Crytek: The Single-Player Experience Has to Go Away
Free-to-play and online connectivity will be more beneficial.
Crytek is serious about free-to-play. So much so, that the studio believes that it is trailblazing a multiplayer-focused future for computer games. CEO Cevat Yerli thinks that the single-player mode as we know it is going to go extinct. Or at least, it should.
"I think the notion of a single-player experience has to go away," Yerli said to IGN after presenting the multiplayer F2P Warface. "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."
By this, IGN suggests that he could be talking about single-player titles where an online component can benefit, such as Dark Souls or Journey. Yerli adds that The Walking Dead Game, in a free-to-play environment, would be most popular on Crytek's Gface service. "The Walking Dead would be a primary example of how, with some innovation, it would work even better with the free-to-play concept... on Gface, would make more money than anywhere else."
Of course, there's probably another reason why the German tech-fetish studio is heading closer towards free-to-play. The recently-released Crysis 3, a multiplatform game using an engine created during the development of Crysis 2, had triple the budget of the PC original.
Crysis cost $22 million to develop, meaning Crysis 3 cost the studio a colossal $66 million. Free-to-play might be an area in which the balance between budget and sales might not be a growing concern.
"I think the notion of a single-player experience has to go away," Yerli said to IGN after presenting the multiplayer F2P Warface. "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."
By this, IGN suggests that he could be talking about single-player titles where an online component can benefit, such as Dark Souls or Journey. Yerli adds that The Walking Dead Game, in a free-to-play environment, would be most popular on Crytek's Gface service. "The Walking Dead would be a primary example of how, with some innovation, it would work even better with the free-to-play concept... on Gface, would make more money than anywhere else."
Of course, there's probably another reason why the German tech-fetish studio is heading closer towards free-to-play. The recently-released Crysis 3, a multiplatform game using an engine created during the development of Crysis 2, had triple the budget of the PC original.
Crysis cost $22 million to develop, meaning Crysis 3 cost the studio a colossal $66 million. Free-to-play might be an area in which the balance between budget and sales might not be a growing concern.
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