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Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Play Online?

Posted by John Constantine



It’s getting bad. Ugly even. A friend walks up to me and asks the simple question, “Hey, John, what are you playing right now?” Then I think of the backlog. It’s a pile of games sitting by the consoles, a gargantuan mass of briefly played games, none of them seen to completion. I started Persona 4 in December! MadWorld? Yeah that first stage was a hell of a good time, for sure. My plan to beat Vagrant Story by March? Didn’t work out so much. What’s worse than the line up of single player games sitting by the boxes is the pile of those other games. Some of them I’ve even “finished”. You know the ones I’m talking about. The games that you’re supposed to play with other real live human beings over the internet. Resident Evil 5 without pushing around an artificial intelligence. Left4Dead with more than two people in split-screen. Racing in Burnout Paradise against, you know, drivers. Those games. The ones that keep slipping to the bottom of the backlog.

As playing online has gone from niche to ubiquity over the past decade, I’ve found myself completely unable to jump on the bandwagon. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good multiplayer session. I can sit down with a group of like-minded folks and play Street Fighter (any of them really) for as long as everyone’s willing. I adore a good splits-screen session, co-operative or competitive, racing, shooting, puzzling, or, hell, Jenga-ing in Boom Blox. I’m all for it. When it comes to playing with people online, though, I just can’t muster the enthusiasm. I’ve had just as many positive experiences playing with complete strangers as I have miserable ones. Like everyone else, I’ve had some intellectual cripple call me every racial/misogynistic epithet, real and made up on the spot, during a simple game of Halo 3. That’s not what keeps me away. Even playing with friends, people I know, doesn’t appeal to me in the same way playing with them in the room does, not to mention playing solo. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

My question for you is how do I break out of the cycle and learn to embrace anytime-anywhere multiplayer? What is it about playing together in a room that just can’t be replicated by playing across broadband? What am I missing here?

Related links:


Question of the Day: Valkyrie Profile and the Need for Voiced Dialogue
Question of the Day: Ogre Battle and How Much Tutorial is Too Much?
Question of the Day: Your Ideal Controller?
Question of the Day: Yu-Gi-Oh! And Card-Based Videogames?


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT

Comments

Roto13 said:

I feel the same way. I can't be assed to play online. I'm all for offline multiplayer, but online? Nope. Not even with friends, and ESPECIALLY not with strangers.

April 7, 2009 9:22 PM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

I liked Super Smash Bros. Brawl when I got to play it online and it worked decently, but otherwise?  Meh.

My dad is a big fan of SOCOM.  Or was, until the latest edition completely ditched single player in favor of online multiplayer.  He gave me a sort of open letter to Sony to post expressing his discontent.  And I swear, every asshole in the world, or at least N4G, converged right on that.

I like the option of online multiplayer, but I do dislike when that seems to be the <em>only</em> multiplayer a game will have.

April 7, 2009 11:48 PM

xxsodaboy said:

I pay for an Xbox Live subscription I rarely if ever use. I never really played any of my games' multiplayer content because my first 360's headset disappeared before I even set up my Live account.

Then again, I rarely if ever run instances in World of Warcraft unless I'm in the same room with someone. So maybe it's just a general trend.

April 8, 2009 12:17 AM

Derrick Sanskrit said:

The only online game I ever feel tempted to play these days is Burnout Paradise because it's just such a fluid entry from the single player game and there are all these challenges you can only complete in online multiplayer and, thankfully, I can turn off VOIP to avoid whatever the anonymous idiots I'm playing with are saying. It's actually fun when you aren't cursing out Anonymous Moron #3 for repeatedly crashing into you while you wait for Anonymous Moron #6 to meet up at the garage before the next rendezvous point. Wait...that doesn't sound like very much fun at all...

April 8, 2009 1:15 AM

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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