One of the biggest trends that seems to be catching on with big publishers and developers this year is the transition from traditional single-player campaigns or modes from triple A game releases to multiplayer or online-only game modes. We have already seen it with Titanfall on the Xbox One. Moving forward, a number of triple A, disc-based titles that were previewed by big companies at the Electronic Entertainment Expo were essentially games that you need an online internet connection or other people in order to play. Some of these games actually do look fun and exciting. However, I am not completely comfortable with paying full price of $60, plus tax, for a new game with less features than I usually get.
Now, to be completely fair, games such as Evolve, The Division and Destiny look like strong, promising titles at the moment. I look forward to playing the final products. I enjoyed playing them at E3. As a gamer though, I am still generally attracted to involved, single-player experiences. I enjoy playing solo by myself instead of finding some good partners with the same footing for a cooperative multiplayer effort.
The other issue is price. Most of my favorite games offer both a strong single-player and multiplayer experience. Games I favor that do not have a multiplayer mode instead offer a great deal of replay value, whether it is a New Game+ mode, tons of additional side missions or content to explore, alternate play through sessions or some additional challenge modes. So, for a new game where you have to pay $60 for online multiplayer or co-op only, seems rather disappointing. If a game only offers a multiplayer only experience, what is wrong with shaving a certain amount of money off the price?
On the other hand, I completely understand why Respawn Entertainment opted out of making a single-player campaign for the original Titanfall. With its team, it simply wasn’t feasible. An inferior single-player mode could have left a bad impression on consumers. One could also reasonably argue that fans generally find most replay value in games through the multiplayer modes. However, more developers are releasing quality free-to-play online multiplayer and MMO experiences as well. Even mobile titles that are also free-to-play are improving at an increasing rate. On that note, it is still troubling to pay all that extra money for a disc-based multiplayer mode.
The situation is not a dire one. Once I play The Division, I could completely change my mind. Titanfall is a lot of fun to play. It controls easily, and the mecha gameplay is awesome. At the same time, I probably would not pay full price for it. In order for big publishers to remain competitive, they should consider a price drop for multiplayer or online only titles.
Thats ridiculous so by that idea then games that are only single player should also be cheaper since they do not have mulitplayer. Also as far as gameplay wise multiplayer gives you way more hours of play than singleplayer. My favorite single player game is bioshock played it the most out of every game beat it 4 times total time played around 50 hours. But for titanfall I already have over 50 hours played and most games with good multiplayer I will get over a hundred hours easy. So this argument is nonsense and there is no way you can justify this.
it is complete nonsense,but there are plenty of single player games that have hundreds of hours of content the same as multiplayer
Not good single-player game that have deep campaigns and a lot of content and additional gameplay modes which I addressed in the column.
Yeah your logic is ridiculously flawed. A gamer is more likely to get more value out of a multiplayer only game than a singleplayer only game. Now of course there are obvious exceptions(Skyrim being the first that comes to mind), but on average multiplayer gives more value. So with that in mind, why aren’t you asking games like Heavenly Sword, and Bioshock to be cheaper as well?
I think games should be judged on value, a game can only have muti or singeplayer, but still provide hundreds of ours of gameplay(Bayonetta being another example). And it varies from player to player as well, some people love Halo, and have spent days playing the game. I on the other hand, can’t stand that franchise. On the flip side, I’ve literally been playing marvel vs capcom since 2011, but a lot of people just can’t squeeze that much value out of a fighting game.
So this whole argument is just silly all around in summary.