This week’s topic is single player versus multiplayer, which is the better. Arguing for multiplayer is the dream-team of Kimberly and Matt up against supermen Michael P and Jason who will argue for single player. Let’s get ready to rumble!
Single Player or Multiplayer - which is better?
First up is the opening speaker for multiplayer.
Kimberley - PALGN's resident online shooter junkie.
The single-player campaign. Sure, it serves a purpose, but at the end of the day I want a lot more bang for my gaming dollar than the single-player campaign that has me fluffing around the jungle/desert/insert other generic setting here for 8-10 hours can offer me. Especially titles like Half-Life 2 that force you to tool around with the most budget in-game weapon before you get to the good stuff. Dear Valve, if I wanted to play with a crowbar I’d grab the one from my dad’s garage and start walloping on the neighbour’s kids when they start carrying on over the bloody ice-cream truck.
What really frosts my cookies is that most single-player campaigns keep the pacing tight, letting your excitement build and build and by the time your excitement reaches a fever pitch, wham…it’s all over. What the hell! But once you’ve gotten the single-player campaign out of the way, there is the bright, shiny piece of magnificence that is the multiplayer gaming scene. The Counter-Strikes of the world that make you hone your skills in order to enhance your reputation and expand your weapon collection.
The most fun thing about multiplayer is that you can interact with gamers from all over the globe. Wanna show some Yanks up in Day of Defeat? Go ahead! Or maybe you just want to prove to your mates that you’re top of the leaderboard material? Well bang on Battlefield 1943 and let’s lock and load kids! Not only can you test your skills against others, if you’re lucky you might even forge a friendship or two. That’s the other beauty about multiplayer, even when you’re gaming alone, you’ll always have someone to talk to (or heckle as the case may be).
Whether you’re a PC pro or console convert, there is plenty of multiplayer awesomemess to go around – and that’s just the way we like it!
World of Warcraft - multiplayer goodness?
Next up is the first speaker for single player.
Michael Pincott - PALGN's other Michael
Well sure Kimberley, multiplayer is a lot of fun. But it's like eating a cheeseburger when you could be enjoying a fine steak. Cast your eyes over the classic games of our time. You'll see games like Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto 3, Super Mario 64. All of these are purely single player games. It’s games like these that have made gaming what it is today.
The best and most memorable videogame experiences stem from the single player experience. The feeling of glee of shooting your friends online is great. But you're just a vessel, no longer a character in a story, with no purpose to your actions. More often than not you're just one of a group of strangers shooting each other. In the best case scenario you manage to get a few friends together and shoot them instead. It's fun, for sure, but it's hollow. Multiplayer experiences tend to be barely distinguishable from one another. Shooters, racing or fighting games, you’re getting similar experiences in different skins.
Multiplayer is starved of innovation and variety, and in its current state it has no hope of superseding the single-player experience. Capture this point, shoot the other team, outrace this person, get a higher score. How can that measure up to the epic conflict of taking down a juggernaut in Shadow of the Colossus? How can it compare to skulking through bloody hallways with only a flashlight in Silent Hill? Call of Duty 4 has excellent multiplayer, but the truly memorable moments come from the intense single-player, like the amazing nuke sequence. And don’t even get me started on lag, or the vast assortment of morons you’ll encounter online, glitching and/or quitting mid-game, whining all the while. Your crowbar game sounds neat though. I'd call it 'I Scream: Waffle Cone's Revenge'.
The final speaker for multiplayer please take the stand.
Matt – It’s a bird, it’s a plane…oh, it’s only Matt..
My love for multiplayer started with me buying my first PC. At the tender age of 12, I finally had a rig capable of playing Diablo II, something I’d wanted ever since playing Diablo with a mate on PlayStation. I played through single player, but before long I was hooked on Battle.net and playing with actual people. Instantly, like a revolution from some higher power, Diablo II just became a hell of a lot more fun. Working together in parties and with actually humans sitting somewhere else across the world blew my mind at 12. Playing online for hours after school eclipsed those memories of Mario 64 or Metal Gear Solid sitting under the television.
With my first taste out of the way, I was then introduced to Starcraft and Counter-Strike - God what had I been missing? Don’t get me wrong, I’m now a 22 year old adult who still loves the old fashioned musings of the single player experience. However, every time I add that AAA title to my collection, that Resident Evil 4 or Mario Galaxy, am I really going to replay it? I like owning them, I really do and I love playing them, but after I’ve finished Devil May Cry how many more times am I going to pop the disc in. Once, twice? Never again, perhaps? Each game will have their own exceptions, but it’s hard to go back when there’s opponents lining up to keep things fresh.
Kimberley has got it right. I do want more bang for my gaming dollar. Multiplayer games are the games you can keep going back too. For whatever the purpose, they offer something no other single player game can compete with. No, not even Zelda: Ocarina of Time could offer you the constant competitiveness and longevity that Halo 3 theoretically could. The single player is great and all, but it’s the multiplayer that keeps us sticking around.
And with developers and games that can offer good serving of both, e.g. Gears of War, it’s no wonder it’s a growing trend to play through the single player before getting into the ‘real game’ of multiplayer. Of course you can always just skip the single player altogether and get into the action straight away. Concluding, if nothing I have written has convinced you, then know MMO World of Warcraft has 11.5 million monthly subscribers. They all can't be wrong... right?
Half Life 2 - inspiring crowbar-themed games the world over.
The final speaker for single player, please make your case.
Jason – likes casting aspersions.
I don’t like to cast aspersions on my fellow PALGN writers just for the sake of winning a frivolous debate, but, dear reader, you should know that Kimberly spends her lunch hour kicking kittens while Matt collects My Little Ponies and has a matching comb for each of their manes. I just thought you should know that.
Like my esteemed colleague Michael, I’m also not going to argue that single player is the only way to play games. Michael and I are rational and cultured people and appreciate many different gaming experiences. However, multiplayer success has to be born out of the success and innovation of the single player experience. Let me explain.
Gaming was born from single player experiences such as Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and Pac Man. While you might argue that even back in this era you’d compete against friends on arcade machines or consoles by taking turns, the reason this was so compelling was because the single player aspect was great to begin with. Even World of Warcraft’s success is owed to the early Warcraft titles and other similar titles that put as much emphasis on the single player as they did multiplayer to get the experience right. Many gamers also started playing LAN Starcraft sessions after learning the ropes through the fun single player experience.
If multiplayer is so much better than single player, why is it that out of the hundreds of MMOs and console multiplayer modes that are made each and every year that only a handful are any good? For every Call of Duty 4 there are a dozen games that are half-baked variations of Capture the Flag or Deathmatch. Yet I can name dozens of great single player games that people are playing every year. I agree that multiplayer has a place in gaming, but it’s the single player experience where true innovation begins.
If you're still not convinced who to vote for, just remember that Kimberley slagged Half Life 2!
It's now time to vote!
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