id's creative director loves the idea of no offline single player.
“Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected. If you have a juggernaut, you can make change.”
“I’m a big proponent of always connected. I’m always connected. Our fans are always connected”, he continued, before acknowledging the gamers who might experience issues with their connections: “There will be a few people who resent the face that you have to be online to play a single player game. But it’ll change.”

So I guess the message is this is where publishers and devlopers want to take us and thanks to games like Diablo III they are able to force us whether we like it or not.

That other guy is the Straw Man - a fabrication made soley for the purpose of being attacked.

edit: having said that, you are spot-on about the resemblance.

edit again: after having actually watched the video I realise that the comic was about that specific guy all along.

I still haven't bought Starcraft 2 either, I probably will when I see it at "2 games for $10" bargain bin or something similar. I'm not ready to pay a full (or even half) price for a rental, but I'll probably pay something eventually.

Diablo 3 will follow later, maybe 2-3 yrs down the road.

Although I thought I'd pick up Warcraft 3 at some point as well, but never did.

While it can be argued what "mainstream games" means, I am not just quite as pessimistic. Certainly it can be that some big publishers try to push to online-only mode, but I am quite sure there will "always" be gamers like me who require offline gaming as well. It may mean we won't play Diablo 3 then, but oh well. My life does not depend on it, just like my life does not depend on being able to play each and every XBox360 AAA title (since I don't, and never will, own XBox360).

I think there will always remain a big market for offline games, and if developers like Blizzard refuse to release games for it, then someone else will fill the void. This is the PC after all, anyone can come and develop games for it, something that is not possible on consoles. In the end many of them will make Diablo 3 clones that are better than their example, just like happened with Diablo 2 (or so I've heard, I'm not a true expert with hack'n'slash genre like Titan Quest, Divine Divinity etc.).

A few years ago I wouldn't have believed that there would be sites like GoG or DE where you can buy totally DRM-free games cheaply, even if mostly older stuff. I think GoG and DE prove that there is demand for offline (and DRM free) gaming. After all, a few years ago it seemed like hardly anyone will make single-player games anymore, but everyone tries to enter the more lucrative subscription-based MMORPG business (WoW-style). Luckily, this was not to be.

I think a more probable threat to PC gaming might be that future generations want to play their "computer games" on IPads and Android tablets, where I presume the publishing is just as restricted as on consoles. And I don't consider that so probable either.

But still, maybe fearing about the end of PC gaming is as useless as fearing the end of Amiga gaming in the late 80s. Amiga died eventually, so what? PC/Windows as a platform has obviously proved itself as a more adaptive system than Amiga could ever hope to be, that's why PC/Windows has lived this many years, and still no signs of dying.

but if you take the example and put it on cigarrettes would mean (in the sense of the example) that there are cigarettes without any cancer, and cigarrettes where you absolutely get cncer no matter what

I have 3 reasons, each of which would be sufficient to not buy this.

1. the cheating
2. the DRM
3. the true addiction

Eh, Activizzard will just find a way to blame it on piracy somehow.

http://www.dorkly.com/comic/21142/how-the-real-money-auction-house-will-affect-diablo-iii

Enough said about the AH :-)

As pointed out in other posts, companies are imposing their desires on the consumers instead of trying to sell to the actual desires of the consumers. They WANT an always on environment because it gives them CONTROL. If you don't buy it, they won't make it more than once. But as for the single player comments... single player games in any state aren't dying. You are simply seeing a surge in multiplayer. We see a surge in air traffic, but the automobile industry isn't dying. Fads typically swing full circle. A decent publisher will eventually emerge and try to offer entertainment that the consumer desires.

I'm pleased with the Witcher's removal of DRM and selling on GoG. I can stomach that sales approach, it just means I'll be buying games later in the release cycle. While we have companies like Valve and Blizzard trying to see what they can get away with, we also have some companies interested in offering content to customers. While I do see my game budget growing in leaps and bounds based purely off the DRM I won't buy... I still see games I can buy because they don't alienate the consumer.

As mentioned in other threads we still have books, magazine stands, DVD sections at retail, local box offices for ticket sales, etc. I don't like where the industry is at, but I don't think its all doom and gloom either. And the more people that take and stand and DON'T buy things they don't like... the faster the industry will change for the better.

/my sermon for the day

And never in the 20 years of Blizzard's existence they've blamed piracy directly for anything.

Well said. It was very disappointing to pass on StarCraft 2, but I'll pass on Diablo 3 as well and use the funds I would have spent on it on DRM-Free games.

I thought I made it pretty clear when I said traditional singleplayer but since two people have come at me with "singleplayer isn't dying" I guess I have to clarify.

Games are becoming a service, something you subscribe to instead of buy. This has been Microsoft's dream since they first brought up subscribing to Word instead of buying it like a decade ago. This is where everything is headed sadly, from music to movies to games.

Will we still have games designed to be played by yourself? Probably, but the fact they are services will inherently change the gameplay.

Not just games or other media sadly, everything computer related.

Honestly I am pretty sure that the computer we will be using in 10-20 years will probably be a lot less powerful than the one we are using today, if will probably have uber-powerful specialized video decoding and wireless access chip but will probably have barely enough CPU to run a calculator on it's own.

Everything will be streamed or cloud based, want to do something CPU intensive like edit photo or edit movies ? just purchase some CPU hours from Azure, Google App Engine or iCloud whatever.

There won't probably be anything left to play our GoG games on except if you are lucky enough to still have a working decade old computer or rich enough to buy an ultra expensive server :(

The circle will be completed from Mainframe Computer to Personal Computer to Cloud Computing... basically back to the the beginning.

Diablo 3 cannot be played if I don't buy the damn thing, either.;