I've asked this question on c/gaming, but I'd love to see what KotakuinAction2's members think of this topic:
In an age where every game genre from shooters, strategy, fighting, and racing games are seeing a decreased emphasis on single-player content and in some cases, obstructing the single-player experience through mechanics like forced Internet connections to save progress, I want to ask this community:
Do you think the increased push behind esports and dedication of more resources to it has ruined gaming?
I've noticed that developers have been increasingly neglecting the offline experience and sometimes making some features exclusive to the online modes.
Take how Rockstar stopped adding content to the single-player mode of GTA V, Blizzard and Respawn omitted single-player modes from extremely popular games like Overwatch and Apex Legends, and how racing games like GT7 and the upcoming Forza 2023 are forcing everyone to play online to "prevent cheating", even those that would never touch multiplayer.
Do you think that this has done more damage to gaming in the long run? Do you see things ever trending back toward a more balanced approach where both single player and multiplayer gamers are equally accommodated?
How do you think developers can know that they're alienating a big part of their player base by focusing so extensively if that's how you feel?
Would love to see your thoughts on this topic.
There's a time I would have scrambled to say yes. Instead I think of esports now as what parents do to kids sports--suck all the fun and sportsmanship out of it for the sake of winning in the most crude ways possible.
Instead, I actually blame streamers and Youtubers, and I think that was always to blame. They are the new marketing, the "gamer journalism" to the young generation now. A lot of microtransactions are sold by these people. Do you think the kid watching when they run around and shit on the guy endlessly for not having some $40 fucking cosmetic items is going to do anything different than beg for money to buy it? Tons of tons of the videos I've seen is nothing more than a show off my purchase fest. Hell, I remember being shown some sort of custom room full of people in Fortnite literally doing nothing than walking around flexing cosmetics.
Once the companies realized just how much people will spend on extremely low effort stuff like player models, weapon skins, in-game currency of course that's where the effort went. Why is single player online only? Well, we can't have you cheating to steal our microtransaction dollars. Even if you're like me and couldn't give less of a shit about cosmetic items, look at Ubisoft and their tactic of adding grindiness to a game or skip it with some of your $.
I do think there's a lot of single player stuff though. You just have to look away from AAA studios. I just bought up a bunch of indie FPS games yesterday, I think I'm going to do little mini-reviews of them and "what are you playing" posts every couple weeks while I play them just to have some gaming chat on here.
Also the same reason support for user-made maps and mods have died off.