Battlefield 3 is officially out now and the game journalism machine has been trotting out reviews for the past few days now. On one thing they all seem to agree on: the Battlefield 3 single player campaign is a bit underwhelming when compared to the multiplayer. In Battlefield 3 I think we’d all agree that the multiplayer is the primary focus, so is a pedestrian single player campaign simply diverting resources from the main portion of the experience, or is a single player campaign practically a necessity, no matter its quality?
Well, whatever your opinion, EA are fairly adamant that they’re keeping single player in all future releases. Speaking at an investor call, EA executive Frank Gibeau had this to say:
“The single play experience is important, it’s a great way to get fans into the experience, have them train up and get ready for multiplayer. And a lot of fans just enjoy having that single player experience. So I think you have to have both. Clearly the multiplayer is the richer opportunity for us because of the services opportunity in keeping customers engaged 365 [days a year]. Fortunately, Battlefield, as a franchise, since the late ’90s has been configured around multiplayer and I think that’s why you’re seeing such popularity around the design.”
Many people bemoan a game for focusing too heavily on multiplayer, but in my eyes some games are simply focused on this aspect of play. While some games eschew a multiplayer mode in favour of refining its single player experience, I think it would be beneficial for certain games to drop the pretension of single player in favour of focusing on their real strength.
