanted a single player campaign on Team Fortress 2, or failing that how bout multiplayer with AI bots?

Well, TF2 actually does have a limited offline mode, and has since the Mac update. The AI only has routines for one game mode, but from what I understand, it can play a decent game of it. I can't verify that last part, because I've never sat and played through a match with bots before. Why do that when your favorite server is just as easy to get into, and runs better on your computer because no CPU cycles are being taken up by the AI?

 

[RatRace123]

Some people simply don't care about multiplayer, and if a game has a subpar Single Player campaign, and it's backed up by Multiplayer that obviously had more thought put into it, then Single Player may as well just not have been included.

And many developers seem to think that it's now required in every game, which cheapens both aspects, single player and multiplayer.

 

[wunderguy]

i was under the impression that
'If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game'

only holds if its charging full price

i.e tf2 breaks the rule as its only multiplayer and doesnt charge full price

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

i was under the impression that
'If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game'

only holds if its charging full price

i.e tf2 breaks the rule as its only multiplayer and doesnt charge full price

Well that's just silly. I don't consider any game to be worth full price. That doesn't make them bad games, just overpriced.