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[IbizaPocholo]

GabeN Sees Single Player Games Making a Comeback Against Multiplayer Thanks to AI

Gabe Newell is excited about the future of single player games. He believes they can make a comeback against multiplayer thanks to AI.

wccftech.com

Valve founder Gabe Newell (also known simply as GabeN by fans) is excited about the future of single player games, as discussed in an interview that appeared on the latest EDGE magazine (May 2020, issue 344). In fact, he believes that the advancements in artificial intelligence can sort of turn the tables against the currently dominating multiplayer games.

If you think of lots and lots of people on the Internet as a way of generating entertainment experiences, there was a point in time where it became easier to connect meat than it was artificial intelligence.

We’re starting to head towards a period where that’s going to reverse again, driven by what’s happening with AI. Right now, the OpenAI bots are better than 99-point-some percent of all the Dota players in the world. That’s actually a surprisingly narrow challenge for artificial intelligence. Beating humans is easier than entertaining humans. But over the next several years – and if you ask me, my little spreadsheet calculation is it’s about nine years – we’ll have artificial general intelligence that can do anything a smart person can do. It’ll probably initially take something like a billion dollars to build one of these silicon humans, but then they’ll just keep getting cheaper, and it’ll get cheaper really quickly, and eventually reach the point where you have ten or a hundred people living in your computer all the time. And harnessing that will mean single player games get a lot more interesting.

If you could build a single player game that just never ended, where I could play 20 hours a week and it just keeps growing and getting richer, and I’d be having as much fun 400 hours into this experience as I was in the first 20 hours… I think that is a way more likely scenario looking forward five years than it would have been looking forward five years ago. That’s going to be a tectonic shift in the industry, with AI becoming way more useful, and it shifts the value-optimisation inflection point between multiplayer and single player games.

 

[DynamiteCop!]

Fuck I hope so, I'm getting so sick of multiplayer games.

 

[cireza]

Hope he is right.

 

[Captain Hero]

Indeed.. I can see single player games next gen will be huge against multiplayer games .. and I wish more companies and studios walk on the same path

 

[The_Mike]

Fuck I hope so, I'm getting so sick of multiplayer games.

There's so many single player games so isn't it kinda easy to skip them if you want to?

I find single player games incredibly boring, but I just avoid them.

 

[Elektro Demon]

Great. I hate multiplayer games.

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

Sounds amazing and I trust Papa Gabe on this matter.

 

[Kev Kev]

Something tells me this dude is balls smart and know what he’s talking about so I believe him. And I think it’s fucking great.

I still love multiplayergames though. Rocket League is a great example of a fun ass multiplayer game that just works and almost never gets stale. Vermintide 2 is fantastic and has earned a top spot in my greatest multiplayer games of all time list, right up there with Left 4 Dead and Halo 3.

But my favorite games are single player I’m looking to the shift back to great single player experiences.

 

[GymWolf]

i can't wait to see advanced ia in single player games.

 

[ZehDon]

Praise to be GabeN. I suppose, one can only dream.

 

[TTOOLL]

As someone who hates multiplayer games (Gran Turismo sport is the only one I enjoyed) I totally agree.

 

[mortal]

Single player was never gong anywhere. Not sure why people would even entertain the thought when numerous single player titles continue to do very well commercially.

 

[LordKasual]

Single player was never gong anywhere. Not sure why people would even entertain the thought when numerous single player titles continue to do very well commercially.

Yeah, i don't get this sentiment either. But as a competitive fighting game player, YES, AI could absolutely cause single player to make a comeback. I don't think people understand just how powerful machine learning is.

As a competitive fighting game player, the difference between training vs. players and training vs AI is severe to the point where i literally do not fight AI in fighting games anymore -- it's only Training Mode and Netplay.

I think that unbeatable Rock Paper Scissors AI (that only learns your nuanced patterns and thus always chooses the right answer against you) shows that it probably doesn't take much actual computing power to simulate a human's choices enough to make it feel like an actual player.


I can imagine a future where games pocket a little bit of "baked" machine learning space aside to possibly download profiles of players you've fought to play online.

