Single player games, where's the fun?

[heatlesssun]

No games are meant to be FUN.

Exactly. I play a lot of games but don't really have the time or inclination to become a good gamer, I love the visual experience of it which is best done in single player. Plus all this exotic shit like multi-monitor and 3D really doesn't do anything much for competitive multi-player though I know that's debatable but it can definitely add to the visual experience.

I'll pop in MP maps in CoD or whatever FPS I'm playing from time to time, get my ass kicked by a kid and then move on.

But yeah, it's about fun. If you have fun showing off your skillz, good for you. I'll have my fun with awesome 3D visuals. Different strokes for different folks. It's called life!

 

[banned_user]

my points were:

1. the stories in video games make saturday morning cartoons look deep (and im talking about the games that supposedly have good stories).
2. if you like stories why not watch a movie
3. for a single player experience, why not play an mmo that offers quite a bit more content and can offer the same experience in a much more expansive way
4. People who don't play multiplayer do so because they probably can't compete online.
5. multiplayer offers a different experience everytime, and years of fun, not hours

1-3 different forms of entertainment have their own strengths. I’d expect a movie to have a better story because its game play and controls suck. Also if all you want is a good story then you are looking for a book.

4+5 Variety, Different types of games for different moods. They are all good in their own ways, you just can't get the same feeling of a Portal or X-com in a multiplayer game.

 

[PoopsMacClaude]

@ OP

You hit the nail on the head with your first post. Nowadays that is exactly how I and many others I know feel. These new games that are single-player centric, even those that are so highly-lauded, such titles from Bioware, are just complete junk. The games with great stories have been far and few between: Homeworld, Starcraft, Half Life 1/2... etc. But that is true across ALL platforms. It's just really rare for developers to come out with a solid execution of a great story.

On the other side of things, multiplayer is where the fun is for most people. What drives singleplayer is of course the story. Who gets enjoyment from defeating AI? AI would have to VASTLY improve in its capabilities for it to be enjoyable for most gamers. That's why the money in game dev. on PC is through Multiplayer content.

And on your point about single-player lovers being unable to compete online: YES. Never a truer word said. These people tend to try out an online title every now and then and get completely stomped and then proceed to get called noob or what have you. Needless to say they don't adapt/improve/or overall just handle it well and then proceed retreat back to their little bubble of singeplayer gaming. Whether they are just too stupid to change or what I don't know, but there are A LOT of people that do this on the PC - particularly the RPG fans. I've come across and known quite a few. The story is always the same. In fact this niche is so big a lot of devs have begun to reach out to them - I remember hearing talk about this specifically for COD: Black Ops, for example, in a dev interview. Lots of other games are taking this approach, for instance those that cater to PvE-only players in MMOs, which is a HUGE demographic. WoW is at some 13 million subscribers with PvE as its main focus. Most of the players only care about that as many will tell you. Couple that with the fact that a lot of studios are pumping out MMOs like quarter-pounders with the same development focus on PvE encounters and it's obvious they think there's a lot of money to be had there.

To be honest competing is pretty hard, and when you go online, the bar gets raised much higher than it would say if you were just competing amongst your friends. A lot of people simply aren't capable of keeping up. Playing against other humans is the ultimate challenge in any game, not everyone can be a winner. In a society where everyone is brought up and told that they're smarter and more special than everyone else, a little dose of reality can be hard to take, even if it's just in an online game.

However, with that said, the multiplayer experience has been dumbed down to an extreme since the introduction of the McFPS. Some games, like COD, are designed specifically for a very certain type of gameplay that's perfect for people that I just described. Consoles have had a TREMENDOUS effect on the multiplayer experience of games since they hold the biggest market by a very, very wide margin. People that play consoles generally go for the simpler stuff. Whether that's due to the limitations of the console hardware of the brains of the people that love to play on it, or a combination of both, I don't know. Needless to say its impact on PC gaming is easy to see. There has been almost no real innovation in games today. I have real hope for Battlefield 3, but as you can see form the Bad Company series, it is slowly migrating away from its 1942 sandbox-style roots into a force-fed COD-type experience with an emphasis on brainless gameplay.

Sorry for the wall of text, didn't intend to write such a long reply, but I guess this is an issue I care a lot about.

PS. Some hope for the progression of games is still out there. Check out the Infinity Engine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eREddMjt4

 

[huxley]

Sir...uh..."poops" is it? That is some of the most self indulgent tripe I have heard for some time. I think you need to look at a few things

-Most people arent naturally 'awesome' at FPS games. To become great, you have to learn tactics, and play the game all the time. I dont have that sort of time.
-You act like you and others like you are something special because they have the 'balls' to play competitive games online. You are nothing special, its just a game, get over it. Also to insinuate that you are somehow smarter because you are better at Call of Duty is ridiculous to say the least. To me, its funny that you would want to waste so much time being good at something that really doesnt matter to anyone except yourself and your ego. Why do you care so much about this issue? Why cant you realize that other people dont care and not throw a tantrum when we all dont share your view?

 

[Grimham]

And on your point about single-player lovers being unable to compete online: YES. Never a truer word said.

It's really ignorant that you and th OP would feel that way. I guarantee there are plenty of people on this forum that enjoy SP and can also beat the hell out of 95% of the people in MP (including you). If someone needs puff their chest out and brag about their MP "skillz" to feel good about themselves that's pretty bad....and sad too actually.

