Mark Oakley prefers single-player campaigns, but does the industry really care about gamers like him?
If running around virtual environments with a huge gun is your kind of thing, the arrival of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Star Wars: Battlefront was most likely fantastic news. Even if it’s not, we can take it as read that Activision’s long-standing shooter franchise is insanely popular and, hey, everyone loves Star Wars, right?
If you’re an older-generation console gamer, however (and by older generation, I mean PS3 and Xbox 360 – yes, we know it’s weird to refer these machines in suchg a way) then you may feel you’ve been shortchanged. While the latest Call of Duty PS4, Xbox One and PC versions allow for the game to be played in a raft of online multiplayer modes as well as in the form of a single-player ‘Campaign’, PS3 and Xbox 360 owners won’t be getting a Campaign mode at all. The game will be cheaper to buy, but it’s going to come with just multiplayer and Zombies gameplay. The lack of any single-player campaign mode comes down to the technology of those last-gen machines – they can’t handle the extra functionality, according to Activision.
CoD isn’t the first title to eschew a single player mode, though. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, which came out in December for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC, focuses on online play, with offline gaming relegated to a series of training missions. As for Star Wars: Battlefront, that’s going to have an offline ‘Missions’ mode that supports bots, but again that’s essentially for training you up to get ready for the core online multiplayer experience – there is no single-player campaign.
This is threatening to become something of trend since the industry has ushered in the next-generation of consoles and graphics cards. Is it really what gamers want from their £40-50-plus AAA titles, though? What happened to the solo gamers who want to spend a solid hour or ten on a captivating offline campaign?
Fancy A Game?
Time was when multiplayer gaming meant arranging a games night with friends from school/work/your local club of choice, complete with rustling bags of crisps, a beer/soft drink of your choice and lots of laughter/shouting/fighting to accompany every race won, every goal scored, every man shot. This does still happen, of course, and the good house Nintendo has tried its best to keep that spirit alive.
The reality is that online play has pushed offline multiplayer to one side, patting it gleefully on the back as it saw it on its merry way. Broadband internet has helped, naturally, as now worries of gameplay lags and dropped connections are – while certainly not a thing of the past – less frequent. It’s not just having a better, faster Internet that caused gaming to go online, though. The reality is that the gaming industry has increasingly moved towards that direction, bringing gamers along for the journey. Developers embraced the brave new world created by both Microsoft and Sony as they pushed their online services upon gamers. When the latest generation of consoles was released, Sony’s PS Plus and Microsoft’s Xbox Live were lauded as the only way to play and they were successful. Boy, were they successful.
Games began focusing more on exclusive content for online multiplayers. Beyond the initial game’s release, developers and games publishers quickly took advantage of being able to draw gamers back to their favourite gaming worlds with downloadable content (DLC), encouraging them to spend more money as they did so. So, a game like GTA 5 – a fantastic offline, single-player campaign title in its own right – seems to have found extra life via its Online mode, giving gamers better value-for-money. Or has it?
Does More Mean Better?
Let me take you back to early last year when PS4 exclusive The Order 1886 landed. Reviews were mixed with the positives – outstanding, cinematic graphics, no loading times, immersive setting – soundly outweighed by the negatives – no replay value, no multiplayer or co-op modes, linear gameplay. While most criticism was saved for that linear gameplay narrative, stopping gamers from taking their own path, a lot of criticism was thrown at the title concerning its total lack of a multiplayer online mode.
This was a strange point-of-view to have. Sure, The Order 1886 wasn’t cheap to buy, but then show me a AAA title that is. The fact that the game cost so much money is more symptomatic of an industry that has been steadily ramping up prices for the past decade. The assumption that having a multiplayer mode would somehow make that cost more palatable is a misstep. The Order 1886 was that rarest of things nowadays – a single-player shooter offering a dedicated campaign. That was it. There is no real reason to go in and play it again, that’s true, but the experience itself is fantastic while it lasts. The the feel of the game, the visuals – these are what will stay with you long after you complete the title. Isn’t that worth the admission price alone? How many films do you rewatch again and again? Sure, you’ll have some favourites, but just because I don’t want to watch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy ever again doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy that immensely the first time round.
