Multiplayer Designed to Combat Used Games Sales, Says Silicon Knights Leader

Denis Dyack, who is the leader of developer Silicon Knights, has said that, while a lot of teams are still interested in creating complex single-player experiences, there's a clear pressure coming from video game publishers to develop multiplayer modes as a way of combating the used games phenomenon.

The veteran game developer talked to Industry Gamers and said, “What’s really happening now is people are starting to say ‘why is everyone pushing towards multiplayer?’ Because the used game sales are hurting the single player experience so much, they’re being forced in because of the economics, not because people who are doing single player games are saying,’We really want to do multiplayer'.”

All the players in the video game industry see it as unfair that a lot of retail chain, especially those who are focusing on used games sales, are making profits while some developers are closing down and publishers are posting losses.

Dyack added, “And just to be clear, the changes that we’re going to see with cloud computing or digital downloads are not a matter of how does our industry be more swarmy and make more money. We’re talking about survival. Literally survival. How does our industry survive. When those types of economics start coming into play, you’re going to start seeing that paths of least resistance.”

Dyack has long been one of the main supporters of cloud-based gaming and digital distribution, but so far the console ecosystem has not been too interested in these two trends.

Developers from Lionhead recently said that the used games market for gaming console is more of a threat to their existence than the piracy phenomenon is to the PC.

At the moment, Silicon Knights is working with Activision on X-Men: Destiny, which should be out later during this year, and a collaboration with SEGA is also in development.