A lot of you may have noticed it. Many others –the least- maybe didn’t notice the change, but online modes have been growing until they are considered, both by media and players, as the new “Single mode” on the videogame industry, the King feature and the gameplay mode that cannot be absent by no means.

Online gaming has gained so much power and relevance, that nowadays the videogame developers are exposed to exacerbate criticism if they don’t feature this popular gaming mode. Games like Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Uncharted or Street Fighter now must be released, at least, with a decent online mode. Otherwise, the game will suffer an inevitable burning.

Quantum Break, the game developed by Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne) and produced by Microsoft for Xbox One and PC, is suffering these days from that rage since it appears that the single mode can be finished within six and eight hours. Obviously, there should be no problem with this length, but the game does not feature an online mode which could lengthen its life until infinite. Could this mean that Quantum Break’s life will be ephemeral? We don’t know yet, but this is the risk when you ignore what the market asks for. The Order: 1886 for example. An irregular, exclusive and good looking game for PS4 that, in addition to its weakness, lacked the Golden mode and was quickly forgotten by the gamers. Mediocre game, short game, you better go and play blackjack at blablablá when you finish it. There’s nothing more there to enjoy.

2 The importance of online modes | VGLeaks 2.0

So, we have this scenario where developers are almost forced to make an appealing online mode, which complements the single player one, if they want to make a game with some chance of surviving. Of course they directly can also try to create the new, successful and popular online game that breaks paradigms within the videogame market. But this is difficult.

There is no option and we should prepare for this (if we are not already), because it doesn’t seem that online modes will disappear. In fact, Sony, Microsoft and many more won’t let it die while we keep paying online subscriptions and services such as PSN Network or Xbox Live. Another option for gamers is playing on a PC without charge – via VPN or whatever they want – but we don’t think that console users are going to embrace this, so they will keep paying and supporting the actual scenario.

We will finish this post with only one prayer: “Please, do what you want with the online modes, but let the Single Player Modes alive”.