Single-player only games gone in three years says veteran designer
Veteran designer Mark Cerny sees single-player games without social elements as a dying breed that he says will be gone in three years.
At a special Sony-organized panel on the future of video games, veteran designer and consultant Mark Cerny offered his opinion that traditional single-player gaming will be gone in three years, reports Eurogamer. "Right now you sit in your living room and you're playing a game by yourself – we call it the sp mission or the single-player campaign. In a world with Facebook I just don't think that's going to last," said Cerny. A bold prediction, to be sure, but coming from someone with 15 games that have sold over two million copies, one that bears consideration.
Once past the initial shock of his statement, it turns out Cerny sees a change more in how we play games than what we're actually playing. "Right now you sit in your living room and you're playing a game by yourself – we call it the sp mission or the single-player campaign. In a world with Facebook I just don't think that's going to last," explained Cerny.
He then noted the unique way Demon Souls let's other players participate in your solo game as the first steps in this new direction. "The funny thing here is, we don't even know what to call this. Is it single-player or is it multiplayer? We don't even have the words…Yet, that will be the standard, I believe, in 2014," he conjectured.
Of course a lot of pieces will have to come together quickly to meet Cerny's timeline, not the least of which is designers crafting more meaningful interactions than simply posting to a news stream. It's hard to ignore his core points, though. With friends lists and social sharing increasingly a part of our daily routine, it's almost harder to not imagine things playing out this way.
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replyGarnett Lee posted a new article, Single-player only games gone in three years says veteran designer.
Veteran designer Mark Cerny sees single-player games without social elements as a dying breed that he says will be gone in three years.-
Mark Cerny needs to lay off the booze.
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NoScript is your friend.
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You can get pretty granular with it's targets.
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Looks like I won't be buying games anymore in 3 years.
Single Player matters a lot to me. With everything that goes on in my life and all my friends lifes there rarely is ever a time I can meet up together online and play a game.
Screw playing with random dickwads (penny-arcade ref) online when I want to have quality gaming time. -
Can we get a PC gaming is dying article too?
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lol. was gonna use the same example.
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I don't understand the human need to constantly announce the rise and fall of things.
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The scary aspect of this is the Farmville style spam the will ensue and the need for games to be constantly connected to servers. Sometimes I just wanna be in my own little box, I don't want to need other people to experience everything in a game. And then what happens when the albeit minimal server needs for companies become a red mark on the annual report and you can't even play a game that was released a year ago (which I guess is already happening in some small way).
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I would assume digital distribution on consoles will increase the sales numbers of SP only games. Can't resell used.
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He's not actually saying "no single player." He said there'd be social elements. For example, the ability to take screenshots and share online, all from within the game somehow (in game, front-end, etc).
Why would everyone do it? I don't know, why'd nearly everyone start adding "achievements" to their games?-
Something like the Elder Scrolls games have always been a very personal experience - There's no way that the next TES will be even remotely like Demon's Souls.
And there's other examples aswell. Games will have social components but they will never leave the singleplayer domain entirely - There will always be a large market for games where people aren't bothered at all by other players.-
I wholeheartedly agree, games like Oblivion just wouldn't work great with multiplayer, not in the traditional sense.
One could argue a good example of a mission that could be made richer with 2+ players, but that also adds magnitudes of complexity that would, if aiming for the same level of singleplayer quality as Oblivion, would be so far out of scope it wouldn't be funny.
I wouldn't expect a company with timelines to implement such things, but they could build in basic connectivity tools along with powerful mod-syncing tools that would allow players to connect to each others games. Thats all I would expect or want bethesda to do.
Leave the rest in the hands of the mod community. Just look at the Morrowind Overhaul, if TES players want it, TES players will make it happen. :D
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chievements are a social element. Whew. Dodged a bullet there. Gaming is safe.
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Maybe I'm reading between the lines a bit. It seems to me that he's stating that most, if not all, games will have some type of co-op feature that allows you and your friends the option to drop in/out of your campaign in one form or another. I'd like to think that developers understand that there is a certain group of gamers that want to stay clear of other players disrupting their campaign experience. On the other hand, more and more gamers are enjoying the ability to join a friend's game campaign and work through the scenario or story together. I really don't care one way or the other, so long as it doesn't "break" the game.
When you look at how all these social networks are working their way into our lives, it's easy to assume or forecast similar strategies (eventually) being included in our games. I'll believe it when I see it. He's still one voice in a very large group of developers.-
You got it right.
I think the quote in the comments there is trying to make the nerds crazy.
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Not every game lends themselves well to being multiplayer or even coop. Most games I have seen that tried to force multiplayer elements in a game it comes off half-assed. There a times when you want a cinematic experience or personal experience without having to worry about another player.
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Yes, and 3D is the FUTURE.
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Oh man, need to tag this for future Linux reference.
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On other news cinema is going to die in favour of living room movies.
2012 is the end of civilisation.
Next year is the year of linux.
PC is dying.
The internet is full of predators that want to suck the blood of your children.
Australians ride kangaroos upside down. -
I play single-player games to lock out the madness of online multiplayer and social interactions. That need isn't going to go away, but the profitability of huge single-player titles running at $60 probably will.
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He then noted the unique way Demon Souls let's other players participate in your solo game as the first steps in this new direction. "The funny thing here is, we don't even know what to call this.
It's multiplayer plain and simple. Not up to debate. It's like asking if VGA planets or Usurper was single player or multiplayer.
What about facebook that's not going to make sp last?
With friends lists and social sharing increasingly a part of our daily routine, it's almost harder to not imagine things playing out this way.
