Battlefield 4 has certainly been making its name known lately. With a myriad of reveals and other pertinent information coming out of the woodwork, it's safe to say that the hype train for the game is on full-steam ahead. While excitement for the game is high, an interview with DICE's Karl-Magnus Troedsson has some interesting strings attached to it.
Troedsson claims that the single player portion of Battlefield 4 will serve more as an introduction than anything. "We prepare them for multiplayer," he says.
This is an issue not because beginners are getting their feet wet for the much more competitive online gaming scene, but because it confirms what gamers have feared for years: that the single player portions of first-person shooters are turning into a tacked-on segment of game development.
This is again portrayed when Troedsson says that DICE will be bringing "signature parts" of Battlefield 4's multiplayer to its single player campaign.
It is definitely okay to have a game's multiplayer portion outshine its single-player brother or sister, but to outright claim that you are looking at development from that perpsective seems a bit near-sighted. If you already expect your game's single-player to be worse than its multiplayer, then why would you put any passion or hard work into making that experience better?
Battlefield isn't the only victim of this train of thought. Other first-person shooters such as Call of Duty have fallen prey to the philosophy that most gamers only care about competitive play. Whether or not this is true is debatable, and it might be true – but does that make it right?
