Is Multi-player only a sign of the future of gaming

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

We just had a single player open world game set the record as the biggest entertainment release in history, and you ask if multiplayer is the future? Don't you know how publishers operate? When Skyrim was released with critical acclaim and sold millions of units, everybody wanted to be more like Skyrim. Especially Ubisoft. What do you think is gonna happen now when GTA V is such a smashing success?

 

[Genocidicles]

The worst case scenario is that there'll be no more truly singleplayer Triple A games. There would still be plenty of singleplayer indie games though.

 

[The White Hunter]

I ask this, because when I look at a game like Titanfall, a timed Xbox exclusive (I call it timed because A. Microsoft didn't publish it, EA did. and B. It has been hinted that EA will port it to Playstation, so time will tell, and I'm sure EA will want to since theres more money in it to have it Playstation then make it exclusive) getting great praise at E3 and winning so many awards, it just begs the question is this where gaming is headed?

It's also on PC, it's almost definately timed.

OT: No, the huge sucess of things like Skyrim and Far Cry 3 and it's standalone expansion show there's a huge market for excellent single player content for us social reprobates.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Single player will not die, it will only change forms and new dev's will arise to make those games. Yes, a lot of people play MP only games and as such publishers see the rate of play stats and think that is demand. But SP will never die out. Not in the least.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Singleplayer will endure. Once Devs realize that the multiplayer does make the game alone (In a lot of cases), they'll stop ommitting/half-assing the lone experience.

Plus, as mentioned, there are still the Bioshocks and Skyrims of today.

 

[Berny Marcus]

We just had a single player open world game set the record as the biggest entertainment release in history, and you ask if multiplayer is the future? Don't you know how publishers operate? When Skyrim was released with critical acclaim and sold millions of units, everybody wanted to be more like Skyrim. Especially Ubisoft. What do you think is gonna happen now when GTA V is such a smashing success?

Well of course we'll get the so called GTA clones, it has happened before.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Titanfall is multi-player only, with some single player elements in it. I am not suggesting that Single Player focused games are doomed, but if a game like Titanfall does well upon release and gets all the praise, do you believe developers will look at it as a model for there future games?

This is the not first well-received multiplayer-only game. It will not be the last.

Multiplayer-only games have existed as long as gaming itself. What we saw this generation, the legion of multiplayer games and games-with-multiplayer was instigated by the ability for consoles to go online.

Moving forward and getting over that, we'll see the same or maybe-a-little-different multiplayer/single-player prominence in games as we've seen in the 6th gen and earlier.

Titanfall's reception will mean very little to the bigger picture of the games industry.

You may or may not realize this, but that statement about multiplayer only games being as old as gaming itself is quite literally true. Whether you count the first game as the first one made in a lab (Tennis for Two) or the first one made for commercial purposes (Computer Space[footnote]Or Space War, I never can remember which was the PDP-10 game from MIT and which was the first ever arcade game. Either way, same game, different name.[/footnote], they were both multiplayer only, because there just wasn't enough processing power available to allow for a CPU controlled opponent.

As far as modern games go, they've been common since at least UT'99 and Quake III were the two big dogs, which means there are kids in high school now who were are about as old as the modern form of multiplayer only games. It's nothing new, and there's nothing disturbing about it. Some games are jut multiplayer focused. Basically all games that don't involve a computer are, so it's only natural for a large portion of the ones that do to also be set up that way. Unless you want to think of Solitaire as the coolest card game ever...

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

-snip-

It's really sad it happened to Transformers because I loved playing FOC on the 360 and recently bought it on Steam to replay the campaign and multiplayer was sadly riddled with hackers (most from Russia/Ukraine) but there are still some legit players wanting to do private matches on the games discussion page on steam.

i just really flat out hate hackers because they have no sense of honour and just serve to ruin everyone's fun to a point where they are the only ones left and thus contributed to killing that games multiplayer, which i tend to see as vandalism since they are treating OPP (online public play) like trash.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I can see existing AAA migrating strongly to multiplayer-centric titles.

They actually do have added appeal to Publishers because:
1) It "justifies" Always-Online; a model they adore.
2) Less "static" game content development is necessary.
3) Microtransactions ahoy!

 

[Hero in a half shell]

As long as a market remains for single player games, we will continue to get singleplayer games, and if the market shrinks, that will just make the high quality AAA singleplayer games all the more successful as they become unique experiences, increasing the likeliness of more singleplayer games as developers realise it's a viable market with little competition.

I'd say we'll see a lot less singleplayer only franchises (even the Elder Scrolls has been given a flipping MMO) but as I said, if a market remains for singleplayer, someone will exploit that market.

 

[LaoJim]

It's intersting that TitanFall has made this decision.

I only play single player (or very occassionally split-screen) and I don't have Xbox Live. So from my perspective I would be happy to have the world divided neatly into single player only games and multiplayer only games.

That said, if you are a games company it is very natural to want to add multiplayer onto a Single player game, you've got the assets and game engine working. Yes you need netcode and to balance the gameplay for MP but it gets you a 'big' extra feature.

On the other hand if you are starting from a multiplayer game then there's a bit more work to be done adding in Single Player as you'll need to create cut-scenes and a narrative and enemy AI.

