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The rumors about the death of story

mode are greatly exaggerated

June 8, 2016 | By Bryant Francis

A few years ago, many were predicting that single-

player campaigns in big budget games were on the

way out. Developers were confronted with data

showing that many players don’t reach the end of

single-player games, and high profile titles

like Titanfall and Evolve were announced that didn't

have any kind of single-player story mode.

And yet...The Witcher 3 was one of last year’s best-

selling titles. Games like Doom, Mirror’s Edge:

Catalyst , and more seem to show a continued

support for single-player experiences. And as Andrew Reiner noted in a provocative Game Informer op-ed

on this topic, at E3 this year, EA will showcase a sequel to Titanfall that’s confirmed to have a single-

player mode.

So were these predictions wrong? Not necessarily.

We talked to developers and looked over some data to get some insight about this trend. We discovered

that the factors that led some to predict the downfall of single-player experiences in triple-A games had a

definite impact on game development...just not the impact that was predicted.

Multiplayer gradually became a more important feature

While predictions about single-player were everywhere in the press, developers tell us that they noticed

smaller, simpler signs of multiplayer development creeping up on single-player.

Halo: Reach

Developer Matthew Burns has worked on the Call of Duty and Halo franchises, both of which are deeply

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invested in developing robust single-player and multiplayer modes. He describes attitudes in development

as not necessarily favoring one mode over another, but trying to reconcile the resources needed to create

some of the industry’s biggest mass-market titles. “Most people I worked with understood the value of

supporting both single and multiplayer modes,” Burns says.

“There were some individual team members who were highly invested in multiplayer and who wondered

why so many resources were spent on campaign," he says. "But historically, multiplayer was sometimes

an afterthought in these larger games because multiplayer was understood to be for only very hardcore

players.”

Burns' experience was between 2004 and 2012, and he witnessed multiplayer modes becoming larger and

larger in hopes of gaining a bigger mass audience. Tom Abernathy worked at Microsft during the same

time period. He says his narrative department saw game after game getting cut around the time of therelease of Halo: Reach in 2010.

“It seemed a little odd,” Abernathy remarks, “since there was a new console that we were moving

towards launching, and presumably it needed content. Only after a while did I sort of begin to pick up on

the fact that the economics of the genre was starting to evolve in ways that meant that the industry was

changing.”

To Abernathy, this was Microsoft making a statement that it didn’t see a big enough return on investment

in big story-centric single-player games. And when it became clear that a major release like Titanfall

would hit stores with no a single-player mode and only supporting multiplayer, he worried that this was

going to be the future of his work.

Titanfall

But story-driven single-player campaigns did not die out

When asked if there were any trends about large games releasing without a story modes from 2011 to

present, EEDAR’s Sartori Bernbeck could only name a handful, including Evolve, Titanfall , and Rocket

League. (That's barring the MMORPGs, mobile MMOs, and MOBA expansion of this time period.)

This isn’t to say there wasn’t a growth in multiplayer-centric titles during this time. After all, this was

when blockbusters like Hearthstone and League of Legends and the entire mobile online RPG genre took

off. But despite that explosion, major publishers never could seem to abandon single-player games.

As Bernbeck points out, there was a slightly more nuanced trend unfolding. Single-player games thrived,

but multiplayer modes tied to large single-player franchises? They dropped like a rock.


3/8

EEDAR's data reflects an industry's trend of supporting standalone, mid-sized single-player games such

as Wolfenstein: The New Order, the Batman Arkham series, and more. Even a blockbuster franchise

like Assassin's Creed did away with competitive multiplayer during this period.

This trend hasn’t been without consequences. The cutting of multiplayer modes was accompanied bymultiple studio closures. Bioshock Infinite had its mutliplayer mode excised before release, and Irrational

Games underwent a major restructuring and downsizing following its release. There were also several

games that launched with underdeveloped multiplayer from studios that weren’t entirely prepared for the

task. (You may recall that Spec Ops: The Line developer Cory Davis referred to his game's multiplayer

development as a "cancerous growth.")

