It’s no surprise that multiplayer is booming in the industry. It provides a unique experience that’s very hard to copy from match to match due to the ability of other gamer’s being able to adapt to your strategy. It’s the ultimate “hunt” so to say. But this trend of supplying multiplayer in every major release has begun to have an unintended side effect; the dwindling experience of the single player. As more and more major titles hedge their bets that the multiplayer will be what sells their title we’ll continue to see less single player games attached.

Normally, as an avid gamer who wants to be engaged in a story, this would worry me. Multiplayer is fun, but nothing can live up to the experience of a damn good story. I’m not worried, however, because I see the booming horizon of the indie gaming scene rising up to task to fulfill the single player void missing from more and more industry games.

A few example to make my case:

• Braid - A fantastic single-player only puzzle platformer with one of the richest storylines I’ve seen out of any game in a long time. Certainly better than most platformers.
• Sam & Max series – Adventure games will always lead the way for great story telling, which makes sense seeing as how the genre is largely run by indie developers. Should the major game’s industry get into adventure games big time you can bet they’ll be looking to create a multiplayer aspect to these games.
• Fatale – Fatale is an interesting experience. Less game than I’d have liked but a very engaging story.
• CityRain – SimCity + Tetris -  any multiplayer. It’s just a great single player puzzle game that can be played over and over again.

And the list goes on. Most indie games are single player for a reason, multiplayer games are expensive to create and requires a whole new dynamic when factoring in balance. Also, when creating a multiplayer game you have no direct control over the experience of the people playing your game which is definitely something most indie developers want. When Jonathan Blow created Braid he most certainly knew what experience he wanted portrayed through his game.

So I leave you with this; yes single player experiences are dying amongst the major games. You need look no farther than games like Halo 3: ODST and the Call of Duty franchise to see that their major selling component is the multiplayer experience. Likewise, games that never would have had a multiplayer experience in the past are now creating one (GTA, Brutal Legend). But that’s fine! Industries evolve and grow to fit the market. However, like what happened with Hollywood will also happen with the gaming industry as indie games fulfill the need for a single player experience.

Oh and did I mention that indie games are cheaper too?