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Blizzard Believes Single Player Games Are Becoming An Endangered Species

Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment, is under the impression that traditional single player games are now an endangered species as developers fight against things such as piracy, and game rentals. Pardo thinks that developers will have to change the formula, as it’s becoming increasingly difficult for developers to see a return on big budget titles.

“It’s really sad. There’s just a lot of elements out there that conspire to make those games difficult to make now. Between pirating or the ability for people to rent games, it’s hard for publishers to pour millions and millions of dollars into a game and not necessarily see the return they need to make those budgets realistic.”

61 thoughts on “Blizzard Believes Single Player Games Are Becoming An Endangered Species”

    1. Zelda , mario , metroid would like a word with this narrow minded prick.

      As long as Nintendo Keep doing it right , everyone else can sit on a butt plug and swivell .

      1. I believe he was referring to single player in general. Many non-nintendo single player only games don’t do as well with the majority of people.

    1. It definitely is relevant. It’s easy to pirate single player games nowadays (depends on the game honestly). Which is why for people who try to pirate the game along with the multiplayer modes, they run on cracked servers.

  1. It’s called steam lol c’mon guys. Though steam has its flaws also, a little more time, it will be much more secure.

  2. Funny, because I’m giving my money to countless developers for single player games, while blizzard and it’s abusive DRM aren’t getting a dime from me…

  3. Pretty sure Blizzard is gonna become an endangered species after the debacles that are Diablo 3 and Panda Party Online…

    1. Agreed, the first two were good and actually added compelling content. They missed an opportunity when they could have made a second World of Warcraft instead of Cataclysm. Now they’re only making content to keep addicts hooked, rather than offering new experiences to attract new players or bring back the old ones.

      1. You guys must be very bad at judging content or lying about how long you’ve played WoW for, cause Mist of Pandaria has the most epic and compelling quest content to date in the game and the best looking world and dungeons/raids as well. Hell, even the gear looks better over (mostly due to HD textures but still)

        Been playing since December 2004 and a hardcore raider since 2006. Comparing Wrath and TBC to this expansion is like comparing Sonic 3D Blast to Sonic 2 (i.e. not a fucking chance in hell is is better).

        Only thing bad with it is no new character models for the old races yet.

  4. single player games are the best wtf is he talking about and piracy only accounts for a small percentage of people like 20% they making it seem like every bodies doing it. the only ones thats doing a good job in piracy is nintendo the 3ds is 19 mouths unhacked with the exception of ds flashcart. even thou nintendo did the 3ds firmware updates that supposedly k.o flashcarts permanently but that story was bs cause the flashcarts still works with a simple update (all flashcarts only play ds not 3ds games).as far as stopping piracy nintendo might be the ones to do it.

  5. Blizzard you are dead to me after Diablo 3, i forgave you for star craft 2 but diablo 3 was a low low punch. The only endanger games are the bad games.

    1. Pretty funny how Borderlands 2, that used the loot system from Diablo, and inspired from Diablo, and kade one better than Diablo 3 xD its the Duke Nukem Forever of PC games.

  6. Good games=Get sold
    Bad games=”Extinct”
    Bad multiplayer games=”Extinct”
    Good single player games=Get sold

    When did rather or not a game is good stop being a factor?

  7. Ever since World of Warcraft, Blizzard has gone downhill with me (meaning after Wrafth of the Lich King).

    Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria were awful.
    Starcraft II was a slap in the face to all Starcraft fans, including myself.
    Diablo III is quite possibly the worst excuse of a Diablo game that has ever been made.

    And SOME people (aka Blizzard) say that multiplayer games are SOOOOO great. Let’s not forget the Diablo III fiasco there, buddy. -_-

    Single-player games will always be around. Same as local multiplayer. As long as there is Internet, we will have online and cloud gaming. These are staples of the gaming industry.

