How Sony wants PS5 activity cards to help single-player games

One of the most important new features of the PS5 are Activity Cards, which allow players to see certain options and suggestions on how to proceed in any game. It is a system-level interface. which is deeply linked to the game (at least when used by the developer) and in a title like Spider-Man Miles Morales, you can almost instantly transport people to the start of a side quest without having to search and find the map. Of course, you can still play the old-fashioned way, moving around looking for icons on the map yourself, but activity cards were designed to take away some of the friction players often encounter when play single player games.

VICE’s Patrick Klepek was so enthralled with functionality (and the talk around it) that he wanted to learn more about where it came from and Sony’s rationale behind developing activity cards as a central part of it. PS5 user interface. VICE Games received confidential internal documents that were distributed to developers in 2019, detailing the game’s activity cards and help features.

Sony used the presentation to explain that single player games weren’t “dying”, they just had a few sticking points that gamers often encountered that impacted the experience. In particular, he described the scenarios that players may have that would prevent them from participating in a single player game:

• “I have no idea how long this might take, don’t play unless you have more than 2 hours to spare”
• “It takes a long time to scan long help videos when they get stuck”
• “How to interact socially without the risk of spoilers”
• “I forgot what I was doing in this match last time, it’s hard to come back”

“Often free time is caught between other obligations. An hour before going to bed. A 30 minute break between assigned tasks. A few minutes before your connection [multiplayer] they match, ”one slide in the presentation reads. Sony reports that gamers are left with decision fatigue. It often takes a long time to get back to a solo game, remember where you are, what you were doing, and figure out what you want to do next. Also, sometimes you just don’t know how long this mission will take.

PS5 activity cards are designed to remove some of these barriers to gaming at the system level. The PS5 itself wants to take you right into the game exactly where you want to be and give you a rough idea of ​​how much time you can spend there. Internal documents (again, from 2019 so things may have changed) call this the “ Universal Data System, ” where the PS5 interacts with the game to give you a lot of information to advance and allow players to plan and plan more meaningfully. play games in your free time.

Of course, how to implement these game “markers” is entirely up to the developer. Even Sony’s launch titles use PS5 activity cards differently. Klepek notes that Miles Morales uses them for missions, while Demonic souls allows players to easily teleport between worlds. And the PS5’s super-fast load times eliminate friction even more.

PS5 activity cards also have an added benefit for multiplayer games, although they were originally designed to solve a decidedly single-player problem. For a game like Call of Duty: Cold War Black Ops, you can switch directly from the PS5 board to matchmaking without having to navigate the menus. Activity Cards allow developers to effectively “score” specific points in their games, be it a location in the world, a mission, or a multiplayer playlist. And this is only the beginning. The feature will certainly find creative uses and future evolutions throughout the life of the PS5, but its initial design was simply to eliminate decision fatigue and the friction that arises between a gamer and their games.