Kirdie Pañebe

Are Single Player Games Dying? With the advent of computers in the late 20th century, many have had varying opinions whether it will stay as an integral part of everyday life or it will fade as it’s seen as a temporary fad for electronic enthusiasts. As computers stood the test of time beyond countless decades and even a turn of a millennium, continually being reinvented to fit the lives of those that use it, its further niche uses came to life in the form of video games, a facet of entertainment unheard of at the time. Fast forward to today, video games are a now prevalent form of media, ranging from esports, streaming, and even to just passing one’s time but all these almost always include a functionality to play with someone else, the multiplayer feature. And year after year, these multiplayer games seem to be coming out of an assembly line like a can of sardines from a factory which adds to an already saturated market. Before these, video games were considered to be a take on entertainment designed to be consumed or played alone without the distractions or interference of another person, the take being the single player games. Which begs the question, are single player games dying? In its infancy, video games were not even considered a form of entertainment but a source of data for academic research, particularly for programming; its form as we see and play it today only came into light when the aspect of socializing came into the scene. While its popularity grew gradually towards a larger audience, video games were not particularly well-received especially in a society that is still skeptical about the swift takeover of machines not everyone could understand nor use. At the time when everyone was unsure what computers can become, video games provided the assurance that it has at least the potential to become a singular form of entertaining people. When the first global peak of video games came, it was in the 1970s, a time when discos are taking the world by storm and spotting hippies are a commonplace. During this time, video games are becoming its own emerging industry where the success of one title leads to clones of it to turn a profit for other companies. This is when home consoles and arcade machines were toe to toe in popularity and in playerbase. Home consoles such as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) became the most dominant in the market, this marked a flourishing chapter for consoles bearing mostly single player games where people can enjoy at the comfort of their own homes. While this is a victory to home consoles, the arcade video games did not back down where iconic games like Pac-man and Space Invaders were born, attracting all sorts of players to come down to their nearest arcade centers. Some would argue that this is the genesis of the multiplayer games scene as it pits the best of the best against each other, creating the same atmosphere of competition in the esports scene of today. However, all this came crashing down when the video game crash of 1983 happened due to the immense flood of poorly copied video games saturated the market, of which impacted most the western market. In the ruins of the crash, an emerging company from the east has already picked up the pace and has hit the ground running. Nintendo, the company that created Super Mario and Pokemon, arrived at the video games scene with its own console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or the SNES which boasts games that cater to both the solitary player and competitive ones. At this point, consoles or systems are not an issue anymore as games are simply interchangeable on the same machine; what has now become the divider between the types of players are the genres that countless game companies are coming up with. For those who prefer to play alone: adventure games, role playing games (RPGs), and platformers are always within arms reach as some are even included when an SNES is purchased. While players who want to test their might against another have fighting games, racing, and even sports simulation games invented for them for the sole purpose of finding out who the best player is in real time competition. A decade later, this divide has been solidified as the first Playstation was introduced by Sony. This historic games console is worlds apart from its predecessors in terms of graphics and games capacity, making it the console of choice whether it’s for single player or multiplayer games. The Playstation took the different genres to new heights no one at the time thought possible and thus it spawned new rivalries between playerbases. Some claim that the terms single player and multiplayer games were first coined during this era thus it was only fitting that the rift became clear between the players and the games they choose to play. However, all these existing tensions and divides were shaken when the internet became a necessary tool for the video games industry as a whole. Personal Computers or PCs were slowly gaining popularity back in the west where it made significant strides to take back its glory days as the crowning dominator in the market and with the internet its new muse, it became a whole different beast. Local Area Network (LAN) parties and Internet Matchmaking are suddenly the new rave in the video games scene where multiplayer games were taken to exponential heights, making a historic leap towards dominance in the market. Single player games didn’t back down either, it also took advantage of the rise of PC games but instead of the internet at its core, it made use of the processing power of the new platform and made a significant upgrade in the graphics department. This trend did not slowly die out, instead the internet as a feature of connectivity between players became the norm even until the present time. However, this convenience brought by the internet as a means of connecting people became the catalyst of some developers to saturate the market again, this time with different Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) and First Person Shooter Games. One would assume that this repeated saturation became the speed bump that single player games would need to catch up but it wasn’t. Of course, this was taken advantage of certain developers to take the angle of captivating storytelling that multiplayer games simply can’t achieve but as time goes on, even story-driven games eventually had a multiplayer mode or just a new installment that’s focused on multiplayer with single player features removed. The gap between single player and multiplayer games may have been the farthest it has been for half a century in the present time. Despite this, multiple indie developers and some triple-A studios are still striving to keep the format alive. In fact, most of the game accolades that are awarded belong to mostly single player games but the potential to earn in multiplayer games have been the biggest wall to overcome by the former. Each had their own unique features and limitations, and ultimately no clear winner can be declared. It is at least safe to say that single player games are not dying but still surviving.