Why Videogames Shouldn't Be Played Online With Strangers

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Wired says you should play games with friends, not with a bunch of strangers online. Wait, people have friends in the real world?

But just as soon as these social gatherings were becoming the next big thing, game consoles adopted an innovation that would all but kill them: Internet play. Suddenly we were playing together alone.
 
I get into this argument all the time with my friends. Is it REALLY multiplayer if you're essentially playing online alone? I mean IMO, its nothing more than playing with glorified bots and can not even be mentioned in the same conversation as local MP where by definition you're playing either with friends or at least acquaintances.

The sad part is how most developers have ditched local MP almost entirely in favor of the now ubiquitous online MP and one of the main reasons I still only buy Nintendo consoles (I primarily play on the PC).
 
That's why as much as I support and enjoy watching e-sports games and whatnot, I had to get honest with myself. What do I REALLY enjoy most in multiplayer? Frankly? Playing a co-op game of some sort with my RL gaming buddies. Sure you don't have the focused competition of a ladder rank worldwide but you know as an adult when you get home from work you want to RELAX and HAVE FUN. Which makes good co-op games so great.
 
As much as I hate to admit this. I don't mind PUG'ing. it's different and it gives me a chance to meet new folks and see different play styles.
 
nothing beats an old fashioned LAN party with a handle, a case of beer, and a group of friends who play for fun instead of playing for stats.
 
This article is pretty much what I have always thought. I always used to play video games with friends in person. It's probably been 4-5 years now since my friends had a weekly game night that we would all attend, but personally I never wanted to give that up to begin with. Other people don't seem to care as much about it anymore. (NOT a case of wife and kids - none of those friends have either, nor do I.)
 
I almost never play online with strangers anymore. Maybe the odd pug group in ff14 (which I'm not playing much anymore as it is).

Most of my online gaming is with the wife, her brother and one his online buddies. The 4 of us will get on a skype chat and play anything from diablo 3 to neverwinter.
 
Playing online with strangers has its place - to me that is where I go to improve my skills and make sure my playing level is in-line with the standards for a given game.

But yeah, I agree that it's 100x more fun to play with friends. Whether it's just 2-4 or us doing a co-op game, or getting a large group together for LAN, it's an absolute blast. Where-as playing online with strangers just feels like more of a chore to me – it’s like being beaten with hammers for an hour or two, it might make you better at the game, but it normally isn't actually fun.
 
That's why as much as I support and enjoy watching e-sports games and whatnot, I had to get honest with myself. What do I REALLY enjoy most in multiplayer? Frankly? Playing a co-op game of some sort with my RL gaming buddies. Sure you don't have the focused competition of a ladder rank worldwide but you know as an adult when you get home from work you want to RELAX and HAVE FUN. Which makes good co-op games so great.

Different strokes..I'm 35, married with 2 kids. I don't find CooP fun in the least. It isn't challenging to me. I suppose for those whom a bot AI is a challenge it could be fun, and that is fine but remember many of us play vs other humans because at this point AI just isn't hard. So really all in all for me I completely disagree with the article. It is Subjective at best and depends on the target audience. Furthermore I have established more RL friendships online than I ever did previous to online competition. So the notion that you can't forge real relationships with people online is rather dumb. The people claiming that have clearly never been part of a Guild/Clan/competitive organization or group.
 
Several years ago, before I was married, and had kids, I lived in a nice house with my brother, and two of our best friends. We had a very elaborate lower floor. One room was basically a dojo sort of thing. 100 pound punching bag, gloves, weapons, a piano, and a full wet bar of top shelf liquor. (what could go wrong?) In the next room, we had about 7 or 8 top end PCs, a fast (for the time) LAN, an arcade controller that I built with a MAME box attached to a big TV, etc. etc. We all worked from home at various jobs, so we were there all the time. We'd have a few friends over, and play LAN games until we couldn't keep our eyes open. Then we'd beat each other up in the fighting room a bit, maybe have a 2AM grill session on the deck, or play some drunken croquet, then back to the LAN. The coolest part about all of this, was that it was us and our immediate friends. If someone did something in the game that pissed you off (or even just jokingly pissed you off) you could pick something up and toss it at them. Or we could be feeding each other intel across the room. We were ALWAYS laughing, and having a blast.

I don't play on the internet at all. The only times I've witnessed it in action there have been 12 year olds with filthier mouths than my friends an I screeching into their mics, cheaters, lag, and I just can't think of much good to say about it.