    Piracy can be easily prevented if the right precautions are taken. So far, Nintendo’s precautions with the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U have been perfect in keeping hackers off the Internet and scoreboards while also providing a safe haven for online multiplayer. Pirates have been unsuccessful at pirating games on the Nintendo 3DS and I’m sure the same will be said about the Wii U. I know many people from my college that had their systems bricked because they tried to pirate. Once they connected to the Internet, their system was logged and the next time they turned it on from sleep, it bricked and became non-functional.

    Now tell me again, Blizzard, what was it you were saying about single-player games being easily pirated? kthxbai

  8. The ability to rent games ?
    Like that didn’t exist in the 80’s and 90’s ?
    This guy’s really credible (sarcasm).

  9. Let us not forget that Blizzard is owned by Activision at this point, the company that we all know likes to slap a number on a game and call it new; which in my opinion helps close the tomb on many multiplayer games. Not to mention the fact that they lost a lot of Warcraft players because of their most recent expansion, myself included.

    1. I’m looking at you, MW3.
      I played a free weekend of the game and the multiplayer felt exactly like Black Ops. Not to mention they improved nothing like the exploitability of prone or the glitchy hitboxes.
      I took the game out of my wishlist after that.

      And I do agree about the new expansion. At this point, all they’re doing is dragging out a dated game.

  10. Really?…
    So you’re telling me that games like Zelda: SS, Metroid: Other M, Borderlands 2, Batman Arkham City, and Skyrim are becoming endangered?(I could name more, but I’ll leave it at that.)
    But it seems that when I see a company talking about piracy, they really don’t know what they’re saying and either use it as an excuse and/or exaggerate it to make it seem like there are more people pirating these games than those buying them.

    1. I’m getting tired of this, no thats not what he is saying. what he is saying that single player games that are actually good (like games made by nintendo and bethesda) are becoming more rare. Honestly I can’t pick out a good game made in the last 2-3 years that wasn’t made by them.

  11. Of course he would say this; his company is known for their MMO’s, so why would he say something positive about single-player games that are doing better than he wants to admit?

  12. fuck you blizzard you fucked starcraft because you’re afraid of piracy now we gotta be conected TO YOUR SHITTY NETWORK ALL THE TIME, I DON’T HAVE PORTS OPEN AND I CAN’T PLAY BECAUSE THAT ( I GOT ORIGINAL GAME) WTF

  13. Oh, i think i got just the thing to solve the lack of profit:
    STOP BEING SO GREEDY!!

    The more you try to charge, the less we feel willing to pay, thus the more eager we are to pirate said content.
    Jeez, about 30 years on the same business and still you don’t get a clue!

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  15. Starcraft 2 wasn’t a slap in the face really.
    I love the Single player more than online so Mists of Blizzard should stick more to Single player now.
    Mists of Pandaria = Kung Fu Panda Obvious Rip Off…

    Worst shit ever.

  16. and earlier today, I was just thinking/hoping/wishing that Blizzard would finally make a decent RTS for the console with the Wii U. i know they say it might work on the Wii U (as per an article basically everywhere), saying the only obstacle would be controls, as the game was made with the mouse+keyboard in mind talking about hotkeys and all.

    i think given time to work with the Wii U gamepad, they really can make a decent RTS for Wii U, it’s not like they’d need to have a full keyboard interface on the touchscreen; they should just focus on the important ones that affect gameplay. i know starcraft’s got tons of hot keys in it, but really, who memorizes them all? one of the reasons it has tons of hotkeys, it takes time to move your mouse cursor from one function to another. but with a touchscreen, all the visual elements are in your hands, you just need to point and touch. again, having the right attitude towards the console, they can come up with some pretty exciting stuff.

    1. They could come up with a new ways of playing RTS games on Wii U instead of focusing on traditional RTS games…

  17. The chap seems to have summed up my current issues with gaming in general – accountants seem to be driving what games are developed rather than creatives. I look forward to new Nintendo releases as they remind me this is not always the case.
    Single player or otherwise.

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  19. Pingback: A Diablo Title Was Planned For Nintendo’s Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance | Gaming R.S.S.

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