From the article it’s pretty obvious that Activision/Blizzard is largely abandoning the single player game.

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/activision-blizzard-layoffs-1203136982/

It seems to me that SP games are becoming less popular for developers now. I have no problem with always being on-line for SP games but some I just wish there was an option to avoid other players,Elite:Dangerous is a good example.

As I browse the Steam forums (yeah I know) I often see people screaming 'no sale' if there is no MP. The people who want a true SP experience seem to be in the minority. I don't see this trend ending at all.

Gotta disagree with you about Elite Dangerous, Chucky. Elite demanded a strong multiplayer presence due to the lack of content, and without those players to interact with, became quite dull.

Given the mega dollars that the e-sports business is becoming, I can see why Activision Blizzard might want to move to multiplayer only. After all, they sold an Overwatch team LICENSE for 60 million dollars a pop, not too long ago. Professional sports teams are buying up e-sports teams, and kids these days don't watch pro sports like they did thirty years ago. Many could care less about football, baseball or basketball. They'd rather watch their friends wreck pixels.

I'm okay with that. Competition is competition, and pro sports, especially the big three in America, have grown lazy and expectant of fat revenues from their chattel they farm as fans, with ever increasing ticket prices for the same #%&*$# game that was played last year, the year before, and a hundred years before that.


But I love myself a good single player game. So long as it has a fully developed world, a great story, tons of interactivity and a point, I'm in. I expect they'll still exist, same as cinema and written verse does, and have a niche, and we'll likely see many supplement their multiplayer bretheren. Like you, Chucky, there are many out there that don't want to be subjected to a zit-faced teenage psychopath who has nothing better to do with their life than punch keys and squeeze triggers all day like it were their job. I think it is nice that we can save our game, shut off our machine, and come back to where we left off the next day or month and not be worried that we'll be so far behind in the universe we were immersed in that we'll have to take short-term disability to catch up on.

I guess that's what makes the classic hardcover book still so great. Bookmarks are pretty darned neat and I love how the stories never change when the pages are closed.

I also believe that this is the current trend indeed.
However, I believe this is a trend which will inevitably change as all things do - and history as this "nasty" trend of repeating itself, time after time. IMO a thing that may lead to an eventual change of this current trend may be because of this actual trend where the vast majority of gaming companies are going after MP (only) which IMO will lead to the inevitable situation where the MP market will be "doomed" to become overcrowded and saturated and when this happens (IMO it's not a matter of "if it happens" but it is "when it happens") then at least some companies will be "forced" to return back to the SP market again.

IMO all this current MP gaming hype is a paradox since:
1- It's a fact that most people struggle to have any free time for activities such as gaming - As such SP allows the best use of such free time since with MP you can't save games in order to continue (already mentioned here), you need to spend a considerable time (which many people probable don't have) in order to achieve something useful in a MP game and/or depending on the MP game, having to wait for other player to join, etc, etc, etc...
For example, I simply don't have the time and patience to play my favorite MP game - ArmA3 - and my current gaming is limited to a few minutes (half an hour to a single hour tops) of Single Player gaming, currently in Cold Waters.
2- Then we have all the current buzz around AI (Artificial Intelligence) or AI technology. AI this or AI that, bla, bla, bla... Then we have this technology - AI - which is essential to any SP game and I even dare to day, essential for an excellent MP game (specially if it models Co-Op gameplay but not only) but then we have all these gaming companies going after the MP route in an also clear move to avoid AI altogether. Again a huge paradox, IMO that is!

I don't have any hard numbers but my educated guess is that a very significant percentage of people who play MP are teenagers and college students who do indeed have plenty of time to dedicate to the MP grind. So in other words, the target audience for many of these MP games are younger gamers with plenty of free time.

The struggle for free time does indeed apply but mostly to older gamers who already have a career and/or family.

