How relevant are single player games today?

I remember an article from the nineties about multiplayer because it became much more popular with the rise of the internet. I didn't give it much thought, sure I liked multiplayer, but I sure liked single player a lot as well.

With the xbox 360 and their party chat, multiplayer became much more interesting, voice chat was already a thing on the pc, but in most cases you ended up typing, the x360 came with a mic, and the party chat became hugely popular.

Single player games, for me anyway, became a lot less interesting, and probably for a lot others too, since the best selling games nowadays are multiplayer games.

But I doubt this is only due to the added features for multiplayer in recent history. I mean graphics have always been very important, but they have become less important than in the past. Just because the leaps are less big than let's say during the crysis era. When you add the fact that the gameplay didn't change much either it's probably less interesting for people to buy the next big sp game, than to buy the next big mp game.

I for instance, am interested in playing a lot of sp games that released this gen, but I just can't find the time because I'm so consumed with mp. Heck I've always been a gta fan, and I haven 't even been able to finish the story mode of gta V, I doubt I will even buy rdr2.

They're still big, they havn't diminished as such.

Just multiplayer brought about bigger change and more people are playing those kinds of games more.

Why would they not? its more competitive, its more challenging, its more social... that will usually take priority.

Very relevant.

more relevant than multiplayer.

Aren't 2 of the best selling retail games this year single player?

Also, aren't a lot of single player games exceeding sales expectations?

Very relevant to me.

I have been gaming for 29 years and I only play single player games.

Always have been. That is what I love. The stories, the virtual worlds, the adventures....

Multi-player has absolutely no interest to me whatsoever.

I don't like it, and I don't wnat to deal with other people.

SP games are the most relevant for me... generally, I find them the most interesting.

Never play online/mp games. Went through that phase over a decade ago, got it out of my system and now I'm completely done with that.

Was so refreshing getting back to actual games after that repetitive bs and I don't look to games for socializing, more to enjoy something on my own (or with a friend who's sitting right next to me)

AAA can pretty much f**k right off too, so I don't care if they go in that direction, as AA and indie games are more suited to my tastes as far as modern gaming goes anyways.

Single player games are still big in my opinion. I am big on indie games, and many of them are fantastic and single player. Also my favorite games of this generation are single player (Octopath Traveler and Xenoblade Chronicles 2).

Very relevant.

I don't spend a lot of time in MP games. My most played games are still played solo.

SP games will always be better than MP because you don't have to rely on other players to make or break the experience.

For me and a big part of the gamers they are relevant.

The problem is Multiplayer games give more money, thats why companies like EA keep pushing them...

Multiplayers is way too popular, so much that garbage like destiny and Star Wars Battlefront sell way more than they deserve.

Multiplayer ran its course, they are unbearable now. Single player are ALL I'll play.

As relevant as they ever were, i.e. very relevant.

Very. They provide the best damn experiences out there.

As someone who used to play a lot of MMO's I only ever play SP games now. Like @bussinrounds said above I got the whole online thing out of my system a long time ago and now look for quality SP experiences and there are plenty of them around.

that's going to be obliterated when fifa, bf V and cod releases, and rdr2 will probably have multiplayer as well.

Well, several single player games sold extremely well this gen....if not more than just several.

So I’d say yes.

I mean, GoW might not have made as much money as Fortnite, but it sold more than Tekken 7 I believe.

I can't stand multiplayer games except for football (fifa/pes), so single-player all the way.

My point still stands. You say single player games are irrelevant when some of the best selling and critically acclaimed games this year are single player.

Also, your comparison of the games you mentioned doesn't really make much sense since those franchises will outsell every other game out there - single player or multiplayer.

Solid as rock...The sp oriented games sales are!!!

Therefore very Relevant...The SPOG must be /QED

Totally with you on this. All this lootbox money grabbing tactics and profanity with idiot gamers that infest the servers makes MP pretty crap.

Singleplayer ALL the way..

As relevant as ever. The only thing the market is rejecting is sub-par games, irrespective of type or genre.

The more delicious question is whether SP-focused games will attempt to rock the boat by changing their standard practice. Publishers don't like SP games because the audience most keen on spending is only asked to do so once. So what gives way first: consumers' reluctance to pay on a rolling basis for content? Or will publishers increase the base price for their product? I lean toward the former.

Skyrim. Single player. One of the best selling games ever. Assassin's Creed Origins. Single player. Sold like hot cakes. God of War. Single player. Flew off the shelves. You get the picture.

"Single player is dead" is just wishful thinking from greedy publishers who want to bring free-to-play economy and microtransactions to the $60 (+ Season Pass + Super-Duper Collector's Edition) AAA market so they can enact their Scrooge McDuck fantasies. This herd mentality is going to backfire on them, and I'm going to bring the popcorn.

And personally, I don't play multiplayer at all. Even in Warframe, I'm almost exclusively a solo player. People on the internet are jerks.

I enjoy both sp and mp games equally so I think that they are just as relevant as multiplayer.

I feel like the thread backfired for ya but whatever. Like everyone else said, it’s relevant as ever. The games this month and a few last month seems like a testament to that fact.

I still find them fun.

I only like multi-player for the community.

Everquest was amazing in the sense that you NEEDED to make connections if you wanted to achieve anything. Once mmos introduced cross server party finding, instancing, little to no penalty for playing your class poorly, allowing every class to solo right up to max level, my interest dropped significantly.

What’s the point of being online with all these other people if you really don’t need to interact with them? I’d rather play a single player game and just chat on steam or discord at the same time in that case.

They are going to get even better next gen.

I know a lot of people who are losing interest in multiplayer, especially FPS games. All I'm interested in these days is SP games.

