Ascension Games

So… whats with all the games these days being single player?

I mean….do people even have friends any more? Have all the gamers become an unsocial luddites whos Idea of multiplayer is get your own damn computer / console stay at your house and Ill stay at mine and we can laugh and drink beer alone in our dark man caves ( women gardens)?

I just want to have friends over, so I can play with people. Is that too much to ask for? I mean , I was raised in arcades. I’d put my quarters up on the arcade machine like everyone else, standing around to await my turn to play with friends, strangers, competitors all. (Reds too, Chris.) I recall playing bomberman with my mom. My brother. I remember that in less technologically sophisticated times when there was an actual use for having more than 1 controller for your console. Sadly today, I have to report that port number 2 on most consoles is a lonely place. Dont even think about ports 3, and 4.

I just had this discussion with 2 of the office gamers, the topic ” Name a game that has hotseat multiplayer that isnt a FPS, or a sport game “.

Also, we (Chris and I) posed this question to gamestop employees with out any caveat ” Whats a good multiplayer game we can play? ”

The answers were not impressive.

Gamestops replies were:

Halo 3

Call of Duty 4

Gears of War 2

(They then recommended Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which IMO, isn’t the calibre game I really wanted, it has multiplayer, but thats about it.)

My officemates replies were:

…

…

…

To be fair, there are arcade games that feature the multiplayer component, and are fairly decent.

Geometry wars

Castle Crashers

(Full disclosure: I actually enjoyed Gears of War, and GoW2)

My vocabulary of this current generations game offerings isn’t too surprising given the lack of support for the game types I enjoy (read that: non FPS ). It looks like publishers are catering toward a different gamer. The ones in college, or even better , high school. Back when I was in high school buying a $60 game wasn’t too big a deal. If it was crappy then it certainly sucked but i usually didn’t go return it. I didn’t have a mortgage, or a car payment. I had some decent moneys. I could go buy shit I didn’t need without too much thought. Now its a different story. I expect the games I play to hold their value. That is, be worth the $60.

On the casual end you have people don’t mind spending a couple bucks for a game they’ll play for 15 minutes a day and aren’t expecting much outside of a easy quick fix. I figure the casual gamers are more my age and above. I find myself preferring a quick game every now and then. In between cooking dinner and grocery shopping.

That part of my life promises only to grow, while the hardcore in me, wants a damn good dungeon crawl with my level / loot loving goblin face smashing barbarian.

Or a good old fashioned street fight, plowing through a rival gang to save my girlfriend who was kidnapped.

But damn it, I want to do that with my friends. In person.

This part of me, is nowhere near being satiated with todays offerings. This is the selfish me speaking.

I know research firms contend that a great portion of todays gamers play alone or online. Screw them and their research. I know I’m not alone. I cant be. Am I the only 30 something gamer out there? Surly not. There’s got to be an answer somewhere. If not, Im going to make a an answer.

What set me off today was Dragon Age: Origins. Looking through my morning RSS feeds, I saw DA:O, and remembered my great hope for this game’s pedigree. Bioware has been a great developer of multiplayer goodness. NWN2 was messy at first, but got better. NWN1 was very awesome. Mass Effect I haven’t played but hear very good things about. Jade Empire we wont talk about.

So, my hopes soared. An epic adventure: check, Dragons and goblins: check. Phat Loots: check, Dark, fantasy setting: check. I was checking out a few of the movies, and it looks like the game is going to be epic… for the one person playing it. Alone.

Huh!? I mean, in DO:A you supposedly have a party size of 4.

Maybe they plan on shipping it later? I do know the toolset for mods and stuff looks to on par with the what you come to expect from Bioware. Some of the NWN mods are still some of the best content NWN had to offer. Maybe it falls to the community to make a coop mod? Or some sort of DnD DM module or something? I can only hope. Even if they shipped with multiplayer in, my argument still stands Majority of games require online to do multiplayer. I’m not the only hopeful one either, the Bioware forums are full of “zomg why no multiplayer?!” threads.

Well, there is now Dawn Of War 2, which aught to be given some sort of award for its coop campaign, so I hear.

Diablo 3 also comes to mind of a sort of hardcore game. Loot, quests, demons. I have to admit a lot of anticipation on my behalf for this game. More like salivation, actually. Just straight drool, yea, thats about right.

Ok so maybe the tide is turning. Maybe my thirty something brethren are grabbing the reins. Maybe Street Fighter IV forced open the eyes of the sleeping multiplayer giants I stood next to in arcades all those hours.

Watch this YouTube clip and try to understand what I miss about playing with my fellow gamers.

Granted, I dont want to be the guy getting spanked. That..would suck.

Lets hope that our undeserved demographic gets some attention. I understand that lots of folks enjoy playing alone, and I don’t care. You’re being served, don’t justify why you enjoy it, don’t be smug about it, just… you know… go play.

This post is tagged Opinion