The whole GOTY element you are trying to inject into the discussion is completely irrelevant to a large portion of the audience. We don't care if someone somewhere doesn't think this game is the best to release in a given year, we just want to play it and have fun.
And what is hard to understand about finding play against the cpu in one on one combat to be fun? When I play TLOU I'm playing against the computer, reading the situation, and adjusting my actions accordingly. I'm doing the exact same thing in fighting games.
I'm using "GOTY" to give the reader an idea of the kind of game I'm talking about. It's hard to express that by using terms like "fun" and "more fun".
My whole point is that for the vast majority of fighting games throughout history the focus is clearly on multiplayer. And it's understandably this way because they have their origins in arcades where more money could be made having two people plug in quarters vs. one.
So with games made with one on one multiplayer as the focus it introduces limitations that many singleplayer games don't have. As I mentioned earlier fighting game single player modes are either a series of fights with (maybe) some cutscenes breaking up the action or some sort of new mode where the basic gameplay has been modified to better suit a singleplayer experience (Tekken Force, Subspace Emissary, etc). A lot of the time this ends up with the fighting game actually turning into another genre entirely: the beat-em-up.
I'm not contesting that it's fun to play arcade against the CPU in a fighting game. I'm only asking what draws people to a fighting game if they're only interested in singleplayer. Because, to me, it's like a person is playing a game where the most interesting element is removed (playing against another human) and all your left is a game that when matched against all the singleplayer games out there comes up incredibly short. I'm not arguing that it isn't fun, I just know people don't have infinite time and money so a game shackled by the conventions of a mode the player isn't even interested in doesn't seem like a likely pick to me.
I like fighting games and how they play so when I try to get into the head of someone who likes singleplayer in fighting games I think I'd be drawn to something with similar mechanics, like a character action game. And if I really needed it to be a one-on-one affair I'd play something like Furi.
I'll concede the only thing I really can't account for is singleplayer games that have a wide variety of characters to choose from that each have their own unique playstyle. That's probably the only thing I can think of that other, singleplayer games come up short in offering.