The issue of including an online multiplayer mode in a game that’s aimed squarely at a single-player campaign market has been shown in the past to be a mistake if you don’t get it right. When the Uncharted franchise added multiplayer to the second and third games, users took to the web to complain over the treatment of the mode from the developer. For a franchise that remains one of the best offline campaign experiences I’ve had on a console to date, the delicate balance of handling a solid multiplayer mode to back up a great singleplayer campaign is one that’s important to get right if it’s really going to add value.
Of course, if you get it right – like GTA 5 or The Last of Us did – then it does undoubtedly provide for a longer-term and rewarding gaming experience. To automatically assume that offline is better, however, is naive.
I’m also a huge football game fan and the recent trend of adding a trading card style mode to the game, marketed as offering more gameplay for your buck, is wasted on classic football gamers like me. We just want to take our teams onto the pitch, so all these additional online modes are simply not aimed at the core gaming experience. Unfortunately for many sports gaming franchises, the core online experience is all too often a disappointment with quitters, pausers and posers aplenty. It’s also incredibly hard work.
Learning Curve
The online multiplayer world is all too often not a nice place to find yourself in. Abuse, cheating and cockiness all feature in the online space. Also, the starting point for new gamers coming in to online multiplayer environments is far behind the established players who have been spending hours upon hours to get good at a certain title.
The Last of Us is a perfect example. I’ve been playing its multiplayer Factions offshoot since I finished the campaign – and what a campaign, by the way – for months and I’m OK at it, but I’m always, without fail, up against seasoned shooters who round on me in an instant. They have the best weapons (likely by paying for the in-game weapons and skills that you can buy) and they know the online maps inside out. Whereas the single-player campaign mode was immersive, breathtaking and downright scary, online play is more often than not frustrating; annoying even.
Experiences like this have steered me away from online-only titles such as Destiny and World of Warcraft, as has the lack of time I have to put into these kinds of experiences. I have a young family, a wife and – bluntly – a life outside of gaming. I simply don’t have enough hours in a day to dedicate to these experiences in order to get as good as I’d need to.
Yet companies are investing much more money in the multiplayer space. I know I’m not alone in embracing the single-player experience, but why don’t gaming companies want to cater for gamers like me?
Money And Mates
The financial business of the gaming industry is the most important thing for developers, naturally. In the days before online, once a game was purchased then the developer had done their job and it was time to move to the next title in development.
Now, there are clear opportunities to actively sell in-game purchases to gamers to help them get better against superior online opposition. Downloadable content with additional mini-episodes, new maps, new characters – this has become the norm for many of the big AAA titles. Just as game developers can issue gaming updates to improve the user experience, so they can issue new content to a captive audience.
There is also the plain fact that while there are plenty of gamers who crave the solo experience, there are many who want to play in a social gaming environment. The guys in multiplayer shooters who are mocking you for dying all the time, who know the terrain like the back of their hand – they are a huge part of gaming these days. These gamers are more than happy to pay money to get even better online and to brag about it to their mates. For a late-30s gamer such as myself, this is all a bit of an alien concept but the reality is that I’m playing against a much younger, very different competitor online. Truthfully, I’m out of my depth.
As for the industry, the head of EA – no less – has said that the lack of a singleplayer campaign mode in Star Wars: Battlefront was always part of the plan, as the market data they rely tell them that very few buyers of these kinds of games bother with the single-player mode. With that in mind, they decided to ditch it.
EA is obviously not alone in taking this stance towards what players want from its games, and we have to take it at its word. It’s a position that makes me a little sad, though, truth be tol. That’s particularly true for a universe that’s as rich with possibilities as the Star Wars one. The recently-released Halo 5 for the Xbox One seems to epitomise where first-person shooters are at right now, with the online multiplayer experience gaining decent reviews while the single player campaign sounding like a confused, underwhelming experience.
A little while back, I read a piece on the web on David Braben’s thoughts on Elite: Dangerous and its lack of an offline mode. There is a single-player mode, but it does need to be played online. The reason? The core of the game was designed around a multiplayer mode that was evolving and changing, centred around the collaborative nature of a multiplayer game. To recreate this in an offline, single-player setting would be impossible, said Braben.
My worry is that this view is becoming the norm in the industry as a whole, and that as multiplayer gaming is what gaming studios say the people want it will become the only game in town. Perhaps I’m in the minority. I know I’m not completely alone, though.