Well, I too don't get why there is often an over emphasis of multiplayer in games. I don't like playing online. My gaming life hasn't been diminished by it. I do have a problem when an online feature somehow causes other features (like single player) to be diminished.

I don't like MMOs. I have tried to play more than a few, but they don't quite mesh right with me. I don't play at the same speed as others (my speed tends to vary), so it is possible for me to miss a group event because I felt like taking a week off (they would not be able to contact me to tell me to get back on), or I annoy people because I've leveled up way beyond them because one night I decided I didn't need sleep. I don't like the subscription method for MMOs, it feels like it is now kinda like a job because if I don't play lots then I'm wasting money.

In many ways, I like being able to play my games at my convenience. I very much feel that I should be able to pause a game at any point in time and resume it later. Failing that, at least make the save points frequent and the levels short. I may for instance one night play GalCiv 2 for half an hour, while another night I might play it for 4 hours strait.

I felt the same for the longest time.  Recently I have begun playing on ICO with Sacrifice of Angels 2 enthusiasts.  The game is totally different when you play against other human beings.  I understand you're misgivings because they were also mine.  It also helps to be a little giving of yourself.  In your time and knowledge and experience as well.  Like any human to human interaction there is give and take.  Having friends can sometimes be work but friendships have emergent properties.  Look for us on SOA2 we'll treat you right.  Roll the dice.

backs out of the room slowly...    

While I grew up playing single-player games and some of those same games are still among the best and most favourite, there is no denying that I have had MORE fun playing multi-player (to be specific multi-player COOP games).  I do agree that MP ADVERSARIAL games are rife with cheating and/or griefing, in fact so much so that it absolutely does rob one of added enjoyment one should be able to get by playing a game with others.

MP COOP however is where it is at (at least for me).  Nothing, and mean no MOD, no expansion, no amount of SP glitz/glamour can ever replace those crazy intense moments when playing a game meant to be played COOP (ie. PAYDAY, PAYDAY2, LFD, LFD2) with a couple of buds and yelling into voip.... "...DUDE.......we need help here now.........damn....we're losing this hallway......get the f43%#$% over here.......look out behind you!.....ahh......too late!....."

Once you have tasted that kind of intensity (and reward when the mission actually doesn't fail sometimes) it can never be replicated for me in any game in single-player.  For that reason.....MP (sometimes even the shittier adversarial kind) does take the cake for me.  These days, if a game doesn't offer MP......it is more than likely a no-buy for me......even just based on that fact alone.

Best advice for video-gaming fun I have?  Find a solid gaming community/clan and hang on for the ride.  When you're with a good group of people you move from game to game with the group (always have someone to play with) and your fun absolutely is dependent on the people not the game.  Exactly how it should be!  

To me it varies greatly from game to game. Some games were built to be played in multiplayer, and they pull it off well. I don't mean it has a "good multiplayer feature", I mean the game was designed for it from the ground up. L4D is a perfect example, very poor single player but great MP. But a great MP experience isn't just reserved for FPS games; 4x TBS games as well - Dominions 3, Endless Space. And RTS games - Starcraft, AI Wars.

So ultimately I don't think it comes down to genre. I think any game can have a great SP and / or a great MP experience. They just have to be built for it. I can personally enjoy either experience if it's great. I think I prefer multiplayer though. My most played games (measured by in-game time) in my life are World of Warcraft, L4D2, TF2 and Natural Selection 2. I can just get so much more out of those products than I can of a game with SP, both fun- and time-wise. But that's me. I have friends who have clocked 1000+ hours playing Crusader Kings 2, Civ5 or Total War: Rome.

I think for TBS you need modding to make MP successful.   Modding is needed sometimes to fix MP exploits.

See the AOW:SM 1.4 patches.

Again, how do you know that? The games that I see that last forever (CounterStrike, NeverWinter Nights, Baldur's Gate) do have multiplayer, but also have modding. How can you be sure in your assertion that multiplayer is 'almost necessary in any symmetric game'? In what way is it necessary?

The TES series has been around forever and it doesn't need multiplayer.

Again, this is not a 'all multiplayer games are dumb' thread. I am just curious to know why/how multiplayer makes a game better/remain popular longer than modding.

