Crysis dev calls for an end to purely solo experiences

For years, numerous pundits have called for the death of single-player games, and while some of us gnash our teeth at the thought of losing solo experiences, the creep of multiplayer has been undeniable. This is good news for Crytek, a studio that apparently can't wait to be rid of single-player.

"I think the notion of a single-player experience has to go away," CEO Cevat Yerli told IGN. "However, I'm not saying that there will be no single-player experiences ... it could be it's called Connected Single-Player or Online Single-Player instead.

"Online and social can reignite single-player in a new type of context and provide benefits that will make you want to be a part of a connected story-mode rather than a disconnected story-mode. Sure, if the technology forces you to play a traditional single-player game online, that doesn't make sense but if it's offering actual benefits to be online then you want to be part of it."

Sigh.

If there's one thing that really irritates me about this industry, it's the sudden and callous desire to see things killed off. The games market seems incredibly quick to discard things at the slightest provocation, or claim something's "dead" at the drop of a hat. This is coupled with a seeming need to see everything homogenize and become the same thing.

Yerli's connected single-player idea? Not a bad idea. In fact, it's been done with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls tremendously. Great idea ... but why does it now need to be every fucking game? This is the same attitude that saw multiplayer crammed into Overlord -- about three people played that shit, and nobody's playing it now. It was a useless waste of time and money, but it had to be done because everybody's doing it. I hate seeing one good idea duplicated to obnoxious excess -- we have Hollywood for that already.

You know what notion needs to go away? The notion that something needs to go away entirely just because you've latched onto one idea that works for a set few games.

Crytek Reveals the Many Faces of Free-to-Play [IGN]