MMOs may not inherit the Earth after all

A lot of attention has been paid in recent months to the notion, espoused openly by Phil Harrison and quietly acquiesced to in much of the rest of the MMO industry, that single player games as we know them are going the way of the dodo. With technology connecting people to each other in greater numbers than ever before, many people see the logical end of this being the complete co-option of the traditional single player experience that has prevailed in games for so long.

In a recent interview with Ben Mattes, producer for the new Prince of Persia game over at Ubisoft, Mattes rejects this notion, insisting there are experiences in a single player game that you can't reliably replicate in a multiplayer context. Players still crave these distilled bouts of fun, and will continue to flock to them in the future as long as companies keep making them. Obviously, being the producer on a big budget single player title doesn't make Mattes the most unbiased source in the world, but we have to agree with him. While the greater trend is towards connectivity and multiplayer, there's always going to be a market for a well-told single player story.