For my age, I'm a curmudgeonly sort, keen on complaining. 'They don't make 'em like they used to' is a common complaint, and true, except for the most part they make games better nowadays. When it comes to multiplayer gaming though, the old man in me has a valid point. Fights in my childhood household would erupt over Sensible Soccer or Gravity Force 2 on a frequent basis, and a few years back when a five on one team battle advantage over my brother on WCW/nWo World Tour was shot up in flames by Hollywood Hogan and his Ax Bomber Lariat of Doom, I was so incensed I moved to Japan and didn't see him for more than two years.
Nowadays we're lead to believe these kinds of feuds and experiences can bring us all closer together from worlds apart. PS3 owners can play against each other online for free, while Microsoft charges for XBox Live, though that doesn't stop tens of millions of people shelling out for subscriptions. Nintendo's online, meanwhile, it.. exists as well. Yet in gamings great web based party, I sit alone and awkward in the corner, a solitary tear dripping into the drink I've been nursing all night.Online gaming, how is it we don't get along? Let me count the ways:
Anti society
The best way to play games online, I am told, is to play with your real life friends-.people who you've had real life conversations with while drinking real life beverages and then possibly returning to a real life home to play games in that hideous antiquated tradition of local multiplayer before. Sounds grand to be able to connect to friends and play games without meeting them in person, but there's a problem. I have no friends and am desperately lonely? No, that's not quite it, but the friends I have aren't into gaming. Those that are work different hours and play at different times to me, or live halfway around the globe, where eight hours time difference (not to mention epic lag) is an issue. Casual friends who would have played split screen multiplayer post pub/party back in the day find online play too daunting and difficult to venture into, and I know quite a few people who have current gen consoles but don't connect them to their internet.
So that means going online and doing the dreaded search for strangers to play with. Now, this isn't going to be a rant about children on Live or those who continuously spout nonsense into their microphones- idiots are all over the world, and when playing in GMT +8 means your evening is the western unemployed/ school slacker/student type's mid day session just before 'Judge Judy' comes on, you're asking for some degree of idiocy. What irks is how cold people are. I first hopped into online games in 2006, and one of the first games I played was Splinter Cell Double Agent. Got into a lobby, waited while I assumed the game was loading for a bit, only to be berated by a man in my ear 'Ready up, man'. What the hell does that even mean? A perplexed reply of 'I'm sorry, what?' was met with me being kicked from the game, and no doubt my oh so important XBox Live 'Rep' going down.
It didn't take me long to find out that I had to press a button to show I was ready for the game to start, but nobody explains these things when it's your first time, and the experience soured me- online gaming is rife with its own etiquette and vocabulary, which you either know or don't, and if you don't you're shunned.That nice people are around online, I have no doubt, but they occur so rarely, and are so outnumbered by elitists or losers, I often forget to don the headset when playing online, which means I might as well be playing with myself - or to stretch the masturbatory analogy further, sit in the corner of the Live party jacking off while everybody else is having sex with each other, making faggot jokes all the while. Which is a bit ironic if you think about it.
A different ball game
Before I hopped on Live for the first time, I was under the impression that I was fairly good at games. It didn't take too long to be proven otherwise, and in four years of on and off online ventures, I can count the number of victories I've had on one hand, and that even includes the times I hosted a game of Winning Eleven against someone playing in America and the experience was so laggy I could score four goals from the halfway line.
When it comes to things like sports games and racers, I can admit my lack of skill and move on- online the games follow the same rules as off, and if I truly had the will to win I could hit the practice pitch or time trials or whatever. Success in different genres, most notably action games seems somewhat harder, meanwhile.
From progressing down linear corridors of varying width killing dumb scripted AI drones as they emerge from monster closets, multiplayer first person shooters charge the player to move quicker and more freely to gun down intelligent targets, to capture flags and win control points. It's easy to see how people get absorbed by this- it's a far more involved gameplay experience. Unfortunately though, it's one where a whole new set of tactics has to be developed in order to do well, and it's a skillset I'm not privy to.
Experienced players know a map, where the best tactical points are, when to use their sniper rifles and when to charge in and stab someone in the testes with a machete.I don't. I'd wager a lot of people don't, and the longer the time between a game's release and a new player picking it up, the greater the information gap between genius and ignoramus.Unlike with sports or racing, one can't practice offline, the parameters of the game are necessarily different in terms of playing with humans anmd game rules. Multiplayer Killzone 2 for example, has much faster moving characters than the single player's plodding space marines.
