Crytek: Offline single-player needs to "go away"

Crytek boss Cevat Yerli has taken a strong stance against offline single-player experiences, saying that players have to get used to connected solo-gaming.

Following on from Sony's unveiling of its highly-connected new console, Yerli told IGN that he believed online connectivity could provide a host of benefits, but that gamer resistance had to be overcome.

"I think the notion of a single-player experience has to go away. 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," he told the site.

"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."

The Crysis-maker didn't specify how he hopes to lure single-player gamers online but suggested that it would be demonstrated in its upcoming free-to-play efforts, Warface and its new online platform Gface.

James Lee

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James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.