Actually, I now think your whole poll is just troll bait (and I fell for it, stupid me), no one can be so closed minded.

 

[rehab]

Im actually going the opposite direction. Mulit-player ruined MY imagination and ability to get immersed in the story line; which ironically are the abilities that got me into gaming in the first place, with the likes of Castlevania and Zelda. Years of SOF2, Battlefield 2, CODMW led me to sell everything related to gaming and not touch it for 1.5 years. I picked up a gaming laptop last week, and the first game I loaded was Clive Barker's The Undying, fantastic story.

And lets get one thing straight.. there is about as much "skills" involved in most MP FPS as your run of the mill circle jerk. Its more of who can expose holes in the gameplay quick enough.

 

[heatlesssun]

I admit that I'm not a good gamer and one reason that I prefer SP. So how much money to you make with you mad skillz? And who besides a bunch of pimple faced teenage boys and you give a rats ass?

So you're a better MP game player than me and 99.9999999% of the world doesn't fucking care. I play games for fun, not to stroke my ego and that of others. There's no right or wrong and better than. It's called individuality, you like what you like, I like what I like and others like what they like. And it just doesn't matter unless you're making mad coin with your crazy skillz.

 

[Tudz]

So you're a better MP game player than me and 99.9999999% world doesn't fucking care.

That would imply around 6 people in the world care So its more like 99.999999984%. But yeah, I agree with you heatless, I'm not terrible at MP games but really I dont care if I'm better than a bunch of kids who haven't played as long as me and nor do I care if I get beaten by some kid who lives in his parent's basement and doesn't get enough sun. After a while the joy of beating a human didn't really become all that much more significant than beating the AI to me, at least not significant enough to outweigh the shear grind involved in MP games.

 

[chockomonkey]

You know what the problem is here? These kids don't have a proper outlet for competition. Go join some sports, yo :smith:

edit: or do you suck at sports so you've never played them? rofl

still the best response in here:

Perhaps you mean mean "where's the fun for me".

Believe it or not, people who are not you have a different opinions and different tastes than people who are you.

This will be an important truth to remember throughout your life.

Also this:

 

[Lyric Suite]

I don't understand why anyone gets pumped for single player anymore. Any notable game that is known to have a great story (bioware games for example) usually has a story that's not nearly as good as most b movies

But that's a fault with the developer, not the genre in itself. Bioware always had very bad writers, even from the beginning. Try playing a game like Planescape: Torment and then come back at me saying how much fun you had dealing with the WoW kiddies.

The problem isn't that single player games are inherently less entertaining then online games. The problem is that most games today are crap, period. Take first person shooters for instance. How difficult can it be to make those games, right? I mean, you just go around shooting stuff, right? Except even as far back as Doom, those games weren't just about shooting your way through hordes of enemies. Level design was a key element of what made those games so entertaining. Even games like Serious Sam failed to capture the essence of those old shooters, considering the game was just a room cleaning simulator. You entered an area, fought off wave after wave of enemies, moved to another room, rinse and repeat. This is not what Doom was like at all. And as the genre developed new ways to interact with your environment were introduced. Levels became more maze-like, puzzles became more complex, interactivity increased and so forth. Doom, Hexen, Duke Nukem, Blood, Jedi Knight (possibly the most underrated FPS ever concieved). And that was just the beginning. Half Life introduced in-game cinematic that tied with the action (rather then seek to replace it, like modern shooters). The Thief series introduced stealth and an increased complexity in level design. The System Shock series introduced RPG elements and eventually Deus Ex was borne, which is perhaps the most complete and ambitious FPS to date. So from 1993 to 2001 we witnessed a continuous evolution of the genre into new and complex forms, and then, everything just collapsed. With each subsequent shooter the genre became less complex, more derivative and just plain boring. Black Ops is the summit of everything that is wrong with modern shooters. Here we have a game that practically plays itself (literally), where the player is more or less a passive spectator going through a linear series of scripted set pieces. It feels less like a game and more like an interactive movie, a movie with horrible plot and terrible acting. Of course those games are much better on the internet, and least you actually get to play.

And its the same thing with other genres. RPGs? They are all crap now. Dumped down pseudo-action games with limited interactivity (besides cross-species gay sex), no strategic or tactical value, and boring writing and story. Modern flight simulators? Boring. Space sims? Dead. Adventure games? Dead. Turn based strategy games? In the process of being dumped down (I.E. Civilization V). Real time strategy games? Unevolved since 1997. And so on and so forth. Most of those genres offered experiences that went far beyond "lol story". I just recently started playing Daggerfall again. An old school dungeon crawler with gigantic randomly generated dungeons which are veritable mazes, requiring hours of exploration and a great deal of strategy. You think WoW can compete with that type of experience? The most complicated dungeon they had was Blackrock Depths and that was already too much for an online game.

The only genre which always worked better online then in single player has been real time strategy games, but playing those games single player was still fun, because the actual content was pretty good, qualitatively wise. The original Starcraft wasn't particularly challenging compared to the battle.net experience but at least it was well designed and had a good story. Starcraft 2 tried to revolutionize the single player experience of those games but ended up making a mockery of it, due to the terrible writing and ludicrous characters. Even the cinematics were horrible.

 

[saedrin]

Best. Troll. Ever.