Single-Player Games: Alive and Kicking (Your Butt...)
Single-player games are hardly talked about any more. It's all about multiplayer (or massively multiplayer). Single-player is just so... passé.

But this little goody suggests that while single-player games may not be the hot topic for developers or gaming press, it's still as popular as ever amongst customers.

Solo Games Live On In a Multiplayer World

From a personal standpoint - well, I LOVE multiplayer games. I feel the fun-factor goes up for almost any game that you can play with other people. Playing with friends instead of strangers is about 10x better. But multiplayer games can be much more stressful and frustrating as well. Getting people scheduled together, dealing with punks, interruptions for one affecting everybody, dropped connections at critical moments, getting bumped off your team three minutes before the win, dealing with widely varying skill levels, friends getting lost on the way to the dungeon... that's a lot of additional pain which is usually worth it, but too often it's not what I'm looking for.

A good, focused single-player game where I get to be the hero, where I get to play exactly when and for how long I want, is often EXACTLY what I want and need. I would never want either single-player games or multiplayer games to go away, and I don't think every game should have both components.


(Vaguely) related senselessness:
* SPORPGs: You Heard It Here First!
* Why Bother With Single-Player RPGs
* Game Design: Tough Choices
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Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink)