We all remember the days. We would play Spyro with a couple of friends or try to get the fastest time on a run through world 1 in Super Mario Bros. But what happened that took this old joy out of the new games?

It's all an effect of the modern day game developers trying to cater to the newer audience, or at least a part of it is. You see, Modern day video games have a new, younger audience that is more likely to spend their money (or their parents money) on the newest games and all of the Dlc because they aren't experienced to know what they are getting in that DLC pack or in that expansion. Video game corporations have taken ahold of the younger audience as their main revenue stream, and it shows with certain games. Minecraft has an average user age of 14, Halo 5 reduced the graphic content to get a T rating on their game to be more appealing to concerned parents, and Video game trailers are becoming so cheesy that it makes any adult cringe. These are just a few examples of how video game companies are trying to move their user base to a younger audience.

Another way these companies are developing a younger consumer base is where they put their funding in the game design. Kids nowadays buy games for the multiplayer so they can play with their friends. Now don't get me wrong, I love gaming with my friends just as much as the next guy, but the issue is the funding ratio in the game design. Game designers will generally focus on putting a majority effort into either multiplayer or single player. This creates games like call of duty, where the game design was centered around multiplayer, with the single player as an afterthought in the newer installments. Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline are good examples of this as they have pretty great multiplayer, however, the single player lacks a good story. Halo 5 is having a similar issue with it's terrible single player, but its redeeming new arena modes and the new, massive-team battle, game mode war zone.

A majority of people say good story driven single player games are far and few in-between. This is true and false at the same time. For example Fallout 4, a survival, FPS, RPG is a great single player only game, but what was the one complaint they received on a regular basis when they game came out? "Where is the multiplayer?" "Why couldn't you include dedicated server gaming" "Why can't I play with my friend?" This sways a companies design choices since they focused on making the game 100% single player and didn't focus on including other players. With this feedback, they might start building their next game with a multiplayer functionality and the game design won't be near as spectacular as Oblivion, Skyrim, or Fallout.

There are some ways companies have gotten around the issue of putting money toward different parts of the game. Both Ubisoft in The Division and Rockstar in their Red Dead Redemption and GTA installations use the same map for both single player and multiplayer. This ingenuity of putting max funding into map design and then incorporating the story and multiplayer situations into the map is a great way for a game designer to appeal to the gamer. (I would include Destiny in the list but let's just pretend that game never existed) The reason why these game inevitably lose popularity is the inability to put out good content fast enough for common players. GTA V lost some of its steam when the updates it put out were just a couple of cars and some new clothes or a new house. Games like these need to include enough story or missions to keep the player constantly entertained and the game developers need to spend more time on the DLC and make it have a lot more materials to keep the game interesting, like new missions versus just new visuals.

What will need to happen, if we are going to get a quality multiplayer and single player game, is gamedevs will need to build and multiplayer game and a single player game and sell them separately. Now I know this sounds awful (personally I don't want to spend any money at all) but these companies are working with the budget that they have, and if they can't make enough to put out two great game modes, then I don't see games improving to be an all-around great game these days.

What are some of the ways you think video game companies could develop a great single and multiplayer game?