Multiplayer is a big deal these days, to the point where even a game focused on a single-player narrative feels the need to shoehorn some online component into the mix, regardless of whether or not it works. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has criticized this, because every now and then, he's awesome.
"Let’s forget about what the actual promise of a game is and whether it’s suited to a narrative or competitive experience," he mused. "Take that off the table for a minute and just think about the concept-free feature list: campaign, co-op, how many players? How many guns? How long is the campaign?
"When you boil it down to that, you take the ability to make good decisions out of the picture. And the reason they do it is because they notice that the biggest blockbusters offer a little bit for every kind of consumer. You have people that want co-op and competitive, and players who want to immerse themselves in deep fiction. But the concept has to speak to that automatically; it can’t be forced. That’s the problem.
Pitchford used Dead Space 2 as a specific example, adding: "It’s ceiling-limited; it’ll never do 20 million units. The best imaginable is a peak of four or five million units if everything works perfectly in your favour. So the bean counters go: ‘How do I get a higher ceiling?’ And they look at games that have multiplayer.
"They’re wrong, of course. What they should do instead is say that they’re comfortable with the ceiling, and get as close to the ceiling as possible. Put in whatever investment’s required to focus it on what the promise is all about."
As someone who totally supports the concept of the single-player game, I have to agree with Pitchford here. Of course, I'd love to see Gearbox practice what Pitchford preaches. As great as Borderlands is, it felt a bit flat in terms of character, and I feel that the faux-MMO vibe was to blame. I'd love to see the studio focus on crafting a good story with that series, personally.
Pitchford Bemoans Multiplayer Obsession [Edge]
Contest:
12:20 PM on 04.05.2011 | 
Alternatively I love games like Oblivion.... hundreds of hours of gameplay for when I don't want the company of real people.
Don't get me wrong. Certain titles manage to capture my attention anyway, Monday Night Combat jumping to mind right off, but for the most part I prefer single player.
You spend more money tacking on multiplayer to a game that doesn't need it hoping that it will become a big enough hit to recoup those costs, but how often does this actually happen? It's a culture of overproduction, throwing more and more money into pits and hoping more than what they tossed in comes flying back out. Wonder why production costs are too high to produce diverse games anymore, if you don't have a budget you can overproduce the product with, you may as well give up and develop an iPad game.
mmm meat and potatoes and cake
I recently read a blog post from Lars from Larian studios the guys that made the divine divinity series. He pitched two ideas for new rpgs and barely secured funding.He also wanted to make a huge open world rpg and the publishers wouldn't fund it.
They wanted online play and of course the hated word dlc. He didn't. He wanted to make a good singleplayer game with new tech. They didn't understand denied him instantly.
Am I the only one that enjoys single player experiances? I'm tired of devs worrying more about multiplayer more than single player+story stop forcing multiplayer into every fucking genre and franchise some are meant for it some are just forced and result broken game.
End rant
@ SpacemanRoo That's the thing though, would any of them be as successful without the singleplayer to begin with?
Also I agree about the MP as well.
Both Dead Space 2 and Bioshock 2 didn't need multiplayer and in the end they really didn't add much to it. I doubt anyone actually went and decided to buy either game for the MP.
That doesn't change that Borderlands is a bit weak in story. Nor does it change that its "millions of combinations of guns" wasn't the kind of variation originally hyped, but rather just very minor number differences on a very small set of basic weapons (with a few unique weapons thrown in). But Borderlands didn't suffer because it was made multiplayer, it was always meant to be multiplayer. It suffered mostly because Gearbox just wasn't that great in making it. (Although I wonder what involvement the bean counters had with the change in its art direction, whether they were for or against the move to cel shaded.)
Also, I may have never disagreed more than with your sentiments on Borderlands. Story? What? That game is about dicking around, finding loot and shooting things over and over with buddies online, with drop-in-drop-out ease. No one cares about those characters or a meaningful story -- that's not why they played the first one.