Spec Ops: The Line

In short, when the industry thought its future lay in developing broader multiplayer at the expense of

single-player, reality led it to slice away the less-favored multiplayer modes. But that still doesn't leave

developers with clear answers about what to do about players not finishing game scenarios that they

invest so much time and money into designing.

Ultimately, stories have seeped into many aspects of multiplayer-centric games

Here though, Abernathy sees a possible supporting reason for why the rise of multiplayer-centric genres

like MOBAs and hero shooters have been so character-driven.

When Abernathy was still at Microsoft, he says that he saw a lot of survey data from the internal research

team suggesting that despite the fact that many did not play games to completion, players still ranked

“story” as the #1 most important consideration for buying a game. (It’s a data point that’s cropped up a

few times over the years.) Abernathy never took this to mean that players valued gameplay less than

story, but that storytelling wasn’t as vestigial as some seemed to think.

It’s part of a theory he’s presented about at GDC, and a problem he’s tried to solve at Riot Games and at

his current startup Jumo. Though MOBAs and hero shooters have gained popularity on the strengthof competitive gameplay, Abernathy says that developers always saw huge attachment to the characters

they choose to take into combat. Their backstories, their personalities, their conflicts with other

champions...Abernathy believes that these were valued sometimes as much as the damage and utility of

their abilities.


4/8

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The rumors about

the death of story

mode are greatly

exaggerated

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“We needed to stop worrying so much about things like the Institute of War and the Fields of Justice,”

says Abernathy, referring to a set of narrative conceits Riot junked before Abernathy’s departure. “We

needed to focus more on these champions and who they are, and explore that.”

If developers are concerned about players not reaching the end of single-player games, and consider

multiplayer the central starting point for creating a profitable game, Abernathy says that there’s room in

multiplayer design to solve those narrative needs. At this point, it may even be essential to success.

To put it simply, if players are invested in characters and what happens to them, but don't necessarily

want to finish eight-hour games, multiplayer games that still deliver concise character stories may be a

market-proven solution.

Titanfall 2’s return to the narrative fold may be more a return to the model of Halo, Call of Duty , and

Uncharted , aiming to create the largest mass market game possible. But the departure of story mode

never was part of a bigger trend. It’s another example of how genres that are declared dead in the

game industry tends to just keep coming back.

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8 Jun 2016 at 2:59 am PST

2

8 Jun 2016 at 4:12 pm PST

1



Comments

Alan Barton

Thanks for the thought provoking article. The industry is in oscillation between loving and

hating single player. One year its all for it, another against it, then another back to loving it

etc..

They are all chasing success stories. A single player game is a huge success, then everyone

else wants single player in their game. Then a multiplayer mode in another game is a huge

success, then everyone is like death to single player, we want multiplayer only etc..

There are details for success or failure that some are unfortunately not seeing due to often

non-gamer filled marketing departments of many companies who can't see the details.

For example, this multiplayer only mode success was true even as far back as the success of

Quake 3 Arena being only really Multiplayer (and still considered by many the best Quake

game). (Its single player was just multiplayer maps with bots). But non-gamers don't know

the details like e.g. ... Then Quake 4 added a very contrived (Q2 style Strogg themed) single

player, that wasn't well received, but far worst from a fan's point of view, they nurfed the

lightning gun a bit in Q4 (so it wasn't the single player why Q4 failed). (The lightning gun

nurfing was enough for fans of the lightning gun to loudly hate Quake 4, but not enough in

game play terms, as it was still one of the most powerful ways to kill opponents in some

situations, but only top players knew this about the Q3 game, so they wanted it to be over

powered … Few even gamers realise you can push an opponent back with the lightning gun,as well as hurt them, so in some parts of the map, you can trap an unsuspecting opponent).

But now as Doom has been such a huge success, I could see Quake 5 really aiming for both

Single & Multiplayer player again (if they make Q5). So we could well be back to Quake 1 in

terms of theme and gameplay modes … which would be all kinds of wonderful. :) ... (The

Strogg idea in Q2 was never intended to be a Quake game, that's why Q2 is so different

from Q1, as Q2 was intended to be another franchise, and then someone in marketing got

cold feet and decided to just call it Quake 2). It is these crazy snap knee-jerk marketing

decisions, where a lot of the problems are coming from.

