The myth of the "tacked on campaign" in Battlefield and Call of Duty.

[Hawki]

The only actually good Battlefield campaign was the one from BF2 on consoles, they actually felt like a war

As someone who's had the misery of playing Modern Combat's 'campaign,' and the joy (well, mostly joy) of playing the campaign of Bad Company...no. Just no.

The Call of Duty series started out with a singleplayer focus. It continues to sink huge amounts of money and resources into its campaigns. Hiring award winning writers, for a start. And award winning actors. Yet some people still delude themselves that these campaigns aren't the focus of development.

The most obvious argument against your point is this: if single-player campaigns are not "tacked on", then why 15% of all copies of Black Ops 3 sold without it? If single player were truly the focus, ALL copies would have it on the disk.

That isn't really an argument against campaign, considering that the official reason was that last-gen tech couldn't handle the campaign. There's actually a precedent for this in Perfect Dark, where one couldn't play the campaign without the N64 expansion pack.

 

[F-I-D-O]

You can put a lot of effort into something that looks like it was thrown together by the c-team in a month.

Battlefield 3 and hardline both had that problem (Didn't even look at 4). When the campaigns miss the point of why people play those games by such a wide margin, it doesn't matter how much effort was put in - it feels inconsistent with the rest of the package.

And something like Titanfall, where there was evidently money and thought put into the campaign still felt tacked on. It was stapling a mission structure on random multiplayer maps, where swapping sides, voiceover, and the general structure were strange compared to the rest of the game. Unlike old Call of Duty entries or Bad Company, there was no reason to even try the campaign - it felt like an afterthought.

Consistency, effort, and length matter more to perceptions of "tacked on" game modes. The original CoDs were relatively short, but had great pacing and structure to pull the player through. Too much attention is being given to "ridiculous globe trotting adventure" and not why people liked the old campaigns. It's why CoD4/MW2 are remembered fondly, while MW3 is ignored - there's a reason people cared about a guy named Soap. All the skilled writers, voice actors, and set pieces don't mean anything if the effort doesn't show.

 

[F-I-D-O]

The Call of Duty series started out with a singleplayer focus. It continues to sink huge amounts of money and resources into its campaigns. Hiring award winning writers, for a start. And award winning actors. Yet some people still delude themselves that these campaigns aren't the focus of development.

The most obvious argument against your point is this: if single-player campaigns are not "tacked on", then why 15% of all copies of Black Ops 3 sold without it? If single player were truly the focus, ALL copies would have it on the disk.

That can be an argument for disc space though. If you put the campaign on disc and take out zombies, now you can't sell zombie dlc. It's less of a "tacked-on" argument and more of a "people predominately play multiplayer, and we can sell MP expansions." Adding extra discs adds production costs. An argument could be made for downloading stuff, but then all of the campaign's assets from next-gen have to be downgraded and optimized. Plus, server space for the co-op, or rebalancing for only single player. If only 15% of the copies are getting sold where you need to make that decision, it's not worth the effort to pay for parity.

If single player (I'd argue campaign, due to BlOps3's co-op emphasis, and discussion is on tacked on campaigns) wasn't important, why'd they build in NG+, upgrade paths, and one of the longer campaigns to date? They could have gone like Ghosts.
I don't think campaign's are the run-away focus anymore, but they certainly aren't an afterthought, at least not in the past two entries. MP definitely is the one paying the bills, and has taken over, but AW and BlOps3 both took consistent strides to establish/continue their universes. A game element can simultaneously not be the focus and not be tacked on.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

The Call of Duty series started out with a singleplayer focus. It continues to sink huge amounts of money and resources into its campaigns. Hiring award winning writers, for a start. And award winning actors. Yet some people still delude themselves that these campaigns aren't the focus of development.

The most obvious argument against your point is this: if single-player campaigns are not "tacked on", then why 15% of all copies of Black Ops 3 sold without it? If single player were truly the focus, ALL copies would have it on the disk.

The justification was that 7th gen consoles couldn't handle the campaign. Also, the 7th gen ports have been a cash grab (albeit ones made with some dedication) by outsourced developers ever since Ghosts.

Anyhow, on a related note, Titanfall was supposed to have a campaign. It got cut when the game faced cancellation and Microsoft bailed them out. Titanfall 2 is going to have a campaign, and Jesse Stern (Modern Warfare, Battlefield 4) is writing it.

 

[kilenem]

BF3 seemed like it ripped off Black ops to much plus most of the DLC maps for BF3 seem like it had nothing to do with the single player.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

BF3 seemed like it ripped off Black ops to much plus most of the DLC maps for BF3 seem like it had nothing to do with the single player.

BLACK predates Black Ops by 4 years. BLACK and Battlefield 3 were written by the same person. If anything, Black Ops could be accused of ripping of Black, and BF3 could be seen as the semi-official remake.



And the DLC for BF3 isn't going to resemble the campaign. The campaign for BF3 was made by a different team to the MP. Same goes for BF4 and Hardline. They may as well be completely different games. They're just sold together because reasons. (People were fine paying full price for a 6.5 hour game like BLACK back in 2006, but they get grumbly when Battlefield 3 is 6 hours in 2011.) A small team make the MP content, a much bigger team makes the campaign.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

I was talking from a marketing standpoint. "It has a famous person who worked in famous stuff! Good famous stuff! That means our thing is good!". It's a more or less a piece of flair or gimmick to put on the game, in the sense that it has more or less no or negligible influence on its quality.

I'm still not following the chain of logic here. It sounds like you're saying they take a franchise that's one of the best sellers in games and feel they need to add a "gimmick," despite the great expense being completely unnecessary to sell the game.

And even within this explanation, it still sounds like the only reason there's such an expense is because they put some stock in the campaign.

Exactly, now you're getting it! That's the logic of CoD!

 

[kilenem]

And the DLC for BF3 isn't going to resemble the campaign. The campaign for BF3 was made by a different team to the MP. Same goes for BF4 and Hardline. They may as well be completely different games. They're just sold together because reasons. (People were fine paying full price for a 6.5 hour game like BLACK back in 2006, but they get grumbly when Battlefield 3 is 6 hours in 2011.) A small team make the MP content, a much bigger team makes the campaign.

The more you know

 

[josemlopes]

The only actually good Battlefield campaign was the one from BF2 on consoles, they actually felt like a war

As someone who's had the misery of playing Modern Combat's 'campaign,' and the joy (well, mostly joy) of playing the campaign of Bad Company...no. Just no.

Dude, really? Yeah, I forgot about the Bad Company ones but the way Modern Combat let you do it more as you wanted (plus the switching units mechanic) was good and made sense to the game.

Well, I also liked the campaign of Frontlines: Fuel of War, something that was also panned by everyone. What can I say, I guess there is something special to be in a war for attrition where the player has to plan his stuff and choose how to go about it instead of just following waypoints and scripted sequences.