Before building a console like the PlayStation 5, manufacturers like Sony do a lot of research. And one thing it realised while designing the console is that, contrary to common opinion, single player games are thriving in its ecosystem. In fact, the manufacturer realised that more people are playing PlayStation 4 games offline than online – a surprising statistic when you consider the most popular titles are all multiplayer focused.
According to a Vice report, referencing an internal presentation that the platform holder shared with game developers last year, it then looked to learn the problems that people have playing single player campaigns. And they were many: some felt that the titles didn’t communicate how long tasks would take, while others fell off releases and forgot what they were doing in them, subsequently never coming back.
It’s a problem that the manufacturer sought to solve, and its solution was Activity Cards. For those of you who don’t know, these decks effectively allow you to jump into specific sections of a game. In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, it means you can pick a quest and start it in under five seconds; you don’t need to travel to the specific location, and you can launch directly into the side-quest from the console’s main menu.
Interestingly, all of these activities come with an estimated time. So, the console will tell you if the quest will take five minutes, 10 minutes, or more. It’s all part of the organisation’s attempt to provide more feedback about the game you’re playing, and get you to the good stuff quicker. “In an ideal world, every player has the time to spend hours per day, every day, playing games,” the company’s presentation explained. “In reality, most people have jobs. Or kids. Or school. Or all of the above.”
And it’s true! If you’re reading this site, then gaming is probably your primary hobby, but even people like us – who specifically make time to play – will have found ourselves falling off certain titles, forgetting what we’re doing, or just outright questioning whether we have enough free time to play a specific game. The idea with the PS5, and we’re sure it’s an evolving concept, is to help you to find things to do – and get you to them quicker than before.
[source vice.com]
Comments 57
What are the square icons at the bottom?
I saw percentage of something and Blah blah blah... It looked very crowded.
I don't want to get disturbed by unnecessary icons while playing.
I never used them to be honest, it doesn't look very useful at the moment.
Nice, this is me, I like playing game but sometimes I just don't have more than 2 hours playtime, with ps5 ssd speed, the activity card, and the built-in video guide, ps5 is like a console designed for single player gamer like me 😃
@Anti-Matter the square icon is to just resume. And all of this only comes up once you press the PS button on the controller.
I've actually used the activity card help a few times in Bugsnax. It's a really nice feature.
That makes a lot of sense. I spent a good hour zipping around Sackboy last night to pick up collectibles, and those activity cards are extremely useful.
Why is it surprising people are playing single player games so much? The success of the PS4 has been largely off the back of its single player exclusives and look at the launch of PS5 oh and a little game called Cyberpunk next week.
So far I like the potential of the card system more than its execution so far, its been helpful on occasion when done properly such as Astro's Playroom but it could do with letting you organise it properly
I don't know. I think this is a solution looking for a problem.
Yes, people often put a single player game down for awhile, come back months later, don't know what they were in the middle of, and it turns them off of playing it. However a few activity cards that give you a few quest/missing objectives isn't going to solve this.
The reasons behind this issue are much deeper. Single player games are generally about story and atmosphere. Having a few activity cards that tell you the progress on some activities you could be doing, isn't going to give you a run down of the story thus far, reminding you why you are playing, what happened to this point, and where you were headed. Most of the time I stop a game for a few months, I end up starting over (sometimes a daunting task) just to refresh my memory about the story.
Nor are they going to give you your skill back. I can't count the number of times that I stop playing a game for awhile, come back months later, and because I am later in the game (where its more challenging) I just don't have the skill to play in the areas I am currently in. You can push forward and have a miserable time until you find your rhythm again, or start over.
Neither of these are solved by Activity cards, and in my opinion are much bigger contributors to never going back to a game if you stop playing for a bit.
(Also: Those cards are way too large, they take up too much space to scroll through horizontally)
That being said, I like the idea of the cards (if they were more compact); but I don't think it helps solve this problem at all.
Helped me with the last couple trophies on Astro's Playroom and Bugsnax. I didn't have to use my PC to look them up for the Platinum Trophy.
@carlos82 The PS4's mainstream success was not built on its single player experiences — quite the opposite in fact. It appealed to the COD/Fortnite/FIFA crowd more so and they helped to shift the console in its droves. The single player games are for the more hardcore like us, but you're living in a bubble if you think that's the main reason it sold so well.
" In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, it means you can pick a quest and start it in under five seconds; you don’t need to travel to the specific location"
Hehe, even more extra fast-travel for fast-travel gamers. They're going to skip all the random happenings and lootables they could've found exploring naturally.
