When and why did the single player in an FPS become "campaign mode"?

This term just kinda popped up outta nowhere and it's completely ubiquitous now. In my day, we had SP and MP, not Campaign and MP. Supwitdat?

Campaign sounds cooler, I guess. It's also a distinctly military term outside of video gaming context.

edited 20th Oct '11 4:50:49 PM by VutherA

It probably arose around the time dedicated multiplayer FP Ses with bots appeared. Thus, something like Quake 3 Arena has a single player mode, but its just the multiplayer game with bots.

Definitely not, I was gaming when stuff like Q3 and UT hit the shelves, and nobody used campaign then either, or if they did, it certainly wasn't wide-spread.

Probably helps that most "single-player" modes can be played co-op nowadays, so it makes sense to use a player-neutral term.

Team Fortress 2 technically has "Offline Practice."

RT Ses and such were using that term for their single player modes. Maybe people got the idea that those terms could be used interchangeably?

*Shrugs*

Probably to disguinish it from being multiplayer with bots.

The word story mode was being used before campaign became the popular term to use. And I recall campaign being used far back as the original Army Men game for the PS 1.

I guess that it started out in military games because 'campaign' does have more of an 'Army-esque' ring to it than 'story'. Games centered on a Fantasy/Sci-Fi army would use the term for the same reason.

The Co D and MW series logically use 'campaign' because they're about soldiers. Are there any non-military FPS from 2009 or later that use 'story' or 'Single Player' instead?

Been true for most of FPS history actually.

Anyway I think that the term "campaign mode" originated in either turn-based or real-time strategy games and over time just became adapted as the overall term for "the mode where you're not on a network blowing people up."

Halo's use of the phrase probably contributed to its popularity

edited 22nd Oct '11 9:02:21 AM by Reverse

When I saw the title of this thread, I almost screamed with joy that I wasn't alone. "Story mode", dammit! "Story mode"!

HEAR HEAR!

While I can see the point, why it is necesarily a BAD thing than it is now "campaign" instead of "story"?

It comes from RTS games, which in turn get it from real military terminology. I expect the jump to non-RTS games was led by military-themed FPS games where the "story mode" followed the events of an actual military campaign.

From Battle Tanx. Then again, Battle Tanx's campaign mode was multiplayer(as was Halo's) and if you actually are playing a campaign what's the problem? If they were just sticking the campaign title where it didn't belong then I'd maybe see something to complain about.

I and I'm sure a lot of other people have grown up using the term "story mode". I dislike FPS games as it is, but now thanks to them everyone I know is using the term "campaign mode" for ALL story modes, not just in those games. So as you can imagine it's immensely annoying for every video game to make me think of Halo and the like.

edited 23rd Oct '11 4:25:24 PM by Sabertooth1000000000

I don't see how that can affect the quality of the games. And like we've already mentioned, the word has been used for FPS games LONG before Halo and the big ones came around, so pointing the blame at anybody is pointless.

The only beef I tend to have is that they're generally fixed, static, highly scripted campaigns. You generally don't even get secret areas these days.

Now, if we had more dynamic campaigns (like certain combat flight sims are known for), that would be nice. Make it feel like you're part of something big instead of something totally scripted...

edited 31st Oct '11 6:14:49 PM by NamelessFragger

Whoa man, we're literally discussing semantics here.

Though I don't disagree with your points.