PS5 Architect Mark Cerny predicted the death of single-player games 10 years ago

There are not a few people who wanted to predict end games single player: In an increasingly interconnected society, it seems to make sense that virtual experiences go multiplayer rather than single player play. He was one of those people Mark Cerny, the designer at Sony and responsible for engineering PS5, who asserted 10 years ago that it wouldn’t take long for video games to be exclusively single-player video games gone.

This is how they remind us of GameIndustry.biz In a regular column reviewing the events of the video game industry from a decade ago. According to this article, a special session was held at GDC Europe 2011 with the participation of Mark Cerny, Shuhei Yoshida, then president of Sony Worldwide Studios, and Mick HawkingSony Liverpool studio manager. At that event, a PS5 engineer gave the games a lifespan of three years. single player.

“I think the experience single player Traditionally it disappears in three years.

In fact, what Mark Cerny was referring to at the time were the features that made the single game more involved. In fact, he gave as an example demon souls For PS3 and your system Online With features like invasions. “The funny thing here is that we don’t even know what to call this: it’s a single player Or is it multiplayer? The term does not even exist. It’s a bit of Orwell: If you don’t have a word for freedom, you can’t make a revolution. How can you talk about this design when we don’t have the words to describe it? However, this will be the norm, I believe, in 2014. “