It’s about that time where everyone starts to compile their Game of the Year lists. There are a few last minute additions to be considered (Rainbow Six: Siege, Just Cause 3, Xenoblade Chronicles X), but I think most have come up with many of their top picks already.
It’s likely that many GOTY lists will include Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3 somewhere near the top. And I think that’s a significant achievement, given that we now exist in an age where those type of games are practically an endangered species. But their success shows that they shouldn’t be.
I’m speaking of course about single-player. Games that exist to be played by one player, and one player only. The past few years has seen a rise in multiplayer-only games that are often impossible to play solo. I’d argue this latest age started in earnest with the MOBA trend, multiplayer-only games that pit teams against each other without even a whiff of a single-player campaign, unlike MMOs which still had a decent amount of solo content.
After that, we’ve seen many fully priced $60 multiplayer-only titles from Titanfall to Evolve to Battlefront. No campaign, just online multiplayer alone.
And most surprising of all, we’ve seen traditionally single player series dive deep into multiplayer trend. The Elder Scrolls’ next installment turned the game into an MMO with The Elder Scrolls Online. Grand Theft Auto V had a traditional single-player campaign, but it was eventually supplanted by enduring support for GTA Online, the multiplayer component of the game. Even Bloodborne, arguably the best single-player campaign of the year, injected elements of multiplayer including summoning allies to fight with or against.
Very, very few games these days are entirely reliant on single-player. The idea seems to be that multiplayer games allow players to keep playing indefinitely, putting more time into the title, and these days hopefully sinking money into map packs or microtransactions. Single-player is a much less reliable model than it used to be.
But for some companies? They’re so good at it, they can buck the trend. The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 have exactly zero multiplayer components to them. You can’t play with a friend, you can’t do battle against strangers. None of that. And yet, they’ve created the most engaging gaming experiences of the year, because they answer that need for gamers who sometimes, just want to explore a big, wide world alone.
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I wrote about this earlier this year in regards to Skyrim, how that game has had enduring appeal long after its release. And much of it has to do with the appeal of solitude in gaming.
“The power of a focused, high-quality single player experience should not be forgotten by developers, even in this ‘social’ age. We don’t always need to connect with others, to share worlds. Sometimes we want to exist as the king of our own little universe, and not let anyone else in. That’s what Skyrim excelled at above all else, and why it remains immortal today.”
I think the success of The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 this year alone reinforce that narrative. Just because we can connect to millions of other players anytime, anywhere, that doesn’t mean we necessarily want to. One of my chief complaints about Destiny, a game I really like, is that it doesn’t offer enough avenues to effectively play solo. Everywhere you turn in that game, you’re constantly being forced into multiplayer, or even worse, tasked with assembling your own group to take on its hardest content like the raids. That’s all well and good and I wouldn’t destroy that system for my own benefit, but I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed the relentless focus on group play. I love Destiny, but it’s a game that seems determined to beat my need to play single-player out of me. You will play with others, and you will like it.
That’s why switching from Destiny to Fallout the past few weeks has been such a joy. I can do anything, go anywhere. There is no piece of content in Fallout I can’t take on by myself. I’m not reliant on friends or strangers. If I die, it’s not because I’m lacking 2-5 friends to back me up, it’s because I’m in over my head, and I should either strategize or come back later.
I spent an inordinate amount of time in The Witcher 3 for the same reasons. There I was a preset character, Geralt, but the complete lack of any other player characters allowed me to get invested in the story far more than I would have if there were dozens of other “adventurers” roaming around the countryside completing all the same quests as me. As such, The Witcher 3’s story and characters hooked me more than any other game in recent memory, and I didn’t feel as if I was missing anything because I wasn’t playing with other people.
I get that it’s hard to make these games. Not everyone is CD Projekt Red or Bethesda. But I do worry that single-player is starting to feel endangered. It’s being stripped from games that used to have both single and multiplayer, and former champions of single-player like Grand Theft Auto seem like they’re almost completely forsaking it to chase after multiplayer microtransaction cash.
The trend doesn’t need to play out this way. The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 show that games can find huge success free from the trapping of multiplayer. Not that I resent multiplayer games in general, or will never play them myself, but I just can’t bear the idea that someday everything is going to need multiplayer injected into it because of this new trend toward “social.” It doesn’t have to be that way, and these games prove it more than any other.
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