There's something about playing with friends that makes multiplayer amazing and a rewarding experience but what about when they are unavailable or simply don't own the game. Then multiplayer transforms in a horrible experience; many factors go into making multiplayer a bad experience for lonely players like over aggressiveness, unfriendliness, and overall rude behavior. I think if developers start putting more social options in their games; Multiplayer would become a more rewarding, fun, and a better social experience.
Halo reach is the first game that offers a very limited array of social options to players; the options range from chattiness, motivation, teamwork and tone. While I appreciate all this options and I do think they will improve my social experience in Halo Reach I don't think it's enough there are more social choices that can better multiplayer.
Halo Reach Social Settings
If multiplayer is to become a better social experience it has to change the idea that is everyone against everyone, multiplayer has to become almost like a friend maker where you are matched with players with same likes, and ideas. In the option of likes things like music, TV, movies, books, sports, etc could be covered and in ideas everything from political views to religion can be covered.
Imagine being match made into a game where everyone chooses their favorite TV show as LOST and favorite genre of books science fiction and the new episode of LOST just came out yesterday. The discussions about LOST and science fiction would be endless and would certainly make players feel in friendly environment where they can talk without being bashed. Adding to this, players would feel more encouraged to talk there is room to strategize and coordinate the match, teamwork would improve and people that usually don't want to play multiplayer games would feel more compelled to play.
I don't know how hard it would be for game developers to make social options like these work in a matching making system, but if multiplayer is to become something more than people taking advantage of their anonymity. Multiplayer needs to become like real life where we get to chose what we like what we don't like and what people we want to interact with.
