Is the end near for single player games?

By Tiberius Jonez

Zelda, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto and Splinter Cell are all triple-A gaming franchises and all were originally single player only experiences. However, with the exception of Zelda, all these franchises latest iterations feature some form of online multiplayer component. With the big three consoles all featuring online connectivity in varying degrees, it is clear that the future, and in many instances the present, of videogames is online. At some point in the very near future – possibly by the end of this year – completely offline single player games will be extremely rare or even nonexistent.

With development budgets exceeding the $100Mil mark (GTA IV), it’s becoming increasingly difficult for publishers to green-light projects that don’t feature any kind of online revenue streams like downloadable content or multiplayer advertising. Considering only 10-15% of gamers ever finish an entire single player game, the current system of game production and sales is a kind of economic insanity on the part of both developers and consumers. Gamers pay $60 for content they never fully experience and developers spend millions passionately creating content that goes largely unseen.

Gamers wonder why their games have been drastically shortened in the past five years. Five years ago, if a game wasn’t 30-40 hours in length it was considered to be a short game and difficult to justify at $50. Now games are $60 yet most developers are shooting for a much shorter 10-15 hour experience, and why not? Why would a developer want to create a 20-30 hour experience if 85-90% of their consumer base will only ever see the first two-thirds of it? It makes more sense for them to save both money and time by creating a shorter experience that more players might actually complete.

Alone in the Dark, the latest game from publisher Atari is taking a new approach to getting more gamers to see the end of their game by breaking it into chapters and allowing players to have access to every chapter from the get-go. If you get stuck or frustrated somewhere, simply skip to the next chapter and keep going. And don’t worry about missing any important story bits because every chapter is preceded by a “Previously on Alone in the Dark” recap.

This sort of approach or something similar is likely to become more popular with other developers in the future. The next step is chapter by chapter delivery. Instead of buying the entire game for $60, you may pay $5-$10 for a chapter and buy as much or as little of the “entire” experience as you like.

In a recent interview with videogaming247, Atari head Phil Harrison said Eden games, the developer on Alone in the Dark, originally intended to deliver the game episodically when they began work on it four years ago but due to technical and commercial reasons, decided not to go that route with the final product. Still, when you consider the present direction of the industry as a whole, Eden’s thinking was quite prescient four years ago.

As more and more games include features like multiplayer and co-op gameplay the shift away from purely single player games will gain momentum. While there will always be a market for single player games that segment of the industry will become a much more focused one, with fewer developers delivering fewer such experiences. At the same time, with broadband internet becoming more widespread and inexpensive, more players will have the means and desire to play online.

Is the end near for single player games? Probably not the end as a whole but possibly the end of them as we used to know and love them is.