IIRC Tekken 6 already did something like this, although it was a really crude approximation.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Vr

 

[Hendrick's]

He did say 9 years. That's a long time to suffer through endless shitty Battle Royal games.

 

[anthraticus]

I liked playing mp games when I was with actual friends in the same room/arcade, ect.....and I still do on the rare occasion.

...but once ppl pretty much went their own ways, moved, ect... I just gravitated back to strictly sp gaming, cRPGs..

 

[base]

My only multiplayer game in the last 20 years was Counter-Strike.

 

[INC]

Judging by alyx, even valve is still doing poor ai still

 

[hyperbertha]

The fact that there has been zero advancements in AI since 2005's FEAR makes me think its more a developer issue than hardware or computing power. Game after game of super dumb enemies, its obvious they choose to ignore it rather than put in even the remotest bit of effort to actually make AI even half smart.

 

[johntown]

I don't hate multiplayer games but I greatly prefer single player experiences.

I just don't have the time to do both so I have to commit to one or the other.

 

[Doom85]

I enjoy certain multiplayer games (Overwatch, Dead by Daylight, Splatoon 1 & 2, fighting games) but single-player is my primary jam. But I was never concerned, amid that whole "OMG, single-player is totes dying, you guys!!!" noise a few years back stuff like Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War 2018, Spider-man 2018, etc. were kicking ass and taking names in sales. Even niche series were getting larger audiences with more recent entries like Persona and Nier. And hell, plenty of indie games sell quite well despite having nowhere near the amount of marketing budget and such.

Single player was always and will continue to do just fine.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Newsflash: single player was never going to die. It's just that so many companies got obsessed with the microtransaction model easily afforded in multiplayer games that it seemed like single player was dying.

 

[Birdo]

Single player games never even went away.

I don't know why people keep saying that.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Single player games never even went away.

I don't know why people keep saying that.

Correct. See my post above.

 

[Tranquil]

I don't think singleplayer games are hurting much. Managed not to play one multiplayer game this gen and I still have a backlog.

 

[Old Retro]

For decades, my weekend games have almost always been single player games. Really only The Division falls into the multiplayer catagory, and not by my choice.

 

[SantaC]

Making a comeback? They never went away.

 

[MiguelItUp]

I mean, it's true, they never went away. Also lol at the negativity revolving around multiplayer. I want to live in a world where I can CHOOSE between single player and multiplayer. A good single player can be amazing, but so can a good multiplayer.

I just want a world where we can have both a good single player and a good multiplayer in one package. There is proof that such a thing exists to this day, it just isn't common, unfortunately. I want the "solid package" formula to come back bigger and badder.

 

[TyphoonStruggle]

Does this mean my DOTA teammates will stop feeding and throwing our matches?

Spending 50-minutes playing out-of-my-mind support only for my carry to throw it away in a monkey-brain move is infuriating.

Also laning with a support who does nothing but hide in the trees while I have to 1v2 a lane in which my support leeches XP is also infuriating.

It's a competitive game and I'm playing to win. The minute I call out someone for not doing their job I'm called toxic or I'm told they're only playing for fun. They can go play unranked games if it's "just for fun!"

 

[rofif]

Hope so. After Alyx, I replayed hl2, ep1, ep2,... I miss those normal good games

 

[sublimit]

Making a comeback? They never went away.

Exactly. The only one who went away (from game development) is Gabe.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

but perfect dark 64 already had the best ai bots needed!

what he means to say is that they finally figured out how to monetize SP games as good as MP games with machine learning.

 

[hyperbertha]

Hope so. After Alyx, I replayed hl2, ep1, ep2,... I miss those normal good games

would you say Alyx is better than HL2?

 

[rofif]

would you say Alyx is better than HL2?

Only played Alyx once so far. Will play again when Rift S gets here.
But.... no. I think hl2 is better. HL2 pacing and Resident evil4 pacing remain the best paced games ever.
And hl2 is grander. You meet more characters and visit more places. Alyx is more personal and detailed. I cannot wait for more half life in vr.

 

[Life]

Question is, who's working on AI in gaming anyway? We've been stuck in the same ditch for 20 years when it comes to physics or AI.

