Role-playing games are generally a single-player experience. Some titles, like the Tales series, incorporate local multiplayer additions to further the experience. Other titles, such as Final Fantasy, feature no multiplayer features. According to Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada, that may change in the future.
“In all of the games we will be releasing going forward, some kind of multiplayer element will be incorporated one way or another,” Wada told Forbes during E3 in Los Angeles last week.
Wada explains that he doesn’t expect an MMO out of the developers.
“It is not as if all the [all of our] game creators will become capable of creating MMORPG-type games,” he says. “What we will encourage them to do is to incorporate some kind of multiplayer element even in single player games.”
If that isn’t frightening enough for RPG fans, Wada plans on bringing in “fresh blood” to “change the old culture” of the company.
“Frankly, the people who excelled at creating game software about 10 years ago are really not good at making multiplayer games,” Wada says. “We are striving to change the old culture, and as a part of such effort we are trying to bring in fresh blood.”
All I have to say is, while it works for some, not all games need multiplayer.