In an interview with GI.biz, World of Warcraft‘s lead designer Rob Pardo shared his thoughts on why he thinks exclusively single player experiences can’t survive in our pirate packed, trade-in centric world:
I don’t see there being a great business model for it these days. It’s really sad, there’s just a lot of elements out there that conspire to make those games difficult to make now. Between pirating or the ability for people to rent games, it’s hard for publishers to pour millions and millions of dollars into a game and not necessarily see the return they need to make those budgets realistic.
With previously single player only franchises like: Uncharted, Assassins Creed, God of War, Max Payne, Mass Effect, Resident Evil, and Grand Theft Auto all making the jump to online bloodshed it’s easy to see Pardo’s point.
In some games like Spec Ops: The Line, for instance, multiplayer is simply tacked on to 
facilitate a corporate mandated feature, but competitive play has become a surprisingly central focus of games like Uncharted 3, and Assassins Creed 3, which both feature (obligatory at this point) “season passes” to extend consumers the opportunity to give publishers their money ahead of time for DLC still in development.
Are you frustrated with the industries abandonment of singleplayer only titles, or do you embrace the recent multitude of multiplayer murdering taking place on the PS3?