Weird.
Most, if not all, flightsimgame producers seem to admit SP customers are in vast majority - still they rip their legs off to meet the screaming vocal MP crowd.
If true, they put all their efforts opposite where the money is?
To me even my old favourite BI (ofp/arma) moved this way after the landslide effect of dayZ and arma3 became an MP title where even the bloody SP campaign was a multiplayer excercise - who hired that decisionmaker?

I can agree with Blastman though, maybe producers of today bite off more than they can chew and adding to MP is way easier than creating good enough AI and content in general?

ArmA3 with their copy-paste a model and add new paint making all assets look the bloody same.
DCS dropping combat (if it ever was there) becoming cockpit simulator closer to FSX than anything else.
IL2 GB starting off as an airQuake-sim but at least lately trying to add SP but fell a little off the mark (no war progress or general connection between the missions and their results)

Why am I still flying Falcon BMS? Now if THAT isn't the worst grade the industry can get I don't know what is.
(correct, I also play ArmA2 over ArmA3 any day and still push more hours into 1946 than Stalingrad)

This MP trend doesn't apply to flight sims since the flight sim genre itself is only a tiny fragment of the overall market. The trend of MP mentioned in the article has to do with game genres that are popular with the mainstream such as first person shooters, RPG's, MMO's and RTS's.

Reminds me of hearing this when we were only going to have H2H MP in JF-15 and to a lesser degree didn't have it in Fleet Defender after there was Co-op and FS/BS in F-15 III.

Elf

I don't see this at all, there is no shortage of SP games on Steam, I haven't done any serious research on this but it seems to me there are more SP games than MP-only games. By far. Are you talking of a specific genre?

You may not DM,depending on what games you play/are interested in. It's just something I was picking up from reading various forums (not here).

Miscreated is a game I used to play (open-world survival) but the MP element drove me away from it. The developers won't consider a SP only mode. I understand that for some the challenge of MP is what gets their motor running but for me,I could do without it at times.

Mr_Blastman stated that E:D would be dull without MP but I don't. It's horses for courses. I'd like that option.

I hear you, it depends which particular game genre then I guess, and survival games tend toward it. I'm currently enjoying a game called Worlds Adrift (basically boats/ships that sail through air from floating island to island). I don't dig the piracy aspect of that game but luckily there's two different kinds of servers, PvP and PvE. PvE is a nice relaxing affair with helpful people and a good vibe, that's where I stay.

I don't think Single player games are dead. But single player games with a beginning and end are close to being done. Considering fevelopment cost, a SP game with finite length that doesn't bring more revenue in are probably going to go extinct.

Its becoming more abouy open world games with mininal story these days. In addition to MP focus of course

Yes, you're probably right.

Hence why I think (or believe) that the move by most gaming developers to follow the MP route will end up with these developers "shooting themselves on the foot" since such move will only make the MP market overcrowded in where only a few of these developers/studios will end up thriving or I even dare to say, survive.
This kinda reminds me more or less a decade ago where most game developers/studios decided to make FPS shooters (mostly about or around WWII) which ended up overcrowding the genre which by its turn resulted in the demise of many of these game developers/studios.
IMO, the same "hype" is happening again but now with MP games (instead of FPS shooters).





I believe this is the result of another "trend" regarding the current status of our society:
- A total and complete lack of imagination! This affects anything from games, to the movie industry and even within politics and society where every new decision that comes up is definitly not to improve or make things better but instead just to be "different". Or resuming today being or making "different things" is seen as being the synonymous of being good, cool or even better but the fact that being different is NOT a guarantee of being good, cool or better! Often it is far from it. So people take what already exists, changes "a bit" - often for the worse - which end ups with something that's not only not better (or is actually worse) while at the same time not being innovative and far from showing imagination since it's based on something that already exists.

Anyway, I'm digressing here. My point is: This current trend means dull and uninteresting "single player games with a beginning and end" since having a very good to excellent imagination is paramount to having excellent and interesting games of this nature (single player games with a beginning and end).