What Do You Think -- The End of Single Player?

[Cory Trese]

Curious to hear your feedback on this:

www.destructoid.com/crytek-the-notion-of-single-player-has-to-go-away--247397.phtml

[vindroid]

I hate jim sterling but he's right. I like being connected to the internet but I want it to be because I want to, not because I have to.

[xdesperado]

@cory I love your games, but the day you start drinking CryTeks koolaid and telling me I have to be logged into the internet and on your forums just to play them is the day I'll quit playing them.

Luckily I think your as disturbed by that idea as many others are so doubt we'll be seeing such a move from TB.

Would I love to see some sort of multi player online ST or CK in the future? Absolutely!
But please never try telling us we have to be logged into big brother when we're just looking for a little private entertainment and break from real life issues and people.

Okay rant over now, just seeing and hearing things like that really gets me steamed.
I love gaming, my oldest brother and his son love gaming. While there are a couple games we all like they tend to be into FPS type games that I just don't enjoy while I'm more into strategy and sports Sims that they don't get into much. Point is everyone has difirent styles and interests in their gaming and having someone trying to cram their idea of what sort of gaming I should be doing down my throat just pisses me off.

[martyparty]

People will always want to play games where there's no connection to the internet.

[grävling]

Sometimes you want to relax by getting away from other people. Especially when your games of choice involve killing other pseudo-people, the whole 'I may have to deal with somebody's hurt feelings because I just destroyed his high-level whatever' and 'I have to share with others' and 'I have to negotiate with others to decide what to do next' -- all of these real life experiences may be exactly what we want to avoid in our games.

So, a multiplayer TB game would probably be great. But there would be many days I didn't want to play it for all that.

[Lesleyr]

No thanks. Just me and my phone works fine. Internet packages for cellphones are also jolly expensive.

[Swami]

I believe I want to be able to choose or decline connectivity when playing my single person games. This developer is mistaken about EVERYONE wanting connectivity all the time and probably thinks a bit too highly of himself.

[BlastGT1]

This is like ISPs saying they can't afford to expand their footprint and need to cap data to keep costs down, while they rake in high profit margins. Comparison being, it's something that makes no sense to the average person, and serves no purpose for anyone but the company who is pushing their agenda. Screw that.

Guys, keep doing what you're doing. I would prefer not to have a requirement to "report in" just to play my games, and any company that pushes for this has other motives which are not being revealed, in my opinion.

_______________________________

"Issue the standard Cadar greeting, Ensign."
"But sir, that's one of our allies!"
"I know that, Ensign. We're confirming that the treaty is still in effect!"

[slayernz]

I love PC games with carefully crafted and delightfully complex storyline, with well-designed and decently voiced characters who add to the atmosphere. The single-player experience is my nirvana of playing. I can pace the game to my own style, am not pressured to have to "team" with others, and can keep in the reality of the game. That reality is so easily shattered if you have other real players babbling about other crap in text channels, or even worse, hearing their voices in 8khz quality piped over VOIP to my speakers.

If I want to play multiplayer, I play something mindless like Battlefield or Diablo. Play a decent FPS, and Single Player is the only way to play.

[johndramey]

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for stupid generalized statements like the one made in this article.

Is connectivity nice to have? Sure, it can add a lot to the game and make it much easier to share information or files in the community. With that said, I really don't think it's a requirement and should never be forced on the player. I'd even go so far as to say that if the inclusion of such "features" takes away time or money that is needed for other things then those "features" should be dropped. Being able to chat with others about your achievements is great and all, but should never come at the expense of the story.

That article, in my opinion, is just another talking head in the game industry trying to make his opinion seem more right than other opinions. Best to just ignore such people and not give them an outlet.

[xdesperado]

Mar 3, 2013 19:17:02 GMT -5 johndramey said:

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for stupid generalized statements like the one made in this article.

Is connectivity nice to have? Sure, it can add a lot to the game and make it much easier to share information or files in the community. With that said, I really don't think it's a requirement and should never be forced on the player. I'd even go so far as to say that if the inclusion of such "features" takes away time or money that is needed for other things then those "features" should be dropped. Being able to chat with others about your achievements is great and all, but should never come at the expense of the story.

That article, in my opinion, is just another talking head in the game industry trying to make his opinion seem more right than other opinions. Best to just ignore such people and not give them an outlet.