@wiiware Definitely the same for me. I only get like an hour or two tops, to play my console in a day and these helped massively in being able to do the side missions and go trophy hunting in Miles Morales so much.
I really like it. It’s awesome that it allows you to bypass startup menus and load screens by jumping directly where you left off. It works great with AC Valhalla by speeding up the process.
@LiamCroft I mean you're right, but no need to say he's living in a bubble.
@LiamCroft ok but why buy the Playstation over Xbox which has those same games? They didn't help the Xbox One become an amazing success. The biggest difference between the two is those big single player exclusives and Sony themselves said more were playing single player or offline, whilst PS4 was hugely successful before Fortnite.
It's only the games media that likes to pretend that single player is just for the hardcore like us when Spider-Man is reportedly around 20 million sales, Uncharted 4, God of War, Horizon all sold huge amounts. Assassin's Creed sells incredibly well, RDR2 and The Witcher 3 are huge as will Cyberpunk and all the fuss over Bethesda who make predominantly single player games, in fact their own online offerings sell far worse than its single player equivalents
So far I’ve been playing ps4 back compact to clear things up, but my dinosaur brain just hasn’t caught up with the activity card concept. I look through the news one, but generally find myself wanting to just launch the traditional way because its easier.
@LiamCroft I disagree. The most important part of a console is not the number of consoles sold but the number of software titles sold and I would wager that the COD/Fifa/Fortnite crowd did not have nearly the same attach rate as the solo experience crowd. So while they might have pushed the console sales, that metric is meaningless without the software sales to match. Do you have actual numbers (total revenue gained by Sony from multiplayer gamers vs solo experience gamers) or is it just your gut? Because my gut tells me otherwise.
@carlos82 Xbox One's terrible start meant lots of people initially went for PS4. Then, people went "oh I'll get a PS4 because all my friends have one". The single player experiences definitely helped, but aren't the main reason the PS4 sold so well
Still hope there'll be an option to turn all these activity cards and whatnot off, they look a bit too cluttered to my liking and I'm not using them anyway.
@LiamCroft @carlos82 the xbox one was $100 overpriced, arguably inferior in architecture, and pushed for anything but games (i.e. home entertainment). After a slow launch it snowballs. Nobody wants to play multiplayer games with a smaller community than the competitors. Singleplayer games keep the diehards that love gaming so much they go to online gaming news sites happy.
@thedevilsjester October's PlayStation Store charts were dominated by sports games, and the DLC/expansion charts are filled with Fortnite packs and starter sets for Call of Duty: Warzone: https://blog.playstation.com/2020/11/10/playstation-store-octobers-top-downloads-5/
@BranJ0 thats a very simplistic way of looking at it
@TheArt
I would agree with this, whilst it’s useful for many, it does remove the joy of discovery and exploration aspect. Also, those games that feature statistics for distance travelled aren’t actually going to be showing a value that truly represents your characters journey within the world.
Most of the time I prefer to actually play the game instead of using fast-travels and activity cards. I did use activity cards to play Peter's challenges in Miles Morales, though. Quite useful for post-game side missions.
Still didn't figure out how to use those guides, however. Sony did an excellent job of making the menu tricky to work with if you came from PS4 - for starters they switched the commands for "quick menu" and "main menu"... Don't know about you folks, but I often hold PS button by mistake when I want to go to "quick menu" to put PS5 in rest mode, hehe.
@thedevilsjester Well, obviously the system needs to mature. But maybe the reason some people are falling off in the first place is because they have a couple of busy weeks and don't think they have time to progress in the game they're playing.
The Activity Cards might recommend them short quests to play in those two weeks, thus keeping them engaged in the game, and thus meaning they never fall off in the first place.
There's tons of iteration that can be done here, I don't disagree, but I think the overall concept and ambition is a good one. Let's see how it evolves and how developers use it over the course of the generation.
This is really interesting and is totally me. I play for an hour or so after work and a bit at weekends. I can’t stay up until the early hours anymore as I’d be useless at work. But sometimes I can not play for a few weeks and totally forget what I’m doing in a particular game so if this works well then it’s great for me.
I like the idea of activity cards. But I don't think they'll work well at all for any game with heavy exploration elements. How would you even implement activity cards into something like BotW, for example? It would run counter to the point of the game. I bet they'll work great in Ubisoft's open world games though.
