The arguments of "always on" and "the end of single-player"

Growing up, I lived in the middle of nowhere.  My closest friend lived miles away.  We got dial-up internet (eventually), but we could never quite get DOOM working multiplayer.

For most of my childhood, I played exclusively single-player games.  Or, if the game featured multiplayer, it was rarely used.  I think I played Super Mario Bros. on two-player mode by myself just to have double the chances of winning.

I moved away from there and got cable, and now I do like playing MMOs.

But that town I grew up in still only has dial-up, even in 2013.  You can't even get DSL there.

But my early childhood is what got me into games.  If I lived somewhere else, I would probably have friends closer by, and I'd see them more and play outside more.  The isolation drove me to games.

It also got me so interested in games I was drawing level designs when I was seven.

So, with this background in mind, I think it's fairly obvious what my opinion is on the two major debates: the "always on" controversy and the supposed death of single-player.

Single-player won't die, just as books won't die.  Reading is a solitary experience (unless you're reading to kids or something), and books haven't disappeared for the sake of being social.  Single-player remains supreme in the realm of story-driven immersion, because you don't get distracted by other humans acting out-of-character in the world.

Single-player may take a backseat in many genres (and already has in a few), but it will never truly go away.  It will remain the staple for horror games, for instance (and the debate over whether horror games are dying is for another post), for obvious reasons.

I think there will still certainly be a bigger rise in multiplayer-only games, until there reaches some kind of new balance.  But just because the balance is shifting, it doesn't mean single-player will topple completely.

In fact, I suspect there may be an ebb and flow to it, and video games are just too young of a medium to have seen it yet.  Perhaps in fifty years single-player games will be huge again, and it will cycle.

As for "always on", I can assure you that people will decide with their wallets.  I, for one, will never buy an always-on console, until the town I grew up in gets solid and stable twenty-first century internet.  

Maybe when these guys get internet, always-on will be a good idea.

When it does, I will know the technology has advanced enough that always-on won't be a problem.  Well, technologically anyway.  There are plenty of other reasons to object to always-on consoles.

But I would say that the industry, as a whole, seems to be blinded by its own momentum.  It's rolling along thinking it rules the road, but in reality their are turns it just isn't seeing.

The two arguments about the death of single-player and always-on consoles are just two of many examples where the industry is blasting ahead without stopping to think about who really rules the road--the players who make purchases.  The industry is just along for the ride.

Players will be applying the brakes soon enough on these arguments.  The question is: how many companies will get into crashes before they do?