IGN just posted this article talking about EA's current thinking on dedicated single player-only games, and if you ask me it makes for pretty grim reading.
EA's new strategy is basically that all of their games, regardless of the setting or suitability will get online multiplayer or major online features. I'm assuming they're not talking about DLC, either as it's been standard practice for over a decade for almost every big single player game to get some sort of expansion pack.
While the promise of extra online multiplayer 'stuff'' in all our games may sound good, making it obligatory just seems ridiculous. Unless this extra content is well made and actually fits the game in question, it could instead have a detrimental effect, cheapening the overall quality of the product and stealing development resources away from more important things.
A recent example of an inappropriate, shoehorned-in multiplayer mode was this year's Bioshock 2. A great game, indeed, but for some reason the developers tacked on a Modern Warfare 2 style online component that was admittedly decent but seemed completely out of place and was ignored by pretty much everyone. Few people expected or saw the need for multiplayer in Bioshock so few people even tried it. Those who did play began jumping ship almost immediately and less than a year on it's basically dead.
Is that really something to aspire to?
Evidence of this new approach can be seen in EA's own Dead Space 2, which is set to get the multiplayer treatment in the form of a engineers-versus-necromorphs mode that bears an uncanny resemblance to Left 4 Dead's own versus. While I can't judge the multiplayer without playing it myself, I honestly can't see any reason for it's inclusion. Dead Space never struck me as a game that needed online multiplayer, and if I want to play something like Left 4 Dead, I'll just play Left 4 Dead.
If previous experience of multiplayer has taught me anything it's that dedicated multiplayer titles like Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament and Left 4 Dead almost always deliver a better service than predominantly single player games that include a bit of a multiplayer as an extra. While you may be able to play any multiplayer game indefinitely, unless things are kept fresh and exciting by regular patches and content updates few people will stick with them for very long. Most dedicated multiplayer games are simply better focused on this and as a result enjoy far greater success and longevity.
Taking the risk of retrofitting a single player franchise with online in order to sell a few more copies in the short term seems like a strategy that might backfire and ultimately dilute the very things that distinguish carefully paced, story-driven games like Bioshock and Dead Space from their adrenaline fuelled, quick-fix multiplayer brethren.
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