Should Gaming Future Be Multiplayer?

I was reading this article the other day and I started wondering about the state of gaming. If you look around, you'll see games making a shift into the online multiplayer medium. We've got MMOs, Internet games such as Web 2.0 and Whirled, and even services on consoles for multiplayer (Xbox Live). If this keeps up, what are we looking at in the next 5-10 years? Will single player games go the way of the dodo?

It's a phenomenon really. A MMO is a game you play where you essentially go on forever. It's a very time consuming game where the only "Game Over" point is determined by the player themselves. At some point you come to the realization that you're living a second life of sorts, and that's your reality. You will be living and working in the game just as you would in real life, albeit for marginally different goals. The fascinating part about this alternate lifestyle in a digital world is that thanks to big titles like WoW, LoTRO, and EQ we're getting more developers going in for the MMO scene.

For a very long time now most of my gaming was spent in MMOs like WoW or some other online such as Puzzle Pirates. At a certain point you're stuck needing to work with other players, and I've already given my opinion on that. It's been a couple months since I've seriously played any of those games. In the recent days I've gone back to my roots and started replaying all those old single player games I played as a kid. Believe it or not, but I was having genuine fun.

Yes, I said it. Fun. Sure I was still mucking about raging mass murder on anything that so much as sneezed, but it was entertaining. I had a story that was going somewhere instead of some insignificant text in a quest log. I had characters I could play and get into instead of some nameless vagabond who has no real impact on much of anything. When I beat the baddest bugger around I didn't have to go back and beat him senseless week after week until I left him a broken man. I picked up another of my old games and followed a new story. It's a very strange concept I can't believe I had forgotten from playing MMOs.

So that's what worries me. I see more games coming out for the high school cafeteria style of play rather than the intimate candlelit dinner under the stars style I grew up playing.