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Something I've noticed with newer games is that single-player mode is generally either short or badly designed. Example: Halo 3. The campaign still had a good story, but was far too short. I was playing the original game yesterday, and it's more long and challenging. Same goes for Killzone, Dark Crusade/Soulstorm, Warcraft III, and Starcraft. Why is it that single-player is a secondary consideration these days? Even RPGs (see: FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus) are getting shorter. I understand how the gaming community has expanded and people want to interact with each other rather than AIs, but come on... I want a single-player game that's lengthy and challenging, not the kind of boring crap Call of Duty 4 and Dirge of Cerberus throw at me.

The Conduit single player is lengthy and challenging, although the copy and paste boss battles are annoying.

Shinigami wrote:The Conduit single player is lengthy and challenging, although the copy and paste boss battles are annoying.

The Conduit is horrible. It's only challenging because the Wiimote is a bitch to handle and it's so ugly that you can barely see people.

Surely Cheese you should change the question? What happened to two player Co-Op games that didn't need the bloody internet!?!?!? I bought a second controller for the PS3 because I have FRIENDS and a BROTHER. I want games that I can play AGAINST them whilst I sit next to them. I don't want to always be playing some unknown guy with a weird tag!!! Seriously everything nowadays has a crap to medium single player and online. Nothing else.
The only exception seems to be Call of Jaurez with its epic Story mode but still no Co-Op play.

The OC-D

Cheese is a little monster with no friends, that's why.

BrookM wrote:Cheese is a little monster with no friends, that's why.

No, I don't like playing co-op on one screen because everything gets downsized. I don't play online on consoles anymore since I sold off my 360, so I don't play much co-op nowadays anyway. I stick to playing Left 4 Dead online when I want co-op.

Single player is far from dead, but I have to agree with you; a lot of devs have been putting single player on the back burner for multi player. The sole reason for this is the fact Single Player gets the gamer interested, multi-player is what keeps you playing long after the smokes settled. That why games like COD4 are still so huge; even years after its been released COD4 is one of the top multi-player games around.

I think the issue that that devs focus their game in one area rather than be broad. Games like Bioshock and Fallout 3 were lengthy single player endevors with no multi-player. Whereas a game like Left 4 Dead had a terrible single player, but is probably one of the greatest multi-player games of all time. Now we have things like Batman: AA, etc.

I just think that the general focus on FPS's now is pretty appalling. We don't get great RPG's anymore that aren't FPS's, I can't name the last classic style RPG I have played and liked. Probably Persona 3 on PS2... anyways, the general western market share is FPS dominated, and until that changes, I think this trend will continue. Don't get me wrong, its disheartening to me, being an old school gamer. I miss the days of FFVII and Xenogears, sitting in my basement for 70+ hours clearing the game and getting everything. I miss the rush I felt when playing through the first Metal Gear Solid, fighting vulcan in that damn freezer. But long gone are those days and now we have a pile of bad games to wade through to get to the few shining gems...

On the positive side, Brutal legend in october! WOO!

Dirge of Cerberus is not an RPG, it's an action Shooter within an RPG world.

Douche.

(I love you really Cheese )

I enjoyed Lost Planet, despite the physics issues. Mass Effect was enjoyable too, although it too had some serious design flaws. Big multiplayer games sell these days, so that is what gets the developers attention, and single player is relegated to the backburner because it isn't expected to drive sales.

A game doesn't have to have a deep, life-changing plot to be enjoyable and fun though, and single player games seem to suffer from the stigma that it either must be Hemingway or it must be garbage.

I've been playing the new Batman: Arkham Asylum the last few days, and I must admit; its one of the most engrossing, entertaining single player games I've played in a long time. Graphics are superb, and the challenges are cool because its like a league in Warcraft 3; try and top everyone elses score (and its quite difficult as well!)

More like, multi-player games requires more gamers to buy the games while single player
games can be passed around or rented.

Starcraft and Warcraft 3 had bad ass single player modes ditto with HALO 3.

However personally I always despised single player stuff since playing against AI is generally extremely boring for me than facing competent players online. There are epic exceptions though like the Half Life series.

As an industry vet I may be able to shed some light on this issue. Currently the generation of "kids" (12-18) that the publishers are targeting are "social gamers" as far as the publishers are concerned. And these types of gamers want to play a game where they get to do lots of socializing with real people and make friends/enemies/relationships with them from the comfort of their own home.

So the focus has been rammed down developers throats to make games with co-op (none competitve in most cases) games that allow this target audience to enjoy themselves. See World of Warcraft (the glorified chat channel whose game mechanics tend to force players to socialize while waiting for something remotely interesting to do, ex. sit and fly for five minutes, sit waiting for a raid group for hours, auto-run long distances through the barrens while chatting, etc...) or any number of Xbox 360 games with their co-op campaigns. There is also a forced shift by the big three (Nintendo, MS, Sony) to only make multiplayer and co-op versions of games be online only (no more split screens and offline modes) in order to force more users online to generate profit from either the online service (MS) or all the great virtual crap the offer you and advertise in yor face none stop while on the system and plugged into their network (All three). On top of that someone above already hit the point that developers want there game to be a big success and carry enough buzz after release to get them close enough to a point on their next game where they can start making announcements about the new game and thefan base from their first still knows who they are and plays there game still. Causing more free word of mouth advertising to spread through the player base to all there friends about the next great game from X developer. So naturally multiplayer games are the way to do that since they tend to have a longer shelf life.

