Yesterday, I reported that only 17% of Battlefield 3 players have completed the single-player campaign. Of course, this statistic was based off of players who track their achievements on popular gaming site Raptr.com. Throw in the fact that the game just released a little over a week ago and that the main focus of Battlefield 3 is the multiplayer aspect (even confirmed by DICE), and you can understand why less than 1 in 5 players have completed it. Is it a low percentage? Yes. Is it shockingly low? Probably not.
What might come as a surprise however, is that only 18.6% of players have finished the single-player campaign for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Black Ops came out about a year ago so it's a little more surprising that after all this time, no one has really focused their time on the single-player mode. Once again, this is just based off of Raptr's achievement tracking, so the numbers are far from exact. I think it does give a pretty good estimate given the 352,809 followers and the 27,237,968 hours of time played Black Ops has.
When looking back at previous Call of Duty games on the site, you can see a steady decline in the number of single-player campaign completion percentage. Modern Warfare 2 has a 59.1% completion rate, while World at War drops to 31.55%.
It's worth noting that the amount of time being spent on the Call of Duty games isn't any less. As a matter of fact, Kotaku reported earlier that Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 both remained the two most played games on Xbox LIVE, even after the release of Battlefield 3. Though the numbers in that report may have been somewhat skewed because of release date.
Still, it's impressive that so many people are still playing those Call of Duty games, but haven't finished the game's campaign. What can we attribute this stat to? Is it that these games are so heavily focused on multiplayer lately, and have been around for so long that player's don't need to get accustomed to the game through single-player anymore? Maybe more are just heading right to the multiplayer.
Some can argue that while Call of Duty has become more multiplayer-centric, their single-player campaigns are equally entertaining. At least they used to be. Maybe the single-player campaign ideas are getting stale. How many times can you track down terrorists? Jack Bauer could only do it for so long in 24 before the show got canceled, so it is conceivable that players are just tired of the same type of gameplay.
We all know single-player campaigns, especially with shooters like Call of Duty, can get repetitive quickly. That is why multiplayer is so much fun. You have the same fun gameplay with the human surprise element. It's not as predictable as AI.
Like Battlefield 3, Call of Duty may simply be outgrowing the single-player mode. Maybe fans really don't need it anymore. While I'm sure there are some who enjoy it, it looks like the majority can do just fine without it.
Are you part of that 18% who have completed Call of Duty: Black Ops single-player or did you rush right into the multiplayer? Do you think the Call of Duty series still needs a campaign mode?
dfsdgsdgdssd