The interesting point for me is that everyone is clearly expecting Titanfall to be the next big things, this coming generatations Halo or Gears of War. I'm wondering, and I really don't know the answer to this as I haven't played it or many multiplayer games) how they are going to establish a narrative to introduce people to this new gaming world? Will there be some co-operative campaign or a story told through multiplayer missions. Or are they just going to go with "Look, mechs, mechs are cool" (Which is a fine approach not everything needs a backstory)

 

[MysticSlayer]

The first being that multiplayer focused only except in an MMO sense shouldnt be full priced at $60 due to the very reason it doesnt have single player elements. I'll buy some games just for the multiplayer like Battlefield 4 but if it doesnt have some kind of single player attached to it I would feel cheated. Im fine with spending $20 or $30 on a multiplayer only experience but less so for a game thats $60

To be fair, though, a lot of FPS games have been building up their multiplayer while downplaying their singleplayer to the point where it is a pointless add-on only there for fans of older games in the series, and the multiplayer in these games is probably already worth about $50 of the $60 you're paying for. Actually, multiplayer only is probably what Infinity Ward (now Respawn) wanted to do with Call of Duty, and now that they have the chance to do that with a new IP, they probably don't want to bog themselves down in a pointless singleplayer that will trap them for the rest of the IPs lifespan. Provided that their multiplayer is large enough and of a high enough quality, it will more than make up for the lack of singleplayer.

OT: I don't see this becoming the future of gaming. RPGs are still one of the biggest genres, and those are generally singleplayer games. Not to mention, we'll have plenty of platformers and hack-n-slash games keeping singleplayer alive as well. Multiplayer-only might become the future of FPS games, as they already seem to be moving in that direction to begin with, but I don't see it affecting other genres.

 

[Windcaler]

actually there is a strong weakness about multiplayer on consoles that is ignored. hackers. im not talking about acvount stealing. i am talking about game manipulation. i can no longer play transformers because of hackers online cheat. i cannot play mw2 and halo 3 for the same reason. the moment the new shiney product comes in the old one will become a hack fest soon enough.

Hackers certainly exist on all platforms but I dont tend to play multiplayer on consoles so I cant give an educated opinion on how much of a problem this would be. On PC companies that police their servers (assuming they can police them) tend to have small numbers of hackers so that makes me think that the number of hackers will be determined by the company behind the game

 

[Negatempest]

actually there is a strong weakness about multiplayer on consoles that is ignored. hackers. im not talking about acvount stealing. i am talking about game manipulation. i can no longer play transformers because of hackers online cheat. i cannot play mw2 and halo 3 for the same reason. the moment the new shiney product comes in the old one will become a hack fest soon enough.

Hackers certainly exist on all platforms but I dont tend to play multiplayer on consoles so I cant give an educated opinion on how much of a problem this would be. On PC companies that police their servers (assuming they can police them) tend to have small numbers of hackers so that makes me think that the number of hackers will be determined by the company behind the game

i experienced hack fest multiplayer alot on transformers, halo 3, and mw2. so if big companies like activision and microsoft cant police their own games....what do you expect from them going in the future? this why i dont thi k multiplayer focus a good idea.

 

[TallanKhan]

I think its probably the way publishers and the wider industry would like to go, along with always online and subscription fees for everything. Whether it will actually happen, I hope not, but if people are stupid enough to swallow it and give them the opportunity then I'm certain they won't pass it up.

All i can say for certain is that a future where games have no single player / offline modes will be a future where I won't be gaming.

 

[Netrigan]

I think the reality is the market only supports a relatively small handful of MP titles. Becoming one of those games becomes the Holy Grail of developers, which is why so many games shoe-horn in some sort of MP. The vast majority of these attempts fail. Single player campaigns aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

And many members of that elite club, such as CoD and Halo, still have a customer base which is more likely not to go on-line. The single players outnumber the multi-players by a pretty wide margin.

I'd even go so far as to say the reason why many of these companies have achieved this status is they made their bones as a great single player campaign. Bungie success is largely built upon the popularity of the single player campaign of the first Halo game. The first Modern Warfare game was rightfully praised for its single player campaign. Going further back, id was able to dominate the MP market with Quake because they had kicked in the door with the highly successful single player campaign of DOOM. Epic owes a lot of their success to the single player campaign of Unreal, which morphed into Unreal Tournament, so they were able to score a solid one-two SP/MP punch with Gears of War on the console front.

 

[Forobryt]

Developers will look at a multiplayer only style if they have a game that would benefit from multiplayer only its that simple really.

But a lot of games try and tell stories which multiplayer cant do aswell as single player. But its hardly like we havent had multiplayer only games until recently, look at team fortress and counter strike even now still popular. They were made to be a multiplayer only and are good because of that (well ok i dont know about CS but people playing it must mean its decent-ish).

As long as the devs make the game they want to make and not cram these things in because its cool to have a multiplayer only then its all good.

 

[DocHarley]

I think what we're seeing now isn't the death knell of single-player games. Rather, it's the beginning of the end for multi-player games with hastily-crafted, single-player campaigns crudely grafted on. Now that a large enough market share of gamers has a persistent Internet connection, games like Battlefield Whatever and the like don't have to pretend to be anything but the deathmatches they are.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Not as long as their are companies like Nintendo (Who prefer Single Player and Local Multiplayer Experiences) and Valve (Who, while having online Multiplayer, also have very solid Single player experiences... most of the time), it won't be the complete future. But I can see some companies trying to do that.