GregHowley.com

The entire video game industry’s history thus far has been an aberration. It has been a mutant monster only made possible by unconnected computers. People always play games together. All of you learned to play games with each other. When you were kids, you played tag, tea parties, cops and robbers, what have you. The single-player game is a strange mutant monster which has only existed for 21 years and is about to go away because it is unnatural and abnormal.

There's been a lot of talk on the intarwebs recently about the death of singleplayer, and to a certain degree, I've got to take exception. While I certainly won't debate the increasing prevalence of multiplayer games, nor will I decry the inarguable success of MMOs such as World of Warcraft, I've got to point out that all of my favorite gaming experiences have been firmly within the single-player realm.

Games like Half-Life 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts, and Oblivion have been my favorites, and none of them had any multiplayer component when I played them. And while other favorites of mine such as Starcraft and Baldur's Gate do have multiplayer aspects, I would have enjoyed both of them just as much without.

So let's look at my own personal multiplayer experiences. Starcraft I played online a few times with my friend Mark. I don't think I won one of those games. Dungeon Keeper I played online once with three friends in a LAN setup in my friend Rich's basement. I think I lost there too. Mariokart DS I've played online a few times, and I can't think of one time I won there. Team Fortress 2? Ha! I'm the worst player alive.

I suppose I'm not horrible at all multiplayer games. Back in the Playstation 1 days, I was pretty darn good at Armored Core playing against my small pool of friends. And seldom have I ever met my match in the arcades when playing Street Fighter 2. I'm even pretty good at Wii Sports, with the exception that Linda's mom always kicks everyone's butt at bowling.

And then there are the cooperative games. Linda and I played all the way through Icewind Dale 2 together, which was fun. And we got a good way into Champions of Norrath. I'm a big fan of co-op games, but they're hard to come by.

So I guess that while I certainly like games a lot, I'm not particularly good at them. I don't like playing against people. People are good at games. Much better than I, and I'll lose. I like playing against an opponent less good than myself so that I can win. It's similar to my take on MMOs, which I've stated before. When I play a game, I'd like to be the hero. Not the guy who gets stomped 100% of the time.

In addition, I really like to complete games. When I saved Lord British in Ultima V, when I freed Hillys in Beyond Good and Evil, when I escaped Raccoon City in Resident Evil 2, there was a sense of accomplishment and completion. When are you actually ever done with Team Fortress 2 or World of Warcraft? Maybe it's about story. I don't know.

One thing Raphael Koster mentions in his article is "single player in parallel" as a form of multi-player. This semantic loophole is the only means by which I could agree with him. This perspective views something like Half-Life 2, Episode 2, which to me is entirely a single player game, as multi-player due to the online achievements which allow people to compete in a fashion. And while I was momentarily entranced with the notion of removing every camera from the wall in Portal and carrying the Garden Gnome the entire way through Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and thus can identify with the siren song of The Achievement, in the end I summoned my will and resisted.

All I know is that despite this age of Hellgate: Londons, Halo 3s and Tabula Rosas, it's still true that all of my favorite games have been single player games, and they'd better not go anywhere.