i am aware of how the CS does their system and theres a game called urban terror that i play and it runs really well with 8+ players at pings of <200, and client side movement gives us our smooth movement, the only problem is hit detection and there are countless methods to do this, one is also to trace for a few frames per shot, rather than a single frame...

the biggest thing to draw people to the community is a decent looking MP game, SP doesnt deliver that so easily, plus, theres no need for perfect hit detection in certain styled games...

in terms of assets, i still believe MP is easiest, thats where we need coding strength, SP needs alot more resources and in most cases hardly pull any major attention..

look at this game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4t0p50Hj1Q&feature=related

15,000+ views

a few models and a multi texture terrain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQiz_pM2Pk

if we're saying we have more coders than artist and cant do that? then.. i dont know where this is all going.. am not saying the ideas listed above are bad, but study the indie market and you see that the main survivors are:

- very stylized and unique SP games [alot of artwork used]
- multiplayer games [mediocre artwork in alot of cases]
- that one random stylized game that god knows how it turned out to be fun yet we love it [aaaAAAaaaaA...]
- you'll hardly see any story based indie games that really go far, we just dnt have the assets to tell the story correctly especially in such a harsh industry