The Decline Of Single-Player Gaming

Almost everyone who plays games online is either an asshole, an idiot or both. If there are any reasonable, smart people out there then they either don't make themselves known or their voices are drowned out by the static of teenage boys determined to prove their personal worth to their peers and in the process lose what little dignity they have. The internet is unique in that it offers no direct backlash from directed insults. It's probably not a stretch to imagine these same kids wouldn't call people who bump into them on the street "fukin n00b cockscukr". Still the relative anonymity of the internet allows for such perpetually soul-destroying stupidity to continue wide rife. For those of us who like to play games online, this makes the experience a combination of utter frustration and insane anger management, one that many of us could probably do without.

Yet the current trends lean towards a market that is saturated with multiplayer games. Of course we've been told since the early 90's that online gaming was the future, but it took a number of years for technology to catch up. Before that online gaming was a baffling task of IP addresses and modem settings, with MMOG's reserved to text-based MUDs that were about as penetrable as a titanium fortress surrounded by a moat of lava. Perhaps because of this earlier online communities were somewhat more bearable, although pomposity was just a big a virus as arrogance is today. With the advent of ADSL and Cable games such as Everquest and the like found their feet. At around this time games started integrating methods of finding servers to play on automatically. So it was that online gaming became available to the unwashed masses. They saw it and it was good...for about five minutes. Then it was a pre-pubescent "swear-off" of epic proportions, one that still doesn't abate. I may be exaggerating slightly of course, but I think most gamers can agree this is the norm.

By comparison the realm of Single-Player games doesn't experience this problem. The only contenders you have is the game itself, and even then it's unlikely to have a twenty minute chat log filled with cock and "your mama" jokes involved. Not only that but Single-Player games offer many experiences that Multiplayer just can't - Fantastic atmosphere, brilliant story-telling, and above all you don't have to retread the same places over and over again as you do when playing online.

But it seems the modding community in general is filled with those same idiots and assholes I mentioned earlier. Go have a look at somewhere like Moddb.com; most games are filled to the brim with Multi-Player mods, each one more disinteresting than the last. It seems that the idea that people just want to play online extends deep. Single-Player mods are a lot more sparse, which is a shame because most of them are brilliant pieces of work. Nowadays you'd be lucky if a Single-Player mod launched every two~three months. Multi-Player releases you can expect every week, perhaps even every few days. Of course the sheer volume of online mods means that the vast majority of them are underplayed. The major downfall of any online game is that you need enough people playing for it to be successful. Who's going to bother with SWAT-Tactics Combat 2 when you can just play Counter-Strike? Most online mods are not only bland, but theoretically unplayable. It's the metaphorical equivalent of Ford deciding to pump out Reliant Robins at a ratio of 5 to 1 against all their other cars. The modding market is saturated with this tripe, and it shows no signs of abating.

It wasn't always like this. In the hay-day of Doom and Quake, before the advent of the aforementioned faster connections, Single-Player maps and mods were all over. It was a flood of unique and interesting architecture and design, and one was never stuck to find maps that were both brilliantly made and fun to play. Then came the fast-connections, and with it seemingly the death of Single-Player maps and mods. It's telling that when I was still working for PlanetHalfLife (before I was unceremoniously dropped from their rooster due to being told to wait for a Multi-Player session for a mod that never materialised), I was the only staff writer who would do Single-Player reviews. Since my departure the output on Single-Player content has dried up to a trickle. It seems no one genuinely cares about Single-Player experiences any more.

So why is this? Surely with all these idiots and assholes the opportunity to get away from the moronic masses and play something fun on your own would appeal to pretty much every gamer? Well I personally don't know the answer to that. Maybe it's an odd sort of self-mutilation; people get a thrill out of dealing with these wankers. Maybe people just don't think there's any worth of Single-Player mods anymore. It's a sad state of affairs we have nowadays, and it's seemingly getting worse.

Perhaps I'm being a bit negative; In some years we may have a renaissance of user-created Single-Player content. But in the meantime those of us who appreciate the subtle poetry of Single-Player mods must content with the quagmire of trash that the online community largely ignores, sifting through for the small gems of gameplay experience left in a sea of waste created by our own hands.