A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of 8️⃣ the gaming session. A single-player game is usually a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player 8️⃣ mode" is usually a game mode designed to be played by a single player, though the game also contains multi-player 8️⃣ modes.[1]

Most modern console games and arcade games are designed so that they can be played by a single player; although 8️⃣ many of these games have modes that allow two or more players to play (not necessarily simultaneously), very few actually 8️⃣ require more than one player for the game to be played. The Unreal Tournament series is one example of such.[2]

History 8️⃣ [ edit ]

The earliest video games, such as Tennis for Two (1958), Spacewar! (1962), and Pong (1972), were symmetrical games 8️⃣ designed to be played by two players. Single-player games gained popularity only after this, with early titles such as Speed 8️⃣ Race (1974)[3] and Space Invaders (1978).

The reason for this, according to Raph Koster, is down to a combination of several 8️⃣ factors: increasingly sophisticated computers and interfaces that enabled asymmetric gameplay, cooperative gameplay and story delivery within a gaming framework, coupled 8️⃣ with the fact that the majority of early games players had introverted personality types (according to the Myers-Briggs personality type 8️⃣ indicator).[4]