Q1 single & multiplayer & Q3 multiplayer only, have always been the fan top favourites, but

anyone not knowing all of these details, could easily just boil it all down to thinking it was

just about single & multiplayer … which is exactly what happens in many companies

marketing departments, who don't really know or play these games or any other games in

any detail (some of the people in these departments in many companies are not even

gamers, so its no wonder they can't understand the real reasons for success or failure).

Hence they all end up blindly chasing last year's success stories.

Login to Reply or Like

Bob Johnson

exactly. they chase successes and so you get the flavor of the month or

year effect where something is in and another something must then be out.

But plenty of players like sp and plenty like mp. What i hate is when

developers feel obligated to put sp in a mp game and vice versa. The result

isn't usually pretty. IF they really need to go this route then they should

give you the option of choosing one or the other given this is doable in the

digital age.


David Young

Happily retired now but I watched this from within Corporate walls, just not

video game corporate walls. The internal jokes tended to shrink the

timeline, as in the company used to have a multiple year plan. It devolved

to chasing the next quarter to chasing the next contract. First guy with the

money wins.

Wins what? Hard to say from the trenches.


Stanislav Costiuc

One of the big advantages of single-player modes (and games in general) is the longevity of

the game's tail, in terms of how long can it be played (and enjoyed) after release. For

example, you can still play and enjoy all single-player Age of Empires series and its

community creations (from AoE to AoEIII, the communities of which are still active), but Age

of Empires Online? That's sadly unavailable now, and it's the youngest of the bunch.


6/8

3



Multiplayer comes with a price, and that price is that for one reason or another, be it server

costs, platform dependencies, community dying out, even the most popular multiplayer

game has a life-span. Despite the huge success of World of Warcraft, of its huge player base,

of how Blizzard is actively working on the game to keep it alive... Warcraft 3, for example, in

the longterm is a game that's going to be played for a much longer period of time than WoW

(even if the player base will be much, much, much smaller in comparison to its peaks in the

early 2000s, but there will always be RTS players who would be interested in checking RTS

classics).


Alan Barton

There will always be groups of fans trying to keep popular games alive,

regardless of if they are single player games or multiplayer games.

For example look at the WoW Nostalrius servers. They had 800,000

registered accounts and 150,000 active players! The only reason they were

shut down was Blizzard didn't want them to exist, but it still showed huge

fan support for online play.

This is why Multiplayer often dies. The companies kill it and prevent fans

hosting their own servers. Its got nothing to do with game mode, there is

huge fan appeal for keeping old multiplayer games going, its just

companies can kill most multiplayer games far easier than single player

games.


Stanislav Costiuc

So fans will keep popular games alive, what about the not popular games?

And even with popular games, 'companies killing fan-made server' can be

called an issue, but it's not the main reason of multiplayer death.

The crux of the reason is that if the game ceases to be updated, the player

community will assuredly wither away to a small number of consistent

active player base. This means two things for multiplayer games:

1. For games that rely on player-created local servers this means that there

won't be enough people playing at the same time for there to be a

consistent multiplayer experience (I'm sure you can remember tons of

games where when you press 'refresh servers' either nothing appears or a

lot of things appear with 0 players, when there were times in the past with

a lot of active players)

2. For games that rely on a consistent server running, this means that

sooner or later the amount of active players won't justify the costs of

keeping the operation up and running (even if that operation is your own pc

and technically you aren't renting any servers).

People are running Star Wars Galaxy private servers, for example, that

aren't being closed down. Those servers will die, last I checked news stories

about this the amount of active players is about 1000. Years will pass,

there will be less people interested, the person responsible for running a

server will get a second child and not enough time to dedicate to the

server, so another one will take his place, young diehard 16-year old fan,

who will also for one reason or another in 5-7 years won't have enough

time and money for this, and the player base will become about 500 active

players at a time. And this will continue until running a server won't be

worth it.