 

[deriks]

"making a comeback"
They never left, bitch

 

[nani17]

For me AI really needs to improve as an example I found Far Cry 5's AI extremely stupid which for me made the game boring and wasn't even a challenge. The enemies will go behind cover and after maybe 40 seconds or less would leave perfect cover to run out in the open like a headless chicken. Even I Max difficulty like more games it just increases the damage you can take the AI still remains absolutely stupid

 

[tassletine]

Much like Kurzweil he's throwing chum into the water with 'predictions' to generate interest and revenue for Valve. So he's working on AI -- Good. It's been stagnating for far too long.
But calling them 'people' is pure marketing and he should be well aware that there are already games out there that don't get stale. Chess for example. And people are still playing Animal Crossing even though it's barely changed since it's inception.

He appears to be putting his faith in something magical (and he may well be excited for it) -- but in fact he's just telling you what Valve are working on, and faking how magical it will be when it arrives!

 

[Diddy X]

We have enough mp games for the next decade, time to focus on those sp experiences, they haven't made anything breaking in a long time. (by they I mean the whole industry)

 

[Bladed Thesis]

Who calls him GabeN?

 

[kingbean]

Who calls him GabeN?

People on the internet and probably his wife.

EDIT: Sorry I didn't mean to assume his sexual orientation.

EDIT 2: Or GabeN's gender. Gosh this shit is hard.

 

[KingdomHeartsFan]

A lot of games are by all means single player games but have a completely unnecessary online only requirement and people eat it up for no reason. Forza Horizon 4 is an example of a game that did it right, it had its "shared world" but didn't force an online connection on its players.

 

[kiphalfton]

There's so many single player games so isn't it kinda easy to skip them if you want to?

I find single player games incredibly boring, but I just avoid them.

Well when every game is a repetitive time wasting fetch-quest-collectathon, it all kinds just blurs together.

 

[Arkage]

if you ask me, my little spreadsheet calculation is it’s about nine years – we’ll have artificial general intelligence that can do anything a smart person can do

Someone's going to be eating crow in 9 years.

 

[Gargus]

I guess gabe doesn't play many games because there are shit loads of single player games and they keep coming out.

I guess you'd think everything was multiplayer if all you did was just skim headlines on game sites.

 

[Fbh]

What he says sounds great on paper but I'd be really surprised if we are there in 9 years as he says. I'm sure AI will get better in the coming decade but I doubt that in just 10 years it's going to be at the point where it can make, for example, a Souls game with thousands of hours of content that actually feels as if it was hand crafted by FROM.

I imagine we might get an improved version of what they tried to do with Skyrim and the "infinite sidequests", except it will be better and more complex than simple fetch quests. And I also think we'll see big improvements in "procedurally generated" content.

But I'm more into the "quality above quantity" mindset when it comes to games, so that doesn't really sound too appealing to me. I want 30 hours RPG's with really good stories, combat, pacing, enemy variety, etc than 6000 hours long RPG's with an infinite amount of decently made padding.

 

[Herr Edgy]

Does this mean my DOTA teammates will stop feeding and throwing our matches?

Spending 50-minutes playing out-of-my-mind support only for my carry to throw it away in a monkey-brain move is infuriating.

Also laning with a support who does nothing but hide in the trees while I have to 1v2 a lane in which my support leeches XP is also infuriating.

It's a competitive game and I'm playing to win. The minute I call out someone for not doing their job I'm called toxic or I'm told they're only playing for fun. They can go play unranked games if it's "just for fun!"

I'm so glad I uninstalled Dota about 1-2 months ago after 7 years. It's such a great game dragged down by people. It's inherently flawed in that sense, but oh so addicting.
I don't miss it and I'm glad I don't, it eats up so much of your time...

 

[EverydayBeast]

Today you'd be saying multiplayer games matter more (Fortnight, Call of Duty Warzone etc.) they're so popular right now.

 

[Burrito Bandito]

Single player games can be great but i havnt played a compelling one since Mass Effect/Kotor tbh, other than The Witcher

 

[Memorabilia]

I mean, yeah. Or, you know... Write good narratives/stories/characters...?