The other reason someone picked up on in this forum already, is single player games tend to go right back to the EB/GameStop/Blah stores right after the player finishes it or (more than likely) gets stuck and frustrated, to then be resold to another player for which only the store will profit from and the developer sees not a dime, rinse and repeat. Since the current stat is that only something along the line of 15-20% of gamers actually finish a given game this turn over is rather quick and cannibalizes sales for the developer especially if they make the game challenging. On top of that the completion rate stat also supports the idea that games don't need to ever be more than 6-8 hours long, ever. Because most players don't even get that far into a game before giving up or switiching to some new hotness that just came out. Hence the singleplayer campaigns for games becoming shorter and people being ok with that. The games are also getting shorter because the next gen games are costing a crap load more to make each one and as a cost saving measure publishers and developers are shortening their games or only selling the DLC to get the full originally planned scope or multiple sequels to the games. Like the planned trilogies that we have seen announced before the firsttitle even ships this generation (Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, etc)


Hope some of that helps. time to get back to work. Wouldn't want to shorten the game anymore on yeah. haha

Well, I like long single player games. Maybe I'm some sort of mutant. Or just not the target audience.

Correct you are now an old school gamer who is already hooked on games, but the publishers are always more focused on the new crop of customers to hook. The odd product will be thrown your wy to keep you playing games, but most products will be aimed at the new target market for the majority of titles. At least thats how it will go for the thinking of the production companies. I feel your pain, there are many games I used to love to play that no one makes any more because those types of games are not what pulls in the current crop of new buyers. But at least we have some developers who are big enough to not need a publisher or have to bend to them anyways that will still put out the occasional gem of a game directed to more of what the "oldschool" gamer wants.

Its simple!
People have become more social over time and learned to play co-op with other players.

People have become more social through the veil of anonymity that the internet and internet portals like X-box live provides. I don't think that's a better kind of social or neatly described as more social, just more competitive and immature towards eachother.

There are several reasons for the concentration on network games especially shooting games.

1. To drive the market towards network distribution which will cook the goose of secondhand discs because there won't be any anymore.
2. Multiple players relieve the developer of the need to develop any decent AI for in-game opponents.
3. Shooting games are relatively easy to do and do not suffer quite as badly from latency as other genres such as fighting and racing.
4. America is a huge market and you like your guns. (Shooting games aren't so popular in Europe, though they are still very popular.)
5. Developers like to play with new technology and network technology is still pretty new for consoles.
6. Console publishers are demanding network games for the kind of reasons I mentioned.

I am sure we will see more good single-player games coming back once developers get bored of jamming network into everything.

Ratchet and Clank A Crack In Time is looking pretty solid, as is Drake's Uncharted 2.

i can see what your getting at
perhaps all you old school gamers remember the hours wasted playing banjo kazooie on the nintendo 64 ah they were the good old days. Or maybe even zelda the ocarina of time was it? There the sort of games that take you weeks to complete
i must admit being a hardcore 360 player all these shooting games really are getting quite annoying. Its just the same thing time and time again.

Railguns: Yes, it does add another level of competition to games
but only if your the kind of person who wants to win at all costs.
Ive actually met a few decent people over XBL who i actually talk to and play against on a regular basis now.

However, you do get more than a fair share of dickheads on there too that want to do nothing but shout thier mouth off every 5 mins.

I want more singleplayer too. And no more of morality in them either. i want a nice long questionong story in which i uncover mystery. not me make the story.

Don't get me wrong. Most of my finest gaming memories are of when I discovered Team Fortress Classic in junior high school and playing whole nights away, and later playing Halo:Combat Evolved with friends in high school. Those were great times. But I enjoy a well crafted single player experience too. Nowadays, when I rarely play anything or even have the time to, I've been playing single player games. Most, well, all of those have been sequels of games from my more involved gaming days. I still look forward to Lost Planet 2 though. The staged battles between teams of players and giant Akrid are what I always wanted out of the first one, and I've been playing the demo extensively. I love fighting that poor salamander monster.

Single player games are still out there they just aren't quite as dominant as they once were. Of the top of my head: Batman: AA, Shadow Complex, Dawn of Discovery, Metroid Trilogy, FFXIII, and Infamous.

The Morrowind video game series is definitely worth checking out if you like the fantasy genre; its renowned for being an epic single player experience.

Alpha Protocol looks interesting as well, and then Dragon Age.

Shadowgrounds is a fun singleplayer game, heck even the flimsy story is enjoyable.

Don't forget GOD of WAR! Those games have epic plots rpg/action I couldn't put them down untill I was finished with them. I'm looking forward to GoWIII.

Strimen wrote:Since the current stat is that only something along the line of 15-20% of gamers actually finish a given game...

Really? I find that amazing. I may have left Ultimate Alliance and the original Dungeon Siege for quite some time before going back and finishing them, but they are rare exceptions. I can hardly find a game in my collection that I haven't finished. Are people like me rare? I find that really strange. Who doesn't want to finish a game?


Anyway, I hate mutliplayer games. I felt betrayed when X-Wing vs TIE Fighter came out, when Quake III came out - not Unreal Tournament, as the single-player in that was pretty cool - and all the games that have 'tacked on' single-player games. That's why Half-Life is such a shining jewel in the wilderness, and why things like Portal shine even brighter than Half-Life.

I tend to find with the games I've played that if you want good quality single player you need to go for RPG's like Final Fantasy, Lost Odyessey, Enchanted arms etc. It seems to me that games like Halo 3 are more geared for multiplayer aspects rather than the single player.

One of the games that I think has a healthy balance of single player and multiplayer are the Call of Duty series.

Cheese, what are you talking about? WC3 was one of the BEST SP games i have ever played, if you want a better experience go play WC, WC1 and WC2 it really helps get a better understanding..

if you want a challenging SP i suggest WC2 without cheats. its surprisingly hard.