14 DAY TRIAL // Valve, the developer of hit games like Half Life, Left 4 Dead or Portal, has revealed through its CEO, Gabe Newell, that games in the future need to have a new type of single-player experience, as well as strive to deliver some sort of multiplayer one.
Portal 2, Valve's most recent game, arrived not just with a top notch single-player, just like its predecessor, but also introduced an extremely addictive cooperative mode, in which players needed to work together and solve puzzles.
Now, the company's boss revealed, via Kotaku, that future games all need to have some sort of multiplayer, or at least an extended single-player campaign that recognizes the fact that gamers want to be connected to their friends.
"It's more that we think that we have to work harder in the future. That entertainment is inherently increased in value by having it be social, by letting you play with your friends, by recognizing that you're connected with other people. Single-player is great, but we also have to recognize that you have friends and wanted to have that connected as well."
Newell goes on, saying that this isn't about the death of single-player games, but more like their evolution towards becoming more attractive to gamers that are spending many hours in multiplayer modes.
"It's not about giving up on single-player at all. It's saying we actually think there are a bunch of features and capabilities that we need to add into our single-player games to recognize the socially connected gamer. Every gamer has instant messaging, every gamer has a Facebook account. If you pretend that that doesn't exist, you're ignoring the problems that you're taking on. It's single-player plus, not 'no more single-player'."
After the release of Portal 2 last month, Valve has posted a new update for Team Fortress 2, while fresh DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 was also promised some time ago.
After that, though, Valve hasn't revealed what other projects it has in development.