I played Borderlands for 230 hours or so with the same group of friends when it came out (over the internet due to everyone's lives going different directions,) but it was still pretty fun (not quite as, but close) because it was still my friends and myself.
 
Are you people serious. Yes, it's still multiplayer even if your friend isn't in the room, and him/her not being there doesn't make it any less social.

The real problem is that most people are extroverts, who are all mentally unstable and get upset when they have to do something out of the presence of others. They require external validation at every waking moment.
 
And to address the article directly, have fun finding eight of your friends who are all level 50 and in the ideal job roles to fight hard mode Garuda in FFXIV.
 
I'll agree that online can be playing with people by myself, but It can also be very social, leading to RL social lives.

I've been a MMO player for 15 years now and have friends as a result of it.

I have several friends that met their spouses online and have been happily married 10+ years after meeting in game.

The folks I raid with (people I met online) get together several times a year for parties. Plus gaming in other games. Heck, I'm traveling to Australia this year to meet up with online friends.

I also have most of my RL friends that I met offline playing and meeting my online friends. I wouldn't change it for the world. I've met a lot of great people I would have never know otherwise. I've Traveled and stayed all over. I've found online gaming to be a positive addition to my social life. :)
 
nothing beats an old fashioned LAN party with a handle, a case of beer, and a group of friends who play for fun instead of playing for stats.

No LAN party with friends is good without at least 20 grams of good weed. So many great memories. I wasted my youth having fun.
 
The play on words aside, a fun youth is not a wasted youth. :cool:

Hey guy. I take it you love pure id Software gameplay, so you're more than fine in my book, too.
 
Back when games weren't released on a yearly schedule, communities would form in games and you would have to rely on the reputation you built over the years playing to play with like-minded players. If you were a cheater/troll/asshole/micspammer/TK'er you'd get banned from a server, and possibly banned from many servers. There was no "Oh BF9 is coming out, time to reset all the history of my douchebaggery". There was no "Time to exploit the Day 0 unpatched bug", because the game had already gotten past that stage.

With nameless "sponsored" servers / matchmaking, annual releases, and constant "resetting" of the system; no community forms in games. And that's ignoring DLC that splinters what little community there is even moreso.
 
Most of the online "friends" I'd built up a relationship with over time have dropped off. I've found my playing time decreased in lien with that, as well.

Some games are more conducive to feeling more involved with actual people, though. Games like Battlefield, with 64 people, constant action and small text boxes, you don't very much. You don't get a feel for one persons play on the other team, or a teammates, etc. Vs a game like counter-strike, where it's more "intimate" in that you interact very often with the same people, have down time to chat, etc.
 
Back when games weren't released on a yearly schedule, communities would form in games and you would have to rely on the reputation you built over the years playing to play with like-minded players. If you were a cheater/troll/asshole/micspammer/TK'er you'd get banned from a server, and possibly banned from many servers. There was no "Oh BF9 is coming out, time to reset all the history of my douchebaggery". There was no "Time to exploit the Day 0 unpatched bug", because the game had already gotten past that stage.

With nameless "sponsored" servers / matchmaking, annual releases, and constant "resetting" of the system; no community forms in games. And that's ignoring DLC that splinters what little community there is even moreso.

Thanks, made the point I was trying to make better than I did.
 
Hey guy. I take it you love pure id Software gameplay, so you're more than fine in my book, too.

I do indeed! I do indeed. I like a pretty wide range of games, but id games... I don't know... I can just keep going back to them. Probably because of that very honed, precise, and simple play. Nice to know other people see it too. Sometimes I think I'm taking the proverbial crazy pills or something with how people bash on them. :D
 
Pfft. I've played games with friends. You have to remember that, even with a friend, your interests don't always coincide 100% though. So, sometimes they don't necessarily play the stuff you want to play (and vice versa).

If I'm in a game, on a regular basis, and I'm meeting and playing with people on a regular basis, there's no way to say those people aren't ALSO my friends.

I played City of Heroes for about 5 years. I met LOTS of them (several of whom are actually Somebody outside the game). Even now, 2 years out from the game's closure, I'm still in regular contact with hundreds of them, hell INCLUDING the devs and community staff, to this day. I consider the friendship I share with them no less real or important than that of the friends I see on a daily basis.
 
I miss the good 'ol days when you actually had a server you regularly played on and you know the gamer names of folks that played there. You might not know them in real life, but you still know their online alias. You chatted with them and you had fun.