50 years later, no one will be able to play Star Wars Galaxy because there

will be not enough fans to keep it running. But, 50 years later, everybody

willing would still be able to play the Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders

(emulated most likely, because who knows what will happen to the actual

consoles by that time, but still).

You can call this an exaggerated story, and it is, but I just want to point out

that without new content to keep the game always fresh, fans supporting

the game is essentially putting the game or its multiplayer mode on life

support.

This is actually one of the reasons why games with ability for players to

create content fare better and live a lot longer (as a community andgames) than those without. Take again one of my previous examples - Age

of Empires II. It was released in 1999, an expansion was released in 2000,

a couple years of support and then Ensemble Studios wasn't working on it

at all, but players created hundreds of campaigns per year, hosted

multiplayer games, all that stuff. It was enough to make an HD re-release

that would be as active 10 years later. And then also additional expansions

from players-becoming-devs which would prolong the lifespan of the game


7/8


1


8 Jun 2016 at 11:12 pm PST

again as it's new and fresh content.

But there's a game based on the same engine, and I was at one point a

very active member of its community - Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.

The main community on Heavengames (same portal which hosts the main

AoEII fan community) forums was incredibly active for years, but now it

consists of like 30-40 members who stay on the forums mostly because

they became Internet friends over the years rather than because of the

game, which gets now like... 3-4 campaigns per year. Amount of

multiplayer matches that happen is close to 0 I would say. But even then, if

a new person gets the game to play it, he would still be able to enjoy all the

single-player content the game has to offer, and all the community-created

content that came to exist by that point in time.

So I guess the point that I'm trying to make, like movies, books, tv shows,

video games that require just one person would be able to live longer and

experienced by more amount of people than video games that require a

multiple amount of people to be enjoyed, regardless of how popular it is.

And yeah, I'm sure there will be multiplayer games that will stand the test

of time and become 'immortal' so to speak, but that would be a very small

amount of them.


Leonardo Pina

Well, it makes sense that multi-player games only lives as long as its

community.


Alan Barton

@"50 years later, no one will be able to play Star Wars Galaxy because

there will be not enough fans to keep it running."

In 50 years they will be playing against AI's playing the game, as if they

are playing against humans ... if they are free to run their own servers.

Also some of your points, you are extrapolating to a zero player base, for

very unpopular games. Talking about them dying out isn't very helpful at

seeing the point I was making, which still holds true.

There will always be groups of fans trying to keep popular games alive,

regardless of if they are single player games or multiplayer games.

That is if the multiplayer fans are allowed to run their own servers. But

some companies cannot and some will not allow players to run their own

servers.

For example almost all F2P games require payment backend servers, so

as soon as they are taken down, the multiplayer dies. They don't care if

some of their fan base still exists, they only care about enough fans to keep

the game running long enough to monetize their fans.


Stanislav Costiuc

Why does popularity even matter in this discussion?

My point was simple: all single-player games have the capacity to live

indefinitely, all multiplayer games have a life-span dependent on their

community and other cost-related factors (and the end of that lifespan is

inevitable for almost all games, some sooner than other, and there would

be very few games which will have a constantly updated fanbase to keep

them alive for a very long time).

Yeah, WoW probably wasn't the best example to choose first because it's

essentially an MMO phenomenon, but the point still stands and WoW still

has a possibility to die in 10/20/50/100/more years, we don't know. It's a

possibility still, even if it is unlikely.

Replying to the point of 'multiplayer will die' with 'but fans will keep the

popular games alive and your argument about those games that did die is

unhelpful' (btw, as a side remark, none of the games I've mentioned as

examples were UNpopular, all of them had a big active community at one

point or another) is like replying to the point of 'the Sun and Earth

alongside a bunch of other planets will die' with 'but we will be advanced

enough to colonize Earth-like planets in other systems and live there' -


8/8

that's not false, but it also doesn't really have anything to do with the point

made.

So I'm not even sure what we're arguing about as both of us are talking

about our own thing rather than counter-argumenting each others points.


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