Gamer talk on game design: [Anti-]Social gaming

Social networks, online games, multiplayer became everyday life for many. Internet is readily available and is easier to get into than ever before. Nokia isn’t “connecting people” anymore (give it’s financial state, it’s barely doing anything anymore -_-), the internet does. And old jokes about connecting via a fridge aren’t even jokes anymore. And game developers know that.

Games that don’t have any online elements look weird today and tend to be less popular than those that do, even if they are outright better. Even the popularity of a game like Amnesia, which isn’t selling as good as it deserves, is far more popular than it could be due to online – people are doing the “scarecams”, reacting in fear to the game and it’s very popular. Also the Steam sales are helping and Steam today is very much a gaming social network. In a recent interview Gabe Newell mentioned that new games by Valve will implement social elements even in single-player titles that they will make. And seeing the popularity of Steam, understanding the ease of use of such things I fully agree with this approach. Yet I wonder – should these online and social elements be forced into any game and can they change the way the game itself works?

Just a year ago I barely ever saw games having Facebook or Twitter links in their main menus. Just a year ago I did not believe that a singleplayer game can have multiplayer in it and still remain an amazing singleplayer experience (even though I was hoping that it’s possible). Yet, now I’m so used to seeing the social icons in games and I have played Demon’s Souls with its “online play”. I’ve also played NFS: Hot Pursuit with its autolog. And more and more ideas like these are getting put into other titles released on the online-ready platforms. Yesterday I started replaying RE4 again, giving it another chance to woo me, and the realization that there’s absolutely nothing online in it suddenly hit me. I could launch the game offline and it would work exactly the same. Which, on one hand, felt good, made me feel more secure about my ability to play the game whenever I want. Yet, on the other hand it felt like something nice was missing. And, by the way, I don’t really like social elements of things in life, I don’t like music shows, going to the movie theater and barely ever play multiplayer titles apart from hotseat/coop titles with friends.

So while I felt more secure, that I didn’t need to launch something like Steam, which still sucks when launched in the offline mode, that the game is 100% complete and available without any internet available, it also felt as if the internet can add something cool. Expand the game experience. Like, what about the leaderboards, the coop, even as a bonus mode? What about the achievements? All of these are so normal today that unconsciously I’m starting to want to play games lacking these less. I mean, I haven’t launched the wonderful Aquaria despite owning it from Humble Indie Pack until an ability to activate it on Steam became available. And it’s not like the game was any different, yet with the Steam overlay and achievements it felt like I’m getting more.

Yet, there can be cases where a socially-enabled game can get worse when the internet goes down. Demon’s Souls is arguably worse without the online play element. Hot Pursuit without its autolog is a generic (but solid) NFS of the late 90s with prettier visuals, which might not be enough for the players of today. And a more introverted player might find the presence of the social elements, lack of which makes the games worse, a problem.

Optional online/social elements in a game are probably not going to be a problem – you can disable them after all. But the more games make that element part of its core structure, the more of a potential problem it becomes. People fired for getting achievements during work hours, a list of game progress updates spamming your social page that you cannot disable, games demanding a connection to a social network – all of this is already happening and can become worse. And you don’t have to be an introvert without an internet connection and extreme privacy concerns to be affected by this. And get nostalgic for the times where you could just put the disc in, install the game and play it, without an internet connection, additional content, logins, update checks and things like that to get everything out of the game.