'But there's matchmaking to account for that!'. Developers may defensively cry. Well, yes, but it doesn't really seem to work. In my experiences with online matchmaking, I've only ever played people who destroyed me in two seconds or were equally as rubbish as I, meaning neither of us benefitted from the experience.
Again, it's something that shows how insular the community is. Playing BlazBlue online for the first time recently, and not familiar with the characters, I was pleased I could set up a game labelled for beginners and with easy finishers on the right analogue stick enabled. No-one wanted to play such a simplistic game with me. Going probably slightly too hardcore for my level, I bought Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising and after a slow crawl through the first couple of single player levels met with some success (although still no understanding of who the hell Oscar Mike was, and why we would want to 'be' him), went online. With no explanation of game rules, I was dumped in a field with a few other people. I discerned that people near me had red text above their heads, so went ahead and tried to find some people of the dispicable blue race to kill. Finding no-one I got into a helicopter, which I crashed, blundered around a bit and got shot by someone I can only assume had a tactical sniper rifle from a thousand miles away. All the while messages like 'you are no longer the fire team leader' flashed on screen, which made me feel slightly sad but uncomprehending. Dumbfounded, I looked at the manual which explained things a little, but no-one reads these things nowadays.
Ubisoft are doing away with paper manuals entirely. How are they going to explain the rules of the new multiplayer in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood to people? Or as I suspect, will they not bother and just expect people to figure it out on the fly, with no help from more experienced players who got in at the ground level and ultimately want to exploit their informational advantage to win the game?
What to do?
I'm sure I'm not alone with being disenfranchised by online multiplayer. Every time I read about a game having a short campaign but a busy MP aspect, I mentally dump it in the 'won't bother' bin. But how could companies get me in the online fold and exploit my expendable income?
First of all- asynchronicty. As I've said, friends and family who want to play with me online are precluded from doing so by working and sleeping hours and time differences. For me then, the best multiplayer games are ones that aren't simultaneous but asynchronous. Take Little Big Planet or Modnation Racers, two games that through 'Create Play Share' foster a sense of community without having to directly interact with members, just downloading their creations. Shatter, and Super Stardust are great for international high score wars. But how about actually playing against or with someone in such a setting? Words With Friends on iPhone enjoys some popularity- its Scrabble like mechanics lending itself to turn based multiplayer where push notifications prompt opponents to load their apps when they have time and respond to a play being made.
Why not something like that on console? More ambitious than simple board game variants, why not an action game wherein player two allocates evil resources and places enemies in a level RTS style to lie in wait for the next time player one continues her campaign? Why not a co-op stealth game where player one can sneak into a base and disable security cameras to make things easier for player two when he boots the game up? Rather than a dehumanising simultaneous multiplayer with strangers, why not a connective single player experience?
Next, community management. I don't really understand what community managers working for publishers do on a daily basis, and I'm assuming it must be a harder and more demanding job than expecting ex game journalists to moderate forums and make Facebook postings. It does seem though that 'managing' a game's 'community' seems concerned with maintaining a status quo and preaching to the choir who are already into the game. Why not reach out more to new members?
I would have loved it if on heading onto the multiplayer lobbies in BlazBlue, or Operation Flashpoint, or Modern Warfare, there was someone online who, knowing I had never played the game before, would hop in with me and make me feel welcome, explaining how to flank real opponents or play against people. Picture the first time you played chess, poker, or even monopoly. Did the person you were playing with chuck the pieces at you and tell you to figure it out yourself, maybe gruffly pointing you to relevant Wikipedia entries if you protested? Chances are they didn't; but even though they were of a greater skill level than you by dint of knowing how the game was played, gently took you through mechanics and strategies as you went through your first couple of rounds. I want a living, talking tutorial in my multiplayer, and though it's obviously impractical to have someone doing that for every game 24/7, it wouldn't hurt to pay a part timer some cash to sit online and be pleasant to people.
As we march into the second decade of online console gaming, it's something that's not going away anytime soon, but there are still great strides to be made to make sure everyone acan join the fun. Let's al of us learn to play nice, boys and girls.
