The downside of single+multiplayer combo games

Many games, especially big-budget first-person shooters, often have two completely separate modes of play: A single player "campaign", and online multiplayer (which is very often some kind of "arena shooter", either in a free-for-all mode or in teams.) Quite often these two modes are so separate, so distinct, and so independent of each other, that you could just as well consider them two different games bundled into one package. They might use the same engine, assets and game mechanics, but otherwise they have usually nothing to do with each other, and often do not even interact with each other in any way (eg. by having things unlocked in one mode becoming available in the other.)

(In fact, with some games the two modes are so separate that you even have to launch them separately, often from a launch startup menu dialog.)

I assume that most companies produce these "two games in one" combos in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, ie. to those who buy such games primarily for the single-player campaign, and those who are mostly or even exclusively interested in the online multiplayer mode.

There are downsides to this, however.

One is that making two games is more expensive than making one. Sure, it's not nearly as expensive as making two completely independent games (because the same core engine and assets can be used in both playing modes, which probably cuts down development time and costs quite a lot, compared to having to make two entirely separate games), but it's also certainly more expensive than making just one of the modes. Perhaps for this reason in recent years more and more examples of single-player-only and multiplayer-only games have been published. Rather than split resources into making essentially two games, they put all their resources into just one of them. (Of course by doing this they are cutting a chunk of their target audience out, but it may still be profitable to do so.)

Another problem is that almost universally, publications and reviewers will give only one score for the entire game, rather than scoring the two sub-modes separately. (Even if some publications do give two scores, which is rare but not unheard of, aggregate scoring services will only show one score, such as the average of the two.) Since the two modes are often completely independent of each other, and do not affect each other, it would be fairest, and most useful for the potential buyer, to know the reviewers' scores for each mode separately. But this basically is never the case, and instead you get only one score for the combo.

This means that if eg. the single-player mode is excellent, but the multiplayer mode is absolute rubbish, the latter will drag the overall score down. However, for a player who is only interested in the single-player mode (like me), it would be much more informative and beneficial to know the review scores for that mode only. If there is a great disparity between the two modes, that muddles things.

I really wish that such games were actually considered two separate games, in terms of reviews and review scores, even if they come packaged in the same product.