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Cory Barlog: Single-player games will 'be around forever'

After a full year of near-universal acclaim and almost every award imaginable, God of War's Cory Balrog speaks to Shacknews and expresses confidence that single-player games will be around forever.

Ozzie Mejia

February 27, 2019 4:20 PM

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God of War proved to be one of the most memorable gaming experiences of 2018. It revived a major AAA franchise from irrelevency, gaining near-universal praise from critics and players alike. More than that, it was revered as one of the single best games ever to release for the PlayStation 4. But now that God of War is finished, does Sony Santa Monica Creative Director Cory Barlog have any parting thoughts about the 2018 hit?

It turns out he does have some thoughts regarding a familiar refrain that seems to echo throughout the gaming world. Are single-player games dying? According to Barlog, the answer is an emphatic no.

"I never thought they were dead," Barlog told Shacknews. "To me, it feels like, 'Okay, this is an ebb and flow,' right, where it's like sometimes the multiplayer deathmatch games are really big, right? Or a battle royale. Like each time there's a new game that it's like, 'Hey, this is hot. A lot of people are doing this.' And that doesn't mean all the other games go away, it simply means that the attention is being divided in that one direction. Single-player games are going to be around forever. I don't think they're gonna go anywhere simply because there's going to be time that you don't want to be bothered by somebody screaming in your ear or you actually just want to compete against yourself. You just want to get lost in a story. I think there's enough people who actually are attracted to these kinds of games. They were really never gonna go away. Hopefully, they just get bigger and we start seeing even more interesting, innovative stuff out of the indie space that is sort of pushing and motivating us to try new things."

Barlog also weighs in on some of the design choices behind God of War, Sony Santa Monica's freedom in developing games, and the Nintendo Switch. For more interviews like this, be sure to visit Shacknews and GamerHub.TV on YouTube.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?