Valve swearing off single player?

Well this is the saddest thing I’ve heard all day. Apparently Gabe Newell, in Geoff Keighley’s Final Days of Portal 2 app, says that “Portal 2 will probably be Valve’s last game with an isolated single-player experience.”

Which would be unbelievably disappointing. It’s not like I just wrote an article lamenting how Valve hadn’t released a single player narrative experience for years or anything, and it’s not like we have an article forthcoming about Portal 2’s multiplayer’s lack of narrative or anything like that.

This is honestly depressing news. It’s like Michael Jordan quitting basketball to be a scrub at baseball. Why would one of the most prominent, talented developers of single player experiences go to developing multiplayer ones? Oh, right, because of piracy.

Really, it’s dreadful news. And it’s coming on the heels of news that Bioware wants to make Mass Effect into a shitty MMO. It’s like all the best developers of narrative in video games are going off and trying to make more multiplayer shooters, which I can’t be the only person in the world to have no interest in. It’s really awful when you think about it. There’s no upside here: I want Half Life 3, not Team Fortress 3 or Left 4 Dead 3 or Counterstrike 3. I want video games to do something new and unique, and not just become fast paced, interactive versions of chess.