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

Most modern console games and arcade games are designed so that they can be played by a single player; although 1️⃣ many of these games have modes that allow two or more players to play (not necessarily simultaneously), very few actually 1️⃣ require more than one player for the game to be played. The Unreal Tournament series is one example of such.[2]

History 1️⃣ [ edit ]

The earliest video games, such as Tennis for Two (1958), Spacewar! (1962), and Pong (1972), were symmetrical games 1️⃣ designed to be played by two players. Single-player games gained popularity only after this, with early titles such as Speed 1️⃣ Race (1974)[3] and Space Invaders (1978).

The reason for this, according to Raph Koster, is down to a combination of several 1️⃣ factors: increasingly sophisticated computers and interfaces that enabled asymmetric gameplay, cooperative gameplay and story delivery within a gaming framework, coupled 1️⃣ with the fact that the majority of early games players had introverted personality types (according to the Myers-Briggs personality type 1️⃣ indicator).[4]