Hey guys!
Welcome back to Top 10 Gaming, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
If you follow gaming news, you’ve almost certainly heard people freaking out about
the death of single player games.
With more and more games becoming partially or fully multiplayer, and large companies
devoting more and more time and money to multiplayer stuff, those who favour a good single player
game are feeling a bit worried.
So let’s figure out what the heck is going on, and whether or not we should be worried
about all this.
For the record, I am absolutely not the authority on this subject, but I’ll look at some stats
and use my own paltry knowledge of games to give my personal take on the matter.
If you enjoy this video, let us know by throwing us a thumbs up down below.
And if you want more, check out our video on the Differences Between Geeks and Nerds!
But before you do that, get ready, it’s time to ask: Are Single Player Games Dying?
This might seem like a pretty subjective question, and I suppose it is.
A lot of this comes down to what kind of game you prefer.
If you enjoy single player games, you’re likely to defend them, and probably won’t
think they’re dying, whether or not sales are dropping.
On the other hand, if you hate single player games, and all you play is Fortnite, you’re
probably more likely to say “Pfft, yeah, nobody plays single player games anymore”.
People have a tendency to assume everyone else thinks exactly the same way as them,
but that just isn’t the case.
You can just look at the 2016 US election to see how little we actually know about the
beliefs of others.
This also comes down to how one defines “Dying”.
Does “Dying” mean they’re becoming slightly less popular as Multiplayer games see an uptick?
Then sure, I guess some types of single player games are dying.
But if Dying means nobody likes them anymore and soon companies will stop making them,
then I think most people could agree that no, they are not dying.
But the question remains: Are people playing single player games less?
I know personally, the vast majority of my gaming is in single player RPGs, like Elder
Scrolls, Fallout, and The Witcher.
But we’re definitely seeing some companies start to focus more on the multiplayer side
of things.
For example, when Grand Theft Auto 5 was released, the campaign was fun and exciting, and had
fans pretty psyched about the future.
However, when Rock Star realized how much more money could be made in the multiplayer
mode, they began focusing almost exclusively on that.
Another company at whom fingers are often pointed, for good reason, is Electronic Arts.
While EA has made a number of amazing single player games, they have recently begun to
focus on multiplayer, even shutting down the Visceral Games studio.
The failure and abandonment of Mass Effect: Andromeda, as well as the bologna with Star
Wars Battlefront 2, has left gamers thinking that EA has given up on single player so they
can make some sweet sweet cash.
And also ruin Star Wars.
Perhaps the most ominous sign of the death of single player was Bethesda’s announcement
that the new Fallout game, Fallout 76, would be a multiplayer survival game rather than
the usual single player RPG.
This has set many gamers into a bit of a tizzy, worried that Bethesda is taking the EA route
and leaving single player games behind.
But these fears aren’t necessarily warranted.
For one, Bethesda has stated that future games like Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls
game will be single player, so there’s more to come.
But even if there wasn’t, the huge amount of pushback to this should indicate that there
are a LOT of gamers interested in single player.
And if you check the polls online, where people are asked to report their preferences, single
player games often come out on top.
And where there is demand, supply will always follow.
Really, if we take a step back from the craziness, we can see that there are a LOT of great single
player games coming out every year.
Zelda, Mario, Monster Hunter, God of War, Detroit Become Human, Arkham games, the upcoming
Red Dead Redemption 2; the list goes on and on.
Plus the folks over at Telltale Games are pumping out more games than I can even keep
up with!
All this is to say that single player games seem to still be going strong.
One thing that should be noted, however, is that different types of games are following
different trajectories.
For example, single player campaigns in First Person Shooters are definitely losing popularity,
and that’s somewhat understandable.
When given the choice between shooting computer opponents, or shooting human ones, many gamers
find it more fun to try to defeat other humans.
Case in point, the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 without a story mode had people
more than a little worried.
However, this wasn't some arbitrary decision.
It turns out that if you look at the stats, people just don't really play the call of
duty campaigns.
Even with the most played story in the series, Call of Duty 3, only 25.67% of players finished
the campaign, with over 25% not even completing basic training.
And again, that's the MOST played campaign in the series, with others only 5 or 10% of
people finish the campaign.
Now, it's true that the lack of single player would hurt the 5 to 25 odd percent of players
who DO play the campaign, but it's understandable that a company wouldn't want to sink a bunch
of money into an aspect of the game that less than a quarter of players would actually see.
That said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll lose all single player games.
It just points to the idea that people go to shooter games more for the multiplayer
aspect than the campaign aspect.
Does this point to an underlying issue in society, that young people nowadays lack the
patience to see a campaign through to the end?
Maybe.
But that’s not something I can get into right now.
On the other hand, RPGs and the like which have significant focus on story do still seem
to be going strong.
This is also rather unsurprising; it’s much easier to tell a cohesive and deep story when
just one player is involved.
Even with MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, which are known for telling interesting, deep
tales, there’s little a player can do to actually affect the world.
But in a single player game like Fallout 3, one decision can result in an entire town
being destroyed.
And this idea of meaningful choices is something that many people love in a game.
So, when it comes to the death of single player, this seems to be an issue faced mainly by
games that have both single and multiplayer modes, like Call of Duty or GTA 5.
It doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on fully single player games, and they will
likely continue to be made, since there is a significant single player playerbase.
That said, it’s possible that some companies might shift from having purely single player
games, to a mixture, focusing on the rather lucrative “Games as a Service” model.
If the trend continues, and more players start to prefer multiplayer, it could be that the
production of single player games would slow down, as games become more expensive to make,
since far more money can be made on multiplayer.
But even if multiplayer did take over, there’s a damn good chance the pendulum would swing
back the other way quickly, as people grew tired of everything being multiplayer, and
got sick of games as a service.
So, maybe it’s true that some types of single player games aren’t quite as popular as
they once were.
But does that mean they’re dying?
I’d say no.
This seems more a case of multiplayer games flourishing, than it does single player games
dying.
It’s very possible that the current trend of multiplayer games is just a fad that will
eventually fade away, opening the door once again for single player stuff.
However, even if the big game companies started to focus more on multiplayer games, there
will still remain a significant portion of gamers who were interested in single player
for years to come.
This might open the door to other companies, allowing them to step into the top tier of
gaming, which would be pretty great.
They could even use crowdfunding from single player lovers to finish a game if it was too
expensive.
I could go on forever about this, and I probably will on my own channel, but this video’s
gone on long enough.
One final thought on all this is this though: Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if single player
started slowing down eventually.
I know, I know, it sounds terrible, and as an avid single player gamer I cringe just
thinking about it.
But as technology improves, it could be that the negatives of multiplayer such as connectivity
issues and worldbuilding will slowly be removed.
Maybe games will reach a point where even the most stubborn single player lover will
accept that games are better with other people.
Of course, there will always be a place for pure single player games if you want to just
relax, but with the internet bringing everyone closer together, and technology making it
easier and easier to implement, it could be that we’ll soon be in a place similar to
Ready Player One.
And frankly, I’d take that over Skyrim anyday.
But again, as far as I can tell, Single Player games are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable
future.
And if they do disappear, it will only be because nobody wants them anymore since multiplayer
has just become way better.
And if we do, somehow, reach a point where nobody wants single player, then it would
probably be okay for single player games to die.
But not yet.
Not yet.
That’s it for today!
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10 Gaming for more videos!
Check out our Top 10 Mario playlist for more videos like this one!
And of course, hit me up with your opinions on all this in the comment section down below.
Let me know if you prefer single or multiplayer, and whether or not you think single player
games are, in fact, dying.
Until next time, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey with Top 10 Gaming.
Later gamers!