With Respawn confirming to us that the first Titanfall saw its player base drop — though reiterated that it’s similar to the drop off of identical games — the studio, no doubt doesn’t want to repeat that with Titanfall 2.
Speaking to PlayStation LifeStyle during a Titanfall 2 preview event, we asked Respawn Lead Engineer Jon Shiring if he thinks Titanfall 2’s single-player mode will help in keeping the player base higher compared to the first Titanfall.
PSLS: Do you think the introduction of a single player mode is going to help with keeping the player base a little higher than last time?
Jon Shiring: I think there’s a lot of different types of people out there, and single-player games appeal to an audience who might not have bought a multiplayer-only game. Then there’s people in-between, who like single-player and multiplayer. One of the big things is that having single-player is going to [let us] have more people coming into the game at launch, and so there’ll be an uplift on everything. There’ll be more people playing, more people there to join your Network, to party up with, play online with…So yeah, I think single-player will help, even for people who aren’t interested in multiplayer, or who don’t think they’re interested in multiplayer. So it’ll help, but that’s not necessarily the main goal of the single player campaign. What we really wanted to do is create a really different and offline single player experience. So “Mo” can talk a lot about that. But we really have created something that’s really different, really special, I can say that having played it fairly recently. It’s longer than people are expecting, it has a lot more variety than people are expecting, and I’ll leave it there for now.
In the same interview, Senior Designer Mohammad Alavi mentioned that including a single-player portion in Titanfall 2 was a “pretty easy decision.” What Shiring does make sense, though. If Titanfall 2 players log regardless to play the multiplayer or single-player, that will mean a higher player count overall, which could only help, right?
Don’t forget that there’s a second multiplayer test for Titanfall 2 happening this Friday and Respawn has confirmed a lot of changes that players have been asking based on the first technical test will be implemented for the final game.
Stay tuned to our full interview with Respawn set to hit the site later this week.
