Publishers might like multiplayer games because they’re more profitable but as far as most gamers are concerned they prefer single-player.
Earlier this week, the boss of Fortnite was talking about how he thought live service games, which encourage online interaction, were the future of gaming. If you read that and didn’t like the sound of it, don’t worry, as you’re not alone.
One of the many problems for video games at the moment – particularly evident in the PlayStation 5’s current output – is that while most people would prefer to play single-player video games it’s multiplayer titles, with their constant stream of microtransactions, that make by far the most money.
Add in the increasing cost of developing new games, which affects high-end narrative titles disproportionately more, and you’ve got a real problem: people want more single-player games but financially speaking they’re not necessarily an attractive proposition for publishers.
This is why Sony, Ubisoft, EA and others have been increasingly ignoring single-player games in favour of live service titles, even though only a tiny minority are ever truly successful.
The more live service games publishers make the more competition they create for themselves, with more and more multiplayer games competing for the finite amount of time most people have to play – especially when you consider that most of the more popular live service titles are over five years old and do everything they can to discourage people from going elsewhere.
The idea that most gamers prefer single-player comes from a new study carried out by MIDiA, who found that it was the favourite way to play for 53% of people.
That percentage is an average across all age groups though, with 16-19- and 20–24-year-olds preferring online competitive PvP games (the likes of Fortnite and Call Of Duty).
It’s still relatively close though, with the 20-24 group naming single-player as their second favourite style of game, ahead of couch co-op and PvE (i.e. online co-op). Even for the 16-19 group, single-player only narrowly missed out on second place and was only 10% behind PvP.
Interestingly, couch co-op was popular across the board and yet there are very few such games released, suggesting that, even ignoring single-player games, publishers are not producing the games people actually want to play.
Of course, publishers are businesses and they don’t care what you want, they care what will make them the most money. But with live service games proving to have such a small hit rate there is a sense that publishers are beginning to realise that they cannot focus only on that in the future.
Although many gamers have complained about a surfeit of bloated, 60+ hour single-player epics, that no one has any time for, the MIDiA report suggests that, being finite, single-player games are still easier to fit into people’s schedules than a live service game that encourages you to play every day and co-ordinate with friends.
They also posit that while getting live service players to move to a different multiplayer game is very difficult, it’s a lot easier to encourage them to play a single-player game as a break or ‘holiday’ from their preferred online title.
The report ends by pointing out that while single-player games are more expensive to make than ever, so too are live service games. As such, smaller scale ‘leaner’ single-player titles may be the sensible route for the future.
All of which makes perfect sense, and yet the video games industry is notoriously stubborn to give up on a band wagon, even if it’s not working out for them (they’re not necessarily being stupid in doing so, they’re just doing what investors, who often know nothing about gaming, expect of them).
We’ll get a better idea of the industry’s future direction once new games are announced next year, and perhaps at The Game Awards in December, but there is now solid data to suggest that refocusing on single-player titles makes clear business sense.
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