News Fatshark: Not many people finish singleplayer games

On my ps3 I never do but on pc I tend to try (OF dragon rising is just so boring)

 

I mostly finish SP campaigns if they:
1) have a good story and/or 2) are fun to play.
Unfortunately most current games are non. I fully enjoyed max payne, max payne 2, batman arkham asylum and a some others that I can't remember right now.

 

Sooooo...seems there's more people fall into the "don't always complete" category than people thought.

 

I'd like to see those statistics myself... of course there's no reference, so I suspect they're pulling that out their arses.

And if it is in fact true, they have the effect backwards; devs don't cheap out on SP because most people apparently don't finish it, it's that most people don't finish it because the devs got lazy and the SP sucks. They use that as an excuse to make half a game.

 

..I'd like to see the source of those statistics too.

All the devs I know (and I know quite a few) are anything but lazy. What tends to happen is that a studio will have a great idea for a game and the publisher, who is holding the purse strings (and typically cares only for marketability/potential for profit - obviously) insists on there being a Single-Player campaign because "that's what people like".

The opposite often applies, of course, which is why so many primarily single-player games have a lousy death-match mode added on to it - because the publisher doesn't want to take the risk that it won't sell to people looking for MP content.

Fatshark aren't saying that OTHER devs cut their SP content short because most people don't finish them...they're saying that THEY'RE making the SP content short because they believe most people don't care about it.

If they're making a multiplayer game but have a publisher insisting on single-player content, what would you expect them to say?

 

I've finished the SP mode of every game I own (that aren't still sealed, because there are a few) that has one, except for some of the abominably hard JRPGs available on the PS3... Cross Edge, Agarest, Trinity Universe etc. I might not have got every secret, but I've completed the storylines at the minimum.

But, eh, it's not like there won't be games out there with decent SP sections, even if "Fatshark" think it's not worth the effort.

 

If for whatever reason I don't finish a SP game I always make a note to go back and either restart from the first level and do a full playthrough or I pick it up from where I left off and grind it out. MP holds almost no value for me in the life-span of a game unless it's built from the ground up for just that. There is always gonna be two sides to that though, some of my friends could care less about an epic 30 hour SP games and would rather play the same 15 MP maps over and over and over and over after a short 6-12 hour SP mission. That's just not for me.

 

But what if it's not "worth the effort" because actually it's supposed to be a multiplayer game?

Would you complain that World of Warcraft didn't contain a single player campaign? Of course not, because the design decision that was made was that the game would be multiplayer only and that's that.

It's not about "effort" - it's about the type of game it is, and the ideas and goals of the designers.

I know that a few of my friends who I still play BF2 with are disappointed that BF3 has any single player content at all. I'm eagerly awaiting BF3 but I doubt I'll even launch the single-player campaign at all - which, it would seem, has been thrown in to appeal to the CoD SP masses for maximum profitability. It has nothing to do with whether or not the game NEEDS single player, or whether or not we WANT single player - publishers make decisions based on their potential return. Simple as.

If you don't like short single player campaigns bolted onto what is a multiplayer game at heart - don't buy it!

 

Out of those games I have:

Mass Effect 2
Dragon Age
CoD4
Vice City
Deus EX
Deus Ex IW

I finished them all.

 

That wasn't the point I was making....nevermind.

 

I'll play SP games to the end almost always. However I only find every item in the game if I really like it.


But if it's a FPS, SP is for practice for the MP

 

From reading the above comments it leads me to the conclusion that, maybe, if more single player games were worth finishing more people would.

 

I'm having a hard time getting into new Vegas. Mind you I did FO3 (which was pretty pants) and Oblivion (fantastic) all the way through, but I never did get into NV. Or the Witcher for that matter.

 

Only game I bought and haven't done is Stalker, just couldn't get into it.

Did Mass effect 2 even though I thought it was a bit rubbish.

 

ocd when it comes to games.. like if I was playing a mmo nowdays, I would be one of the top players easy.. just the way I am think

playing through dungeons of dredmor and I'll finish it, like other bad games played- half the fun is figuring out what works and then it's stupid easy.. even though it looks like a horses ass- the random dungeons created are actually pretty good..

really a waste of time when you think about all the other cool things there are to do.. but us gamers are like flaming guys to a shasta bar

just got back from seeing conan- and what has been seen cannot be unseen.. I miss the old days of midgets, bad actors with bad accents.. and there was no maid to be found for some humor.. like gaming nowdays- it's gotten so good it's bad in a way.. don't know how to explain it any better than that

sworn to retire.. but always get that itch to play, even if it's burn the rope

 

I think what's clearly coming out of this discussion is a division based on "getting value for my money".

One group will play each and every game to completion because they spent the money so they're going to damn well make sure they get their 30 quid's worth. The "it's cheaper than a night out, and took me <x> hours, so I don't mind so much - even though it was a bit crap" approach.

