A new survey has found that over half of gamers prefer to play single-player titles.
According to Midia Research, this game mode is most popular across all platforms – particularly on mobile, with 58% of respondents saying they preferred single-player games.
The data from the survey was collected from Midia Research’s Q1 2024 and Q1 2023 consumer surveys across the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Poland, Turkey, and South Africa.
Research found that older gamers were more drawn to single-player titles, with 74% of gamers aged over 55 choosing to play games solo.
Is that good, though? I don’t want realistic and challenging AI opponents, at least not most of the time. It works for a 1v1 fighting game, but you don’t want every enemy in Diablo being a smart, human-like entity capable of min/maxing their build and acting with real self preservation. You want them to act as a pincushion so you can test if your build is doing good damage and to watch them pop like so much bubble wrap.
So yeah, for 1v1 fighting games I want a human, but that’s not an intrinsically better solution than a “dumb” AI. It’s the opposite of that in most games, I’d say.