The whole COD/Xbox whatever matchmaking systems takes all the personal part of the game out of it. Add in a few hackers who you can't just boot out of your servers anymore and whole experience is just ruined...
 
That is as ridiculous as saying you should only play soccer with friends, how could you ever get any good? Assuming you even have enough friends of similar age and skill to form a team. The entire draw to online play is the vast user base that sits at your finger tips every night to allow you to play a niche game or a main stream game, to play with people of any skill level and to be able to do it at ANY time. Half the reason I quit playing real sports was it was impossible to get all the different people together for a practice or game at the same time. With online gaming I can have a pool of 100 friends going in and out of voice channel and find someone any time, or I can just play alone if I want to jump and jump out without it consuming much time. And all that can be done with other people not fake bots that don't do anything like a normal person, are completely stupid tactically but have amazing aim.
 
We used to meet up about once a month for LAN games. It was awesome. Unfortunately people move and it's no longer possible.
 
This was always a fun debate growing up. Dinner is ready 30 minutes early and I'm told to come downstairs. Since I'm "playing alone" I should drop what I'm doing and go. In actuality, I'm a tank in the middle of a dungeon. I have to abandon the group and fuck 4 other people out of an hour of their time ... because they aren't real...
 
This is a generational thing. If you are under the age of maybe like 15 to 18 I doubt you even remember a time where people played games in a non online fashion.
 
I have a group of friends come over and play tekken tag 2 all the time. We just play until we run out of beer. Pretty fun with all the sh!t talking and shots.
 
I miss the good 'ol days when you actually had a server you regularly played on and you know the gamer names of folks that played there. You might not know them in real life, but you still know their online alias. You chatted with them and you had fun.

Or OWNED the server, and it wasn't in some datacenter somewhere.
 
Is it REALLY multiplayer if you're essentially playing online alone?
You can't savor on the thought of the sweet salty tears of a bunch of 1s and 0s like you can feel the delicious torment and anguish of a real person you are pwning on the other end.

The best IMO is to pair up with a buddy in a multiplayer game with strangers. My favorite is to have two or more overpowered sniper type buds and focus your efforts on finding and terminating a single individual on a map until they beg for mercy or rage quit.
 
I miss the good 'ol days when you actually had a server you regularly played on and you know the gamer names of folks that played there. You might not know them in real life, but you still know their online alias. You chatted with them and you had fun.

Use a computer?
 
I've met a shit ton of people online playing World of Warcraft over the last 10 years, many of them women.
 
The best IMO is to pair up with a buddy in a multiplayer game with strangers. My favorite is to have two or more overpowered sniper type buds and focus your efforts on finding and terminating a single individual on a map until they beg for mercy or rage quit.

And to the reason I don't play multiplayer games online. Not knocking it, if I could I probably would do the same, but I can only spawn>die>repeat so many times before it looses its appeal. lol
 
I miss the good 'ol days when you actually had a server you regularly played on and you know the gamer names of folks that played there. You might not know them in real life, but you still know their online alias. You chatted with them and you had fun.

The whole COD/Xbox whatever matchmaking systems takes all the personal part of the game out of it. Add in a few hackers who you can't just boot out of your servers anymore and whole experience is just ruined...

Lol, the good ole days? It still happens to this day. A group actually meets in Vegas for fun, and Cali for the intel convention. Sometimes we plan for quakecon as well. So this whole online games with strangers?.....everyone is a stranger till you get to know them in person and even online. If you meet someone online, you don't go balls deep. You get to know em a bit.
 
Back when games weren't released on a yearly schedule, communities would form in games and you would have to rely on the reputation you built over the years playing to play with like-minded players. If you were a cheater/troll/asshole/micspammer/TK'er you'd get banned from a server, and possibly banned from many servers. There was no "Oh BF9 is coming out, time to reset all the history of my douchebaggery". There was no "Time to exploit the Day 0 unpatched bug", because the game had already gotten past that stage.

With nameless "sponsored" servers / matchmaking, annual releases, and constant "resetting" of the system; no community forms in games. And that's ignoring DLC that splinters what little community there is even moreso.

Sounds like you should join a clan/guild/multi game community instead of whining while doing nothing about your problem. I'm always able to get in games with people I'm at minimum acquainted with on voice, or know well, when playing games if I want. Add in pubs chatting in some, and mmo games having a lot of chat + Guildies and I get lots of interaction.

But hey, easier to whine rather than act eh?
 
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