Poll: A Game Must Stand On Singleplayer Alone

[RobfromtheGulag]

It depends on what the game is designed for. I can't really argue that Team Fortress or DotA are bad games because of their single player. Super Smash Brothers has a mediocre single player. Any fighting game, in fact. Most racing games...

I think what Yahtzee usually gets down on is when a game attaches single player as a novelty, like the Modern Warfare type shooters. Or, perhaps more rarely, when a game doesn't know what it wants to be, and has half-assed multiplayer and singleplayer.

So I agree to the extent that games with an actual fleshed out Single Player mode should be worth buying for that single player alone. Borderlands 2 imo does not do well in this respect.

Racing games, fighting games, some shooters, RTS, sports games(?) usually have single player as an extended tutorial for multiplayer. Goldeneye is a good example of a game doing this right. Goldeneye had a long, in depth single player game. If you put the game modes side by side, Single Player would clearly be the more developed mode. But multiplayer was a blast anyway.

 

[lokicdn]

I think if you are going to make a game that includes both multiplayer and single you have to create a good single player experience. It's simple economics, a game with a solid single player experience can thrive with crummy multiplayer. A game with less then outstanding multiplayer will tank if the single player stinks.

 

[lacktheknack]

It depends.

Should Team Fortress 2 stand on the merits of its single-player?

Should Mass Effect stand on the merits of its single-player?

 

[dvd_72]

It depends on the type of game. If it wants to focus on multiplayer (competitive or co-op)then that is what it needs to be judged on. Games like these would benefit by not wasting time and money on a tacked on single player component. If the game wants to focus on single player then it needs to focus its money and time on its single player and be judged on said single player. It all depends on the focus of the game itself.

 

[Mikejames]

Neither variance should be tacked on for the sake of it. If a game is going to implement single-player it should make the effort for it to be able to stand on its own.

It depends.
Should Team Fortress 2 stand on the merits of its single-player?

No.

Should Mass Effect stand on the merits of its single-player?

Yes.

Assuming that was rhetorical, it pretty much covers the distinction.

 

[Subscriptism]

It must be a able to stand on single player alone for me to respect it

I will however make exceptions of L4D and L4D2. They're just too damn good.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

Unless the game is entirely multiplayer focused, yes. Spare a thought for the people that don't have a good connection, or XBOX Live. You could give them the most spectacular multiplayer game in the world, but they couldn't enjoy it.

 

[Broken Blade]

For me to buy it, the single player MUST stand on its own. I have never and probably will never buy a game for the multiplayer.

 

[Arrogancy]

It depends. Certain games are designed solely as multiplayer games, and in that case they do not need a single-player experience to round itself off. However, when a game sells itself as having a single-player aspect it MUST stand on single-player because the multiplayer is not inherently part of the experience. I don't care how great the multiplayer campaign for Call of Duty is, if it's a game that operates under the pretense of being single-player it must have a worthwhile single-player portion of the game.

 

[BeanDelphiki]

Yes, it bloody well does.

Someone above mentioned the possibility of a multiplayer-only game being, "the best game ever made." Ha! Like a group read-a-long could be the best possible way to experience fine literature.

 

[Sight Unseen]

In my opinion, if a game chooses to have both singleplayer and multiplayer elements, then it should be able to stand on either one... Otherwise why include the weaker element? If it's a predominantly single player game with a tacked on multiplayer then resources which could have been used to improve the single player are being wasted in order to jump on the "everything must have multiplayer" bandwagon. If the game is predominantly multiplayer but has a short unfulfilling campaign then it is wasting resources which could be used to improve gameplay, balance, and replayability of the multiplayer.