@Vacuumator There's a lot of items you stumble upon on your way to the next quest you otherwise would've missed if you skipped straight into the arms of the quest-giver. I don't see why those people bother playing games if they're in a hurry to skip everything. Only a matter of time there's a game where you can skip or fast-travel straight from the beginning right into the final boss' laps since we're all so busy.
Along with the controller, this is the most 'next gen' addition for me. Long gone are the days where I will spend hours banging my head against a wall trying to figure out what the developers want me to do. Now if 30 minutes passes and I still can't work something out I'll just look it up and this feature has made it so easy and simple. I've used it a few times in Bugsnax and it's brilliant.
@carlos82 Maybe so, I just think it accounts for a larger proportion than you're giving credit for!
Activity Cards are amazing! It basically compartmentalizes the game in smaller chunks for you and makes side quest actually fun. I really hope devs utilize it, because this is the most next gen feature I've experienced outside of the controller. A lot of talk around load times, Switcher and Quick resume, but I'm turning my console off and cold-booting into games in 12-15 seconds. Load times are moot now. It was very smart of Sony to focus on getting into these massive games easier. I know first party will use it, but hopefully the industry does as well, because I just don't have time for massive 60+ hour games anymore. But if I can do chunks of it in small incremental sessions, it would really allow me to finish more games.
@BranJ0 at no point have I ever said that multiplayer hasn't contributed, it certainly has in a very big way. The point I was making is that a huge selling point of PS4 is having those games as well as its many, many single player games. Not to mention there's been this pretence for years that single player is a small market despite many of the best selling games being exactly that.
Why are Microsoft spending nearly 8 billion dollars on a publisher who's studios are famed primarily for its single player games? Because they believe that is the difference between the success of Playstation and their own fortune ls this generation
@carlos82 I suppose that's fair enough, I hadn't thought of it that way!
@Omnistalgic I still would love for Sony to add a quick resume of at least 2 games, if they want to go totally crazy 3 games. Can't count the times I'm playing something and someone comes over and I have to save right away and change games.
@Anti-Matter It's an overlay that pops up once the PS button is pushed.
If their objective is to have more players complete more games then stop filling them with bloat. Less can be more. Video game development as a whole needs to understand this maxim.
The activity cards are a good idea and I can see the use for them for sure. The game help videos are also a nice feature, but incomplete. At the end of the day, how successful they are or aren't depends on how many developers utilize them. As most devs are creating cross platform games.... I don't hold out a lot of hope for their future.
My average work day is 12 hours. I have 4 kids, 5 and under (yes I know what causes that). Not to mention what else may fill out a day. My mind is quite literally on 50 different things at any given moment. I’m not sure how much I’ll use this feature as I enjoy figuring things out for myself, but the thought of having a little refresher to quickly bring me back into a world and the mechanics that drive it is an absolutely welcome option.
@Deadlyblack Wait what does it do for that game I didn't check derp LOL
@TechaNinja Keeps track of your progress on how many Bugsnax you catch and gives hints on quests.
I really like the time estimate. So often I had a good hour to play in Yakuza only to figure out I'm locked in a 40 minute cutscene and couldn't save the game unless I pick up my kids late or something. Of course now with standby it's less of a problem, but I still like the idea of optimally using the bit of free time I get here and there.
@carlos82 Yea I wonder that too. We always make it seem as though it's only just a few people playing SP games but they're a lot, and are doing so offline so it's hard to track their activities. Yea otherwise MS wouldn't have forked out that much for SP-focused Bethesda.
@thedevilsjester And Sony DOES have the metrics, and they're the ones saying that single player is a bigger deal than the industry thinks it is.
Personally, I'm 100% on board with that - 99% of my gaming is single player or couch co-op. I know there are others (my eldest daughter) who have nearly the opposite ratio, but apparently Sony can tell there must be more players like me than like her.
Dragon Quest has the best reminder feature. When you boot it up, it has a few screens telling a story as to what has happened so far.
It also helps that it’s design is somewhat beneficial to put down and play later, most of the story is in npc stories and the towns you visit. So it’s not difficult to get back into things.
@Anti-Matter don't be daft. It's not crowded at all I have a ps5 and use the activities feature all the time.
The icon along the bottom are what you see when you press the ps button along with the cards.
@LiamCroft Those that play multiplayer games are more likely to use a digital store front for those games (since a retail copy of a game that generally requires online services to function is pretty pointless) which means its always going to be heavily skewed towards multiplayer games. Just looking at digital store sales isn't going to paint a very accurate picture.
