Titanfall does not have a single-player mode, and offers only multiplayer modes. The reason for this is that its developers want to keep the focus on multiplayer battles as a deliberate response to player habits—and the size of the studio prohibits them from doing much more with the game without splitting their focus.
Respawn is made up of only 60 developers, and devoting months of work to single-player missions that most players would plow through in a matter of hours doesn't seem like a good use of resources.
"And how many people finish the single-player game? It's a small percentage. It's like, everyone plays through the first level, but 5 percent of people finish the game," said studio co-founder Vince Zampella in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
"Really, you split the team. They're two different games. They're balanced differently, they're scoped differently. But people spend hundreds of hours in the multiplayer experience versus as little time as possible rushing to the end [in single-player]. So why do all the resources go there? To us it made sense to put it here. Now everybody sees all those resources, and multiplayer is better. For us it made sense."
Given the multiplayer focus, Zampella does not seen his new game as a competitor to Call of Duty: Ghosts and has no ill-will toward Infinity Ward's title.
"Honestly, we're not shipping the same time as them," Zampella said. "We're going for something different. We're not gunning for Call of Duty. We're doing our thing. The important thing is to make sure what we're doing is fun. I'm OK with Call of Duty being big. I helped create it, so I'm proud to see it's something so big that it goes beyond me."