Co-op is a bit different. If you can scale your game so that you can play your entire campaign to accomodate both single player and multiple players playing co-operatively, then both are equally good. However I dont like games which only include a few missions available with co-op as a "token" multiplayer mode, as these are a cheap way to boast multiplayer

It's not surprise to me that for the most part, the single player games I play ONLY have single player elements (Skyrim, Dishonored), and the multiplayer games I play have ONLY multiplayer ( Dota, TF2, etc) Of course there are some exceptions to this (the more recent Assassin's Creed games which have had fantastic single player AND multiplayer; but really, they have so many studios working on AC games at Ubisoft that there's not really a resource wasting here)

But yeah, most times I feel like going half and half, or worse, tacking on either a SP or MP element just detracts from the quality of the one which should be the focus.

 

[Snotnarok]

Honestly I've thought that selling the discs seperately would probably benifit the makers more than the game players considering a lot of people probably want to get their hands on CoD games but are pushed off by that ridiculous 65USD price tag. Cut the game in half multiplayer/single player and you can sell one part for cheaper.

Personally I have no interest in playing Multiplayer in games like Uncharted or Ratchet and Clank so shaving that entire part off the game would be dandy if it came with a price cut.

 

[Scow2]

Absolutely not. A lot of multiplayer games are better off for having a "tacked-on" single-player experience for when you want to play alone, harness your skills, or see what the developers can do with the game's resources when it's not constrained to ensuring that all the elements are balanced. They don't need to "Stand Alone", they just need to be there. I'd rather have a shitty campaign than no single-player experience alone. After all, the worst case scenario is that you get to ignore the single-player element.


A game's only bad if neither the single-player NOR multiplayer are capable of standing on their own.

 

[Fappy]

I disagree. Some games are more geared towards multiplayer and only include a single player mode because people like them and they are good for learning the mechanics of the game. Look at Chromehounds as an example.

 

[kickyourass]

Yes, if a game is being sold with a single player option avaliable, that single player had better be able to stand on its own.

 

[renegade7]

No, there are plenty of perfectly good multiplayer only games.

I tend to think the single player campaigns of modern shooters are just tutorials for the multiplayer mode.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

It all depends on how it is marketed, if a developer is saying that the game has a single player but the core is the multiplayer and that fact is not hidden, then it doesn't have to stand on its single player.

There is no one definitive answer, because not all games with a single player have to be the same.

Yes, if a game is being sold with a single player option avaliable, that single player had better be able to stand on its own.

Why is it multiplayer can be seen as an okay tacked on thing, but not single player depending on the game.

I disagree. Some games are more geared towards multiplayer and only include a single player mode because people like them and they are good for learning the mechanics of the game. Look at Chromehounds as an example.

You hit the nail on the head there.

 

[hoboman29]

I believe that a game can have both multiplayer and single player modes as long as it can stand on its single player. A lot of modern games could drop the pretense of being single player in favor of just multiplayer. When devs don't do that is when we have this debate.

 

[Signa]

This argument seems to focus a lot on the current trend of Garglespunkweewee, and I agree with it. Games like Call of Duty started as single player games. The current modern re-hash of them also was noted for it's single player campaign. However, after that, people started excusing the poor campaign because they spent most of their time in multiplayer. This is unexcusable, because every commercial, and every previous iteration was primarily a single player experience. Multiplayer should be the thing you do after you beat the game, not the reason you purchase it. If they want to make a multiplayer-centric Call of Duty series, it should be marketed like the Unreal Tournament series: a series that contains single player, but is mostly meant to be played online.

Now for Battlefield 3, I don't know what to think. As far as I know, the Battlefield series was never single player, or at least in the sense that COD was at the time. The fact that BF3 has a singleplayer campaign shows they were too busy trying to copy COD, rather than make the best damn multiplayer shooter they could. This makes little sense, because if people only play COD for the multiplayer, then wasting resources on something no one is looking for is just idiocy. That's EA for you I guess.

So to answer the implied question in the poll, yes, games need to stand on their singleplayer. This of course doesn't apply to games like Team Fortress 2, but even if it had to, at least the singleplayer mode is identical to the multiplayer mode. No mechanics are changed, and the player still has to handle the same game, even if it's stupid by comparison. The same can't be said for COD and BF3.

 

[spartan231490]

Of course it doesn't. Many games exist because of multiplayer.