After playing through the single player campaign of Starcraft II, one of the best RTS campaigns I've ever played, I had to think about whether it's worth it for developers to invest so much energy into the single player components of their games. All of the cut scenes, movies, voice actors, different maps, special units, and other material that's needed can eat up a huge portion of development time and money for a project. In a developer that isn't Blizzard, this may lead to an issue where there isn't sufficient time spent on the multi player and single player portions of the game to make them both enjoyable for players.
The problem is usually most obvious in the multi player portion of the game, as the single player is the most played part of a game, with only a small portion of the community continuing to play online. There may be gigantic balance issues in the game where one faction or strategy is basically impossible to beat. Support to fix these problems is also frequently lacking. Many developers take months to put out a balance patch, and even when it comes it may not be tested properly, causing more problems than it solves. This leads to an irate community and a hemorrhage of players until the problems are fixed, assuming they are at some point.
The problem is certainly not limited to RTS games, FPS titles and any other game that includes a online component as well. Many feature a superficial online system that minimal effort was put into, including a couple popular modes like team deathmatch and free for all, and that's about it. The real development effort was put into the game's single player mode. Sadly, in many cases the single player mode is also forgettable. I haven't finished a single player campaign for a FPS in an extremely long time and I have never played them more than once.
This begs the question, should developers continue to funnel ever larger amounts of money into creating a single player experience that most players will only complete maybe once or should it instead be invested into the multi player component, which may build a community that lasts for years, building a loyal community to the title?
The biggest barrier to the creation of games that focus exclusively on the multi player content is that most people who buy games do so for the single player. Many players simply don't feel comfortable with playing online because of many factors. They don't like to lose, the rudeness of other members of the community, latency issues, poor interface design of the online features, etc. Most players are unwilling to get their ass kicked by better players for the required number of games to develop enough talent to win.
Fortunately, many of these barriers are not insurmountable. Starcraft II introduced a lot of features that could potentially make new online players feel comfortable playing. There is the option to play a number of unranked games before diving into ranked play using special maps. These maps feature rock barriers at the ramps to the base, allowing a player to have some protection from attack so that they can develop some comfort with how the game works and how to build their army. Additionally, the first 5 games are played in a placement mode, placing the player in a league appropriate to their skill level. The interface is well designed to make it easy to figure out how to start games and get into the action. The map editor is great, giving mapmakers a lot of options for creating unique scenarios, such as tower defenses, adding custom maps to the community. In Warcraft III these custom maps became a large part of the online population, especially Defense of the Ancients, a custom map that developed its own tournaments! Lastly, the addition of achievements to the game allows players, even bad players, to feel that they are accomplishing something when they get new portraits they can use in multi player.
Although it is still unfeasible to expect developers to be able to focus exclusively on multi player content, if steps are taken to make the online experience more friendly to new players, it may be possible in the future. It will be interesting to see the data on the online player base for Starcraft II to see if these steps encouraged more people to play online or not. If they did, it seems like every developer who wants an online component should take similar initiative to get more people playing the multi player part of the game.
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