The Importance of Single Player Gaming
by Sean "Kaigen" Simpson - kaigen@planetdeusex.com
As the years advance we're starting to see more developers virtually
abandon the single-player aspect of gaming. Games like Counter-Strike,
Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena are basically the most popular games
around, and the most of a single-player experience you're going to find
in any of them is fighting a normally multiplayer playmode against some
brainless bots.
Then there are the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG's, who claim to
have depth, but go no deeper than the bottom of my desk drawer. Their
supposed "storyline" is usually nothing more than a bit of
background for the world. There is no character development for the
NPC's and no sense of immersion for the player.
Now I'm not necessarily saying that all these games are really bad games
- in fact, some of them are pretty damn good on a design level - I'm
just saying that game developers and publishers may be making a mistake
when changing their focus away from single-player and towards multiplayer.
Ever since I was a kid I thought the best games were the ones who tried
to tell a story. It seems to me that that was what the medium was meant
for. Games go beyond television and their ability to tell a story. While
they may not rival books in story telling, they definitely surpass the
printed word in their nature to immerse the player in that story. A
good game can let the player become part of the story, and not just
a hapless bystander.
I also believe that single-player simply makes for a better game. In
a multiplayer game (esspecially massively multiplayer) the designer
is extremely restricted in what they can do in order to make the game
fair. When the multiplayer patch for Deus Ex was released they had to
edit the gameplay quite a bit just to make it even feasible for such
a game to be played online. Try playing the single-player campaign with
multiplayer rules and it'd make for a much less enjoyable game.
A lot of you are probably saying, "What about the community?"
Well I've met very few people actually in game. Nearly every online
gaming buddy I have I've met through other friends, or the various online
forums I post on. In fact, I find that forums are the best way to meet
people online since you're not busy trying to play the game.
That's neglecting to mention the fact that a vast chunk of the online
gaming community is made up of complete morons. So-called l33t speak
(which in my mind is an insult to the English language I cherish so
much) is infecting the vocabulary of gamers worldwide. I occasionally
find myself actually using this moronic gaming lingo and have to slap
myself back to reality. It's the English language people, you don't
have the right to chop it up to tiny bits however you please.
Now, if single-player gaming dies, what does that mean for gaming as
a whole? I'm worried that the majority of intelligent, rational, and
friendly gamers will become nearly non-existent. Story telling in games
will probably fade from existence. Games will likely become simpler
and innovation will wither and die. And the gaming community will lose
what little respect it has from the general public.
This article is my plea to the gaming community, game developers, and
publishers to please not forget the single-player gamers! We're out
here, and we don't want to be left out to dry.
RSS Feeds
