Are single-player games facing their final demise? This is currently being claimed – but the head of Baldur’s Gate 3 firmly opposes this.
In recent years, the trend in the gaming industry has increasingly shifted towards multiplayer titles such as MMOs, often with a games-as-a-service component, allowing the game to evolve continuously. Pure single-player titles have gradually fallen out of favor, and some recent flops have heightened concerns that the era of good solo games may be definitively over. This is something that is often murmured in the industry.
However, Swen Vincke, the head of Larian, the developers behind Baldur’s Gate 3, strongly disagrees. He believes: Good single-player games will always have a future. They simply need to be good.
What did Vincke say? On X, Swen Vincke addressed the topic of single-player games. Due to various statements from the industry, he declared:
It’s that time of year again when big single-player games are declared dead.
Use your imagination.
They’re not.
They just have to be good.
A little later, he explains more precisely what he means and why he believes it is so important to push back against this view:
The reason for this tweet is that I hear discussions from big figures in the industry saying that (big) single-player games have no future. And that discourages investment in (big) single-player games. That bothers me. Because I don’t believe they are right.
At the same time, Vincke believes that one should be cautious with such statements. Because if it “gets around” in the industry that solo games have no future, it could become a mantra and only perpetuate itself by causing investments to decline even further:
The problem is that this attitude has consequences. Because before you know it, it’s become a mantra.
That’s why I’m trying to be a counterweight here. I believe that good single-player games will continue to perform well, just as they always have. They just need to be good and innovative enough.
What is the real situation regarding single-player games? The claim that single-player games are dying can also be easily countered at present. After all, games like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 are popular, Baldur’s Gate 3 is played by many as a single player, and several big titles are also set to be released in the coming months, such as Clair Obscure: Expedition 33.
However, it is also not new that single-player games are periodically declared dead. Vincke is right that this happens nearly every year. Every so often, one hears from publishers that the future lies in live-service games with multiplayer components, and that this would displace everything else sooner or later.
All the better that at least one major figure in the industry clearly states: That is not the case. But Vincke often finds clear words and also reveals what makes a truly great game.
