I come from a background almost exlusively made up of single player games. All of my preffered titles– Zelda, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Prince of Persia, Out of this World/Another World or whatever you’re supposed to call it, etc.– are single player games exclusively. My favorite series–(hint: it ain’t GTA)– might’ve just recently added a multi-player mode to its last two installments, and while I’m always on the move looking for hotspots to access it through my PSP, I still remain slavishly devoted to it for each game’s singular single player experience. A few games I’m fond of, like Katamari and a handful of classic N64 titles might have very impressive death-match modes, but mostly games like GoldenEye, StarFox and even Mario Kart held my attention mostly as solitary affairs. Heck, I’ve barely ever even played the Super Mario Bros. games with two players– I wouldn’t want to risk having to play as Luigi. Basically, in all my life I’ve been perfectly happy to play, critique, understand and hopefully someday design one type of game and one type only– single player games.
The problem? I’m not entirely sure that single player games technically exist.