Another group (which includes myself) who will just as easily put a game down if it's not enjoyable/mediocre and move on to something that provides the fun you were looking for. The "my time is more valuable to me than £30 so I'll write that game off and just play something else and call it a lesson learned" approach.

Incidentally, for this reason, I've walked out of many cinemas after 20 minutes having been so appalled at the movie I figure my time is more important to me than to force a further 100 minutes of crap into my system for the sake of getting value for money out of a tenner.

 

Yeah. Somehow FO3 is a better game than NV, although I've finished them both but enjoyed FO3 more, or maybe that was because I had fawkes, with his unlimited ammo, as companion.

 

I don't much care about a game's MP, I much prefer SP. Used to be that my Internet connection was so sh*t that others would complain, but now my connection is better I can't be bothered devoting the kind of time to it. I play MP only for the social aspect with friends, and I find that this is best in a LAN environment.

So...developers don't put any effort into SP -> SP isn't very good -> Player isn't likely to persist -> Players don't finish SP -> Developers don't put any effort into SP -> SP isn't very....Oh, we've found a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is up to Fatshark what they focus on. I'm not going to slag them off for a focus on MP, it's their choice and I don't care much about their game. I would care if they used "SP never gets finished anyway" as an excuse to not do SP properly. Given the games they've developed in the past I wouldn't have expected a great SP campaign anyway, so no loss.

I don't always finish a game though, and not because I lack attention or commitment:

1. The game is crap. Doesn't usually happen to me because of reviews, but sometimes a reviewer's opinion doesn't match mine. (IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946. Metascore of 86 and I hate it. Have I grown out of plane sims? I could also add Mirror's Edge to this)
2. Sometimes a game just isn't worth the effort it requires to play, with a low effort/enjoyment ratio. (Metro 2033. I really like it, but there is so much about it that annoys me. I suspect it is because it isn't STALKER, a series I adore)
3. Utterly borked console port. (Saints Row 2 for PC - 'nuff said?)
4. The game is interesting and worthwhile but not engaging. I can easily be distracted by something shiny. (Deus Ex. It shames me to admit that the first time I played DE I didn't play it past the Liberty Island level. For various reasons I couldn't get into it at that time, but a year later I reinstalled it and played it through several times)
5. The Real > Simulated mayhem. Sometimes you need to re-arrange your priorities. (Portal. I started playing, personal reasons got in the way of it, and I intend to complete it but there are just so many unplayed games in my Steam account. Damn you Steam sales!)
6. The game just isn't stable enough to persist with. (The Witcher. I intended to return after a few patches but never got around to it. I do intend on completing it)
7. The game is too big/too long/too much of the same. ("How is this possible?" I hear you cry! One word: GRID. By the time I'd finished 2/3 of it I couldn't be bothered with completing it for some "Congratulations, you've won!" screen as a reward, and I thought that gameplay wouldn't change later on anyway)

Good games compel you to invest in SP, with the Fallout games a good example in my case. I've only played them through once each but Steam says I've put 130+ hours into Fallout 3 (inc DLC) and 100+ hours into Fallout New Vegas (not including DLC). And I haven't completed them 100%.
I wouldn't like to think how much of my life I've sunk into GTA: San Andreas, and if I could access my Real Life Steam profile I would probably see (many?) thousands of hours devoted to the original Sim City, Colonization and The Settlers on the Amiga over the years I played them pre-PC.

It was far more common to not complete games in the past, because they generally were so hard. Compared to those classic games, modern ones are pretty easy on normal difficulty. Which is also a modern concept; difficulty levels. It used to be that the difficulty increased the deeper you went into the game, but IMO the deeper you get in games now the more powerful your tools become to even out the increased difficulty of adversaries.

 

I think you just missed the point I was trying to make completely...

...

Agree with Adnoctum's post.

 

@Fatshark: That is complete nonsense, imvho - unless it is some cheap crap plugged onto a multiplayer game, and not really worth being named a "singleplayer campaign".

I bet however that most people who have started to play any version of Half-Life, Fear, Crysis, Far Cry, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Call of Duty, Fallout 3, Stalker, Dragon Age, etc. etc. etc. have finished their single player campaigns - maybe more than once.

So you do your bloody homework and make a singleplayer campaign worth the name, and worth playing, and people will play it.

But I think I know why you wrote that: It is much harder to make a good balanced SP game with a good balanced SP campaign, than a multiplayer game: You need more media (levels, textures, sounds, ...) and a good AI.

So maybe you should modify your statement to "Most people don't finish those singleplayer campaigns the makers of which sucked at producing". The real problem may be that there are many more of these than of gems like the one I have named above.

Btw, while I have played a real lot of multiplayer games, I'd prefer a good, creative SP game over them anytime. Multiplayer somehow is always the same (and the older I grow, the less can I be bothered to deal with the masses of trolls and retards populating public servers in a never ending stream - and I am not a clan player either).