14 DAY TRIAL // Grand Theft Auto 5 developer Rockstar Games believes that, for many games, having a great single-player campaign is much more important than a multiplayer one, including big ones like Call of Duty.
GTA V was released with just its single-player campaign, as the actual multiplayer component, GTA Online, will debut tomorrow, October 1, for the PS3 and Xbox One platforms.
After discussing this delay between the two parts of the GTA 5 experience, Rockstar's Dan Houser talked a bit more about the importance of single-player games and how that solo mode can be more important than any multiplayer experience.
"I think the well executed multiplayer game clearly attracts a big audience, but it doesn't attract as big an audience as in a single player game," he told Polygon. "It just doesn't do that yet. Not everybody, not even with Call of Duty, not everyone is playing the multiplayer. There's a huge audience for people who love single-player adventures."
"And I think what we make is action adventure-games. Games with ever stronger mechanics and an ever stronger adventure component. They're not quite RPG's but it's getting harder and harder to say what the difference is between an RPG and what we do. The space between the two has in the past few years has gotten smaller and smaller."
Even if a game doesn't have a multiplayer, but comes with a solid single-player experience, then it can be more than successful on the current market, according to Houser.
"I think a short single player game struggles. That's what's happened. But a big single player adventure can do well if it's a good game. Just as a focused multiplayer game can do well if it's a big game. The only area where it's become tough is for a short single player campaign without multiplayer. That's become a tough market, I believe. The rest of it, everything is just moved in one direction without moving away from the other direction."
Even if GTA 5 has a solid single-player campaign, Rockstar wants to deliver a great multiplayer experience with GTA Online.