SP games are still huge... MP games have been designed to monetize as heavily as possible, and thus are hugely popular. SP games have been monetized for after the initial purchase, but nowhere near as heavily.

I didn't say they were irrelevant, I asked if they were still relevant because the obvious decline in interest.

And there's a lot more multiplayer games than those big names that would outsell the single player you mention, look at pubg and overwatch, not to mention a lot of people rather spend their money on skins on fortnite than buy a single player game. World of tanks and war thunder are free games too but they have multiple times the revenue sp games do.

Of course you could say those are all big names also, but a lot multiplayer games become big names because they are just a lot more popular in general.

Well fallout 4 was the last sp game I bought, if you don't count skyrim vr and fallout 4 vr. You could say bethesda is a bit of an exception but sp games still can't compete with the popularity of mp games.

To be honest, I don't think those single players games would have sold very well if there were good multiplayer games in stead, apart from fortnite and pubg december last year, there weren't many releases recently, they are all jampacked after the summer.

and I don't know what platform you play on, but I get along quite well with people on the xbox, I meet a lot of different people and you will always have somebody annoying , but that's rather rare. People are quite friendly, of course your opponent in games will sometimes hate on you when they lose, but that's kinda normal.

They are the only things that give value to consoles. And if they aren't exclusive It doesn't even matter.

Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, Sony, Ubisoft still committed to single player, Nintendo sold crates of Switches on the backs of single-player Zelda and Mario games, RDR2 will have a big single-player campaign, so on and so forth. How many "exceptions" does it take for them to stop being "exceptions" and start becoming a significant part of the overall market?

Who says anything about competing? Single-player and multi-player games have coexisted since the days of Quake and StarCraft. As sales numbers show, single-player games are still thriving. This is not a zero-sum game.

AAA publishers are stupid. Single-player games aren't going anywhere, but they see the rolling income generation of free-to-play games, and get dollar signs in their eyes, hence they perpetuate the "single-player is dead" myth to try to nudge people into paying $4.99 for a slightly different coloured gun skin. They're putting all their eggs in one basket, instead of recognizing the diversity of the market and having many toes in multiple puddles. It's going to backfire on them. It's going to be glorious.

I was half-joking about the "people on the internet are jerks" part. I'm just a very private person.

How is interest declined if they are selling extremely well, actually topping last gen sales? You make no sense.

Again, you keep comparing them to multiplayer games and revenue when it's impossible for a single player to make as much money.

A better comparison would be single player game sales last gen vs. this one. Hint: Almost all the big franchises have had record sales numbers - Mario, Zelda, Uncharted, GOW... etc... if anything single player games are making a comeback.

@ghosts4ever: And yet the biggest game in the world right now is Fortnite.

SP is still relevant but it has to have some form of co-op or MP mode otherwise it dies rather quickly, and i dont see value in it.

Spiderman is number 1 seller in the U.K multiplayer can't compete right now just look at the charts

selling extremely well is quite relative for a franchise, gaming becomes increasly popular and the population increases at a very fast rate as well.

You cannot just compare sales numbers when the userbase has increased Not to mention there were much more single player games, people that like single player games will of course lean more to certain titles because there's less to choose from. . Compared to last gen single player games were much more popular.

and of course I'm also talking about revenue, mp get revenue because they add content or are simply free to play.

there is a place for all types of games. SP are in great shape. Playground team 2, Ninja Theory and the Initiative aren't building battle royale games I would bet.

When I was asking if single player is still relevant, I mean this in terms of popularity, single player games get a lot of attention in media, but the matter of the fact is, most people don't care much about those games anymore, relatively speaking of course.

and this will not backfire on them, most people don't want to sit by themselves playing a game anymore, it's just not as fun anymore as playing with someone else, and the reason it has become increasingly popular is because communication is so much easier as it was in the past. Sure voice chat was possible but not many people did it, now almost everyone does it, especially on console.

I only play and enjoy sp now a day and I don’t need video games for social as I play 3 on 3 or full court basketball every week.

I think I'm done here. You're pretty much the only person in this thread that thinks that SP are not relevant, except IP Daily, but we know why he's against them. Nothing to discuss.

lol you obviously have a very hard time reading, I never said sp games weren't relevant, the title of thread is if they are still relevant?

you think they are relevant, fine, some other do to, but there's no denying they are less relevant that they were before, look at the wolfenstein games at the beginning of this gen, that was a launch price of 20$, and those were quality sp games.

UBER relevant.

And I've listed a whole bunch single-player games that sold by the bucketloads in fairly recent times. "Relatively" popular means nothing. Multi-player games can own 60-70% of the market, but as long single-player games still sell well, and as long as there are publishers and studios still willing to put effort and resources into them, single-player games are, by empirical measure, popular and therefore still relevant. Period.

I'm talking about the herd mentality of the AAA publishers who stampede toward the free-to-play-style economy in online-centric games in search of the perpetual cash cow, which is the true motivation behind this "single player is dead" myth. You really need to stop paying attention to them; simple multi-player games are one thing, but this is something else. When they herded towards online passes, it backfired. When they herded towards loot boxes, it backfired. 2K recently had to apologise for charging for a friggin' haircut in an NBA game. Sooner or later, markets are going to saturate, and people are going to get fed up of their games trying to fatten them up to turn them into whales. There have already been backlashes. There will be more to come.

I used to love multiplayer games but I play mostly SP games now. Mainly because most mainstream multiplayer games suck.

I only play Single Player games these days. Fvck multiplayer. I play real life multiplayer the entire day. At night I just want to escape the reality for few hours and enjoy my Single Player experience.