Back in the day, adding in a multiplayer function to a game consisted of simply adding another control input and providing a colour swapped sprite. Everything was practically the same as the single player, but now there was either two people saving the world, or the computer opponent was now controlled by a punchable friend.

With the progression of technology and alteration of standards, when developers add multiplayer to a game they must ensure internet protocols, balance factions, implement lag compensators, design levels for various capacities, enforce security measures and many more details. Clearly, developers now have much more to worry about and test than a new sprite.

In the old eras, single player campaigns were expected to be beat in a single sitting. There were a few exceptions of course, but all of the exceptions I can think of were single player oriented games.

If a newly released game can be beat in a single sitting, it is considered an extremely short game. Campaigns are expected to last a minimum of 12 hours and more likely reach between 20 and 30 hours. While, the occasional poor story slips through, "Save the princess...go" just doesn't cut it anymore. Stories in modern games are more like books or movies with a cast of round, stock, flat and comic relief characters, intricate plots and logical settings. Conveying all of these ideas through in-game interaction and cut-scenes is a large task in itself. Thanks to graphical technology, even 2D games have high graphics standards. 3D games need textures, models, animation smoothing, physics and environmental audio. Basically, the work load for creating the single player game has multiplied many times.

Before I go any further, let me define 'multiplayer' for the rest of this article. 'Multiplayer' is the game style that is expected to be played by multiple humans, usually competitively. However, even if bots can be substituted so that the game can be technically played by a single player, it is still 'multiplayer'.

For the last few years, I've bought all but a couple of games solely for either their multiplayer or their single player campaign. In a game that I buy for multiplayer, I might play the single player campaign if it helps me learn the basics, but the time I spend in the single player is minimal compared to the time I spend on the multiplayer. Likewise, if I buy a game for the single player campaign, I might try a few rounds on a server, but I probably won't play another match after that day. Rarely is there a game that I think is strong in both aspects.

With multiplayer and single player requiring so much work and being so different from each other these days, it seems that one of the two aspects falls short either due to development time or the company isn't as talented in designing one type as the other. Some companies seem to have noticed this and are trying one of two methods of alleviating this.

The first approach, seen in Might and Magic: Dark Messiah, is to have a team for creating the single player campaigns and a team for creating the multiplayer. Initially, I was interested in this game for its medieval action multiplayer. However, the single player demo came out first, so I tried it. I had fun and wanted to see how the controls and mechanics translated into multiplayer. Then the multiplayer demo came out. It was different from the single player. In fact, the only thing in common was the setting and the box it shipped in. It was hard to justify the two games as the same product.

The second approach, seen in many RPGs and Battlefield 2, is to focus on only one aspect and just forget the other. I'm sure everyone has a list of RPGs they can run off the top of their head thatare fantastic, single player and have game mechanics that would not translate into a good multiplayer experience. On the other side of the coin, have any Battlefield fans taken a break from the multiplayer to ask "Hey, what about a single player campaign?"

Since I buy games for either their solo or multiplayer and rarely both, I hope more companies follow the latter approach. That way, rather than wasting resources on part of the game I virtually won't touch, they can add more polish to the other aspect...or just release it to my greedy hands earlier :)