Friends list should be part of the platform, not the game. Otherwise, you're going to have 784895 different friends lists. All this superfluous shit and then dev/pub complain about the rising costs of making video games. -
derpa derp da derpity derp says veteren designer
Actually I like Mark Cerny, his GDC presentation about marble madness was cool, but I don't really agree with him on this. I think we'll see more attempts at integrating single player and multiplayer experiences, but that is just what it is: An integration. There will still be pure multi games, and pure single player games, along with stuff that blurs the line a bit.
I mean I know it's probably an attractive thing for developers who want value added for these games that have the always-online DRM function, but the people will always like a variety of games. You can't resist the will of the people. -
""The funny thing here is, we don't even know what to call this. Is it single-player or is it multiplayer? We don't even have the words"
IT'S CALLED CO-OP YOU TARFBOT -
Timeline seems a bit aggressive given broadband penetration but this is clearly the trend and for a number of reasons. One need only look at the evolution of Blizzard's online strategy with respect to single player to see just the most recent example of Cerny's prediction playing out. The death of single player in this context is not the complete disappearance of solo play opportunities. For one, there will always be independent developers who, either for creative reasons or the simple fact that running an online service is a hassle they can't or don't want to deal with, still create single player experiences. Most games that are always connected, like the forthcoming Diablo III, let you isolate/hide yourself from others if you so choose. I can imagine Madden two years from now live updating news ala ESPN, and for online pass subscribers having clips of games and Sportscenter with live roster updates feeding back into gameplay. The upsides for gameplay notwithstanding, developers/publishers have incentives to do this if only for the copy-protection benefits, and the ease of selling you post-sale content. When Nintendo, notorious for their failures in online integration, are patenting their networked asynchronous gameplay implementations, I think Cerny's prediction has some validity.
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He's right.
No one talks in absolutes- I believe he's referring to the idea of a big budget single player with NO online elements at all, because that makes sense. We hardly have any of those now.
Sure there are exceptions, smaller titles here and there, Amnesia on PC for example. But no one in their right mind is releasing a AAA single player game.-
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Prey 2
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The Legend of Zelda too, I guess..
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I should clarify: he says that there will be social elements in every game in the future, which isn't that hard to see coming. For every app on the Apple App Store that doesn't have social features, all the reviewers want them added.
As long as I can opt out of the social features, and they have no ill-effect on the game, sure throw it in there for people that are interested in it. However, if it forces me to be social then I won't have an interest in that game.
I game because I'm NOT social. It's a lifestyle choice.
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I completely disagree. Everyone wants to have alone time. And that goes with gaming.
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What a load of old cobbler. There will ALWAYS be single player story driven games, generally the best games I've ever played have been single player.
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Demon's Souls's indirect multiplayer feature was pretty neat. Hope more games adopt that kind of system.
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I wish Alice would add this post to this thread.
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26526125#itemanchor_26526125 -
This is not a "bold prediction". Saying something will become the standard means exactly squat. If the guy said "THERE WILL BE EXACTLY ZERO SINGLE PLAYER GAMES", that would be bold (and also retarded).
Sure, we can all imagine more co-op and sp-ish experiences where the internet is used for some sort of influence on your experience. So what?
There will still be things like Minecraft...and even though Diablo 3 requires you to be online, it's still going to have a standard single player mode. Will things like that completely die off? Hell no. Many people do not want others influencing their gaming experience.
I find both fun depending on the game. There's a market for both. Sure it may be shifting to some new "standard", but the best games and the ones that sell a bazillion copies are never "standard" (except the sequels, of course). What a load of crap. -
As long as there are grievers online, there will always be a need for single-player games.
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Still trying to figure out what a world with Facebook has to do with me smashing dragons in a couple months, besides the fact the world with Facebook will have a few less posts/reads.
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wow am i going to get run over by a bus in 3 years or something!?
Shows a lack of connection with a big proportion of gamers. NONE of my friends play games, and i play them when i feel like escaping from life for a few hours.
Just got Xenoblade case in point, no way i want someone else's chat bubble popping up all the time taking me out of the experience. -
Guess I'll finally get to my backlog in about 3 years.
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Who? What has Mark Cerny worked on?
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It saddens me to see how few people know who Mark is. The involvement with Jak, Ratchet & Spryo are very big credentials during the PSOne and PS2 era and he is a man with a lot of experience and many of the games that have come from the studios after (Uncharted, Resistance) have a lot in common with his development ideals.
Now that being said I think he is way off base and could have defined his statement a bit better. I don't believe he means that Single Player will be gone in favor of Multi-player/Co-Op only. There is way too much evidence in the market that Single Player games work on consoles (Bioshock, Elder Scrolls, L.A. Noire, Mass Effect) and that is where the money is made by the big companies. The horror genre in particular just doesn't work well with co-op as all the tension is gone out of the burning walls of Silent Hill if you have a drunken friend burping in your ear right when a demon tries to eat you.
However, there are great ways that multi-player/co-op features are being introduced into games that do not require the status quo of leveling up your player and getting perks. Demon's Souls and the forthcoming Journey are perfect examples of ways that you can blend the two without adversely affecting the experience for the single player.
One other thing worth considering is that the generation of gamers that are cutting their teeth now are in a wired world where everything is done quickly, online and with their friends so it follows that as they get older they will expect something similar in their games. Those of us who relish in the 100+ hours of our life lost in the world of Elder Scrolls are perhaps not as much of a majority as we would like to believe. -
This guy lives in his own gaming bubble. He doesn't have a clue. Already, Skyrim has more in preorders on the consoles than Oblivion did in total sales on the consoles. There's also Risen 2 coming out from PB who are staunch SP only developers. Others have listed a host of other games on the way that are SP only. SP is not going anywhere. Not today, and not in 20 years. People will always be looking to make the kind of game that they themselves want to experience, and for many people that will mean making a SP game.
On top of this all, this same prediction has been made before, and it was equally wrong then.
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