I am not saying I know what that picture looks like; just that my gut instinct is that, when you take all sales into account, over the long term, its very much in favor of the solo gamer for overall game sales.
I agree with others on this, "solutions searching for a problem, etc." I really don't see any value in the activity cards. It's gaming for the Pinterest generation, it's awkward checklisting that goes out of its way to break the linearity of linear gameplay, and, quite frankly it looks like spammy Youtube thumbnails that pop up every time I hit PS. I mostly just don't notice their existence in the same way I don't notice a car alarm going off in a parking lot. It's so intrusively and pointlessly annoying you actively train yourself to not notice their existence.
The concept sounds great...but in practice it's an OS trying to bookmark a game world that is increasingly a "real place" to visit. This system seems like it would have made more sense on PS2 where games were broken up and you couldn't return to particular places easily than on PS5 where all the games are trying to present organic locations.
That metric about most people playing offline is intriguing, but doesn't sound quite right. Given the prominence of Fort FIFA of Duty and the like, I really find it difficult to believe a system with such mainstream appeal last gen spent most of its time in the public playing Ys and Detroit. I'd love if it were true as I'm not much of an online player, but it sounds off. I wouldn't be surprised of that was the case for PS5 given the higher price and thus less mass market appeal, but for PS4, it sounds off.
I really love this idea. I hope it sticks around and devs take full advantage. Going back to an old game can be daunting at times without restarting the whole game.
Also, I have 2 kids and 2 jobs. Having only 15 - 20 minutes to spare is valuable. Every minute counts, so getting straight into a short task straight away is ideal for me when time is limited. Not gonna be how I play all the time but nice to have the options.
@thedevilsjester @get2sammyb Definitely agree with devilsjester on this. The biggest problem with jumping back into a game I put down isn't about not having time or remembering the quest. Loading your save tells you what the quests were. The problems are not having that internalized map of the world and gameplay loop in your brain, not remembering the button layout and combinations for the game, and the sequences of actions involved in success. Games build up pace and momentum from tutorial to final boss, and when you jump out of that loop, particularly later on in the game, there's no real good way to build back to that skill, understanding, layout familiarity and map layout rapidly enough to keep pace with the game's requirements at that point. The cards don't help with that. Some sort of "the story so far..." gameplay tutorial/refresher built into every game would be more useful for that. Something to "reboot your brain" to play that particular game and do a sort of cram session to regain the information you lost, quickly. But that's a bigger task than a console OS could accomplish at a button push.
@NEStalgia I’m not familiar with how this title card system works yet but what you’re saying is exactly what I would love to see. Any game that can implement something like this would be all the better for it.
@thedevilsjester I’m not sure the solution of these cards fix the issue described in the article but what the do is allow me to plan my gaming time a little. If I know I only have half an hour I can see the approx length of tasks and not dive into something that will take too long. They are quite good but depends how they are picked up by devs.
@NEStalgia I think the cards are designed to avoid you dropping away from a game because you can pick something that suits your needs. I don’t know if it will work. If my average trophy percentage rises from 26% I guess it does.
@Robinsad I didn't say that they weren't useful (though they have yet to be useful to me), I just said that they don't solve the problem of picking the game back up weeks or months after putting it down. As @NEStalgia said, you have a momentum (in story, skill, mechanics, etc...), and once interrupted, it's hard to get back.
@Juanalf oh yeah, its definitely a welcome feature. Along with folders/themes I hope they add it back.
@carlos82 Can't argue with that logic. SP games defined PS this generation.
The title of this post is overstated... "PS5's biggest feature".
Cosmetic nonsense adults don't need to remind them of games or progress.
Sony should concentrate on implementing HDR properly, first and foremost.
I wish game developers would include a feature to help players quickly re-familiarize themselves with the game's controls and systems. I'm thinking of games such as The Witcher, Assassin's creed, Metal Gear, and even Batman, which all have complex controls and gameplay mechanics.
I often find myself wanting to go back and play those titles, but I dread relearning how to play. It could be like the tutorial missions in older games, but more focused and quicker to complete. Something similar to the training modes in Mortal Kombat. Assassin's creed Unity had something as well. But I'm envisioning more of a comprehensive refresher course of sorts that covers everything and could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes.
Not sure what this has to do with online or off line play. The PS5 is all about speed, from start up times to the SSD to getting you as quickly as possible into the game.
It what makes Astro Speed runs so addictive.
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