NWN / BG / TES are not symmetrical games, at least not in the single player mode

CS is very symmetrical

almost every symmetric game is going to be boring to play against bots. they aren't a substitute for humans

there are some symmetrical games that are popular without multiplayer, but they aren't very good. They only provide entertainment for people who don't know how to play (eg. Civilization series). The only way they entertain decent players is by adding asymmetry (eg. diety level)

as for modding, relatively few people care. successful moddable games are usually fun and popular before mods anyways

league of legends and dota are played by more people than every game you can think of combined. good luck modding that

Dota 2 is the perma #1 played game on Steam, typically with 3-500,000 players. These numbers don't even track Chinese players of the game (where it is wildly popular but doesn't use the Steam client) so it will easily be close to 1 million players at any given time. This is more than all the other games on the Steam stats lists combined. LoL has even more players I believe. Mods help extend the life of SP games (like Skyrim) and some MP games (various Source ones) but like it or not, MP itself (or F2P MP to be more specific) is currently what draws the most players. Personally I think it's silly to compare these in terms of value for the player though - I'm glad that there are options as I enjoy competitive MP but also like to change gears and get immersed in something SP as well.

I would be surprised if it wasn't double that. These MOBA type games are growing like mushrooms, and there's no telling where their roof is. Even small-time games like SMITE are reporting continuous growth. Dota2 is backed by the wealthiest PC game retailer in the world, and they have shown serious conmmitment to the product.

Boost sales will usually win out over increases game life as the latter doesn't really translate into significant additional sales.

It depends on the game.  Modding made Oblivion hugely successful, it's a shit game in it's vanilla form(Sorry Bethesda, but it's true...).

The engine, while beautiful came stock with some of the ugliest people textures to ever grace a video game.  Not just low quality, but so fucking ugly that you flinch when you see the local tramp.  People sleep with that?  Ew...

I'm sure it would have made a profit without it, but almost no one would be playing that dog today, instead it's got a healthy modding community.

Half-life on the other hand, you mention mods from it, but who'd have made mods if it wasn't multiplayer?  Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day Of Defeat, Natural Selection, the list goes on.  Immensely popular games in themselves, that used objective based multiplayer to make an awesome game out of one of the more boring multiplayer shooters of it's day.

Mods are important to the resounding success of quite a few platforms, but there are plenty of games that are successful because they're interesting in themselves.  For many games, that means they have multiplayer.  It takes either a very deep game, or a PVE design, for a game to be enjoyable long term as a single player system.  When there isn't a lot of thinking involved, you've got to put it up against other people unless it's something like breakout, and those are just time killers.

There are people that enjoy playing the same campaign a dozen times over of course...  Nothing wrong with it, I'd just rather watch a good movie or read a good book than go through what is typically a vastly inferior plot line more than once.

I'll use the recent Company of Heroes 2 as an example here. According to Sega, the publisher, they sold about 380,000 copies in the opening week. That was back at the end of June. Nowadays, there are about 5,000 that are regularly on Steam playing it. I'll assume for simplicity that they are all playing MP as most finish the SP campaign in the first week. So that's about 1.3% playing MP. Not very high. However, that 1.3% has much more effect on a game's marketing presence than a similar number of SP people who play for a week and then drop the game. That 1.3% continues to play the game for months and even years to come. The original Company of Heroes still had 6,000 people online playing 5-6 years after release. This small MP contingent keeps forums active with discussion and replays, participates in tournaments, livestreams the game on Twitch, and purchases DLC and expansions. This all reverberates into keeping an online presence for the game that continues to attract new players in the years ahead. Mods don't have the same effect or reach in RTS at least. This is why for RTS games, the devs/publishers invest in MP even though they know only a small percentage of total sales play it.

I don't know how typical I am, but I would never buy an RTS if it had no MP. The SP is a side attraction that I don't have huge expectations for but am sometimes pleasantly surprised. For turn-based strategy though I'm the complete opposite - I don't care about MP and am only interested in playing it solo - so in that case mods could interest me more. SOASE is pretty unique in sitting somewhere in between those two but I mainly consider it an RTS.