I'd agree about the just another talking head thing if I hadn't seen someof this kind of thing already in use.
I don't have a PC, I do have a PS3 and a 4G mobile hotspot on my cell phone with unlimited data (Verizon hates me ).
Now if I had a PC and wanted to watch Netflix all I'd have to do is log in to my Netflix account and watch. With the PS3 though I have to log into the Sony Entertainment Network before I can access Netflix. I can browse the internet without logging into SEN and I can log out of SEN after I start Netflix, yet in a completely pointless exercise Sony decided I had to notify them whenever I wanted to watch Netflix on my PS3.
It's this type of attitude that concerns me and to be a bit paranoid makes me wonder what their real motives are for such things.

[captain nemo]

I like Single Player games they are mostly what I play. I shouldn't have to be connected to the internet just to play my game. If that's the case I most likely wouldn't buy the game in the first place or if it's a hidden feature then I'd probably wouldn't play the game much then.

Single Player games let you get lost in them !! you don't need to have someone else to be around & change your schedule to suit them, you don't need to have an internet connection either what can it offer that must be there to play & enjoy the game as a whole. It's just another thing that forces you to play when IT wants you to and not when YOU want to.

Hell that's an advantage for the game !!! if you lose your internet for some reason you can always just start up a game and play for a while until your internet comes back. But if you have to connect to the internet to be able to play the game than your shit out of luck !!!

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

Not all games need an online component, not all gamers want an online component.
<rant>
That's what I thought would be good about Star Wars: The Old Republic - before release, the devs said it would be an MMO, but if you didn't want to work with people, you could do everything yourself if that was how you wanted to play. Turns out it's not like that - there are group-only missions, group-oriented missions, the crafting system has to be used with several players (unless you subscribe for £8.99 a month - and if you don't want to do that, you still have to pay to be able to trade), and you have to pay if you don't want half experience from level 10 (in other words, you've got no chance going solo if you don't pay).
And the majority of people they tried to appeal to didn't even want an MMO - people wanted Knights of the Old Republic 3, which was canned many years ago (when it was ~80% done) for no apparent reason. And that was going to be a single-player RPG.
</rant>

[chromeada]

Definitely dead. Heroes of Steel will be featuring teams of four right? Well they better be able to be played by four different people or I'm not buying it! In fact, multiplayer should have been one of the stretch goals! For like, $12,001.00. Seriously, it's totally necessary!

J/k, I hate Mplayer. I have no friends and my brothers are so much better than me that it's never fun to play with them.

Okay, j/k again, but seriously, what goofy argument. I think there will always be a place for multiplayer as well as (true) single player. In fact, I would not buy a game that was exclusively or even primarily multiplayer.

[rabidbite]

I loved Diablo 1. I liked Diablo 2. I loved Warcraft, all of them. I drooled over Starcraft. I bought all those games.

Then SecuRom came in, and all those obligatory "connect to internet games." I got angry because even when I BOUGHT a game, I had to log in to some bull**** server. So I bought and THEN I hacked my game. Can you believe hacking YOUR OWN game is illegal? Your own game? WOW. I bought Starcraft II, hit the securom and got completely disillusioned. All the "require internet connection" for playing my single games in expanded maps got to me. I did not buy DIABLO III.

There is something about Bethesda Software games that gets me to open my wallet. I ... love ... LOVE ... every single Fallout, Elder Scroll game I have played. All of them. I bought and hacked all of them so I don't use steam. They run/ran even better.

As time goes by the new generation of children don't know the feeling of owning your own game. They consider the internet to be a permanent fixture in their lives. Perhaps it is. Yet, I, who live in an area were the internet still cuts out when rain falls a little too hard, know what it is to still walk around 'unplugged'.

Stealing games is really why these companies do what they do. Stealing copyright information over the internet can be done with as little as 1 or 2 clicks. 1 or 2 clicks and you're a criminal. Incredible. I don't condone such acts. Neither will I ignore how saturated and prevalent they are in our world society. We are responsible.

Yet, there is another more nefarious reason to force players to 'authorize': demographics. Your personal user information is worth BILLIONS, and as you connect and allow your habits to be recorded FOR FREE, you become more exploitable, more vulnerable, better targeted.

As more games require "online connections to authorize" the less games I will buy. In a sense that's good. I go out more, exercise better.

Will single player games end? No. They won't 'End'. The godlike feeling some of us get in say, Skyrim or single player games won't disappear completely. Yet, I believe all future games, regardless of single player or not, will obligatorily require internet connection for 'authenticity'.

The age when you lack privacy isn't coming; its already here.

Welcome to the future ... surf carefully.

rabid