Social Gaming. A new imperative for older gamers?

I have come to notice recently that my gaming habit has become a means of communication, rather than just a means of play. As I have gotten older, and my circle of friends has expanded (and I mean that in a geographic rather than quantative sense!) it’s been very hard to ‘hang out’ with my friends. A current swathe of babies among them all has only added to the time pressure being felt by many of them.

The Xbox 360s ‘Xbox Live’ is a great method for sharing time and chatting with your mates, as I realised when going through a bout of solo gaming recently. In some senses I realised it felt quite an empty experience without sharing it with my friends. Often we get on for a game of Forza or Chromehounds or Crackdown, all cooperative pleasures, and achieve very little in gaming terms but have a great time and a good laugh, which in entertainment terms means these games score very highly. Not only that but they offer great longevity, as we keep returning to them, whereas single player games, once complete are often merely discarded. Perhaps when creating a brand or a new IP, games design companies should keep that in mind, as cooperative experiences can keep fans loyal and keep the brand fresh in gamers minds. Also the very fact of coop gaming, especially in sandbox style games, allows for the players to create their own play experiences. I wonder how many people out there have whiled away the hours with their friends engaging on ‘silly’ projects within a game world, rather than achieving anything the game has specifically set out for you to ‘accomplish’. Crackdown offered the chance to try and build structures out of the worlds physics enabled furniture (such as skips, cars, lampposts, and handily enough highly explosive barrels) and once the structure is big enough and packed with enough high explosive to make any pro carbomber proud, detonated for a magnificent fireworks display. Making tanks by tipping skips over small cars while you coop friend rides on top to provide the fire power is also fairly entertaining, seeing how far you can go before your smart car powered tank/skip falls apart. Co-op gaming isn’t just fun, it can enable fun that isn’t present in single player gaming, even within the same game.

I wonder how many games creators are going to wake up to this seemingly forgotten fact in the next few years? Will single player modes become the ‘tacked on’ element of new games, or will they be designed as seems standard now, as single player games, with coop thrown in if possible? Versus play is core to FPS & RTS gaming, but versus mainly uses humans to replace AI effectively and cheaply, and isn’t a shared ‘friendly’ experience (have you tried playing a bunch of American teenagers in COD4 or Gears of War on Live?! Great well made games rapidly become a hideously un-enjoyable experience…hmm online player behaviour might be another blog chapter soon!). Is co-op the new future that is starting to dawn on an increasingly large number of companies? Titles such as Fable 2,and Army of 2 may hint at it, but they still seem to be in the minority

Games are great fun. But in truth this all seems a fairly obvious reflection of what we all learned as children. Play is great, but it’s a lot better if you are playing with your friends.

Interfarce

Games are interactive entertainment.

That's two fairly obvious words. They should connect directly and honestly with the player. And they should entertain them. Simple enough, eh?

So why is that some games either think that pressing a single button counts as interacting, (yes thats right Japanese RPGS, I'm looking at you!) or that other games force pointless such 'interactions' on the player, BEFORE they can even play.

A lot of games seem to have front ends that either are the result of zero forethought or even worse, a seemingly wilful disregard for the players fingers and time. One of my favourite games, Chromehounds on Xbox360, is a classic example of this syndrome. On booting up, the player is asked whether they want to play online or single player. All well and good, but the single player is a tutorial that once over is never use again. Once Xbox live is selected, then the player must select his harddrive as the chosen storage media. After the choice there is a confirm box, which defaults to "no". WHY!?! Why would anyone say no, when there is only one choice..ie your hardrive. Once you have overcome this tricky obstacle you dive into the game lobby. Whoops! Not quite, first you must plough through a series of pointless "news" messages, each requiring a press of your A button to skip.... Great, more Japanese style interation...

All of these hurdles are pointless delays before you can get into playing a game. Oblivion, one of the Xbox's first hits set the right trend. It remembered your chosen storage device, and also where you were in game. You booted up and pressed start twice and continued playing, just as it should be.

In todays time pressed enviroment, with old fogey gamers like me having to cope with friends and families hectic schedules, each minute of gaming is a treasured haven at the end of the day. Each second spent faffing in lobbies or trying to coordinate settings etc, is a waste of time. Pressing "A" repeatedly for no real reason, other than to progress what would have progressed without you pressing "A" is not real interation. Every interaction I make should have an effect. Yes or no is a dialog choice, but just moving on, is not. If its complex and important dialog and you want to give time to read it, put it on a scroll or give me a pause / replay facility, but dont make me press the button just for the sake of it.

This short rant is dedicated to Eric who took the time to read my only other entry, and has inspiried me to write some more soon! I hope I havent wasted your time.

Press "A" to continue....