Gamecca Rant March 2013

Three months into the year, this is what I had to say. I can't remeber if it was any good or not. I never reread my stuff...

You'll have to use a lot of energy and click the read more link...

I am moderately horrified. Moderately, mind you, because I am hardly surprised. And the source of my horror is the state of gaming these days… not just here in South Africa, but the world over. I have come to realise that the major push towards multiplayer gaming online, across all platforms, is one of the greatest evils that the activity has to offer. In my slightly skewed and often frazzled mind, multiplayer gaming is running gaming overall.

You can’t blame the developers for that – they’re merely responding to a market demand. But the very first time two guys connected a couple of PCs with a cable and started playing against each other, the bells of doom started tolling. It won’t destroy gaming, because too many people love engaging in the activity. But it is ruining the experience for a lot of people.

First off, single player campaigns are often getting the short end of the stick, in favour of a bigger multiplayer offering. That’s all fine and well, although the old-school grumpy ancients (like me) have a problem with that. Our gaming was never about multiplayer. It was about compelling single player experiences that sucked you in and showed creativity on the part of the developers. Crafting a great story and engaging the player for protracted periods of time in a single player environment seems, to me, to be a greater display of skill than dumping a bunch of guys in a multiplayer arena with a box of guns and pretty graphics. I could be wrong about that, but I wouldn’t agree with you if you told me that I was.

Still, that’s what players seem to want, so the developers are merely responding to market demands. The bigger, second problem is that these demanding players – these annoying little brats – manage to ruin the experience for me more often than not.

No, I am not being grumpy. I am exercising my right to enjoy a hobby that I have been engaged in for longer than most of these nitwits have been alive. But when some prepubescent moron has the audacity to call me a word that rhymes with runt, with his unbroken voice and all, I start to realise that these spoiled brats have no respect for anyone or anything other than their own self-importance. There is no respect, which is not a right but which every person deserves until they prove differently. There is no friendly competition. There is no discipline. There is just an absolute desire to win, no matter how many other people’s experiences get ruined along the way. Sportsmanship has lost its meaning behind the anonymous mask that online play gives us.

I take back my future statement. Multiplayer is not ruining gaming. Instead, it is a large segment of the community that is doing so. I think, from now on, I will only play with people that I have met in real life. Preferably people I see on a regular basis. That way I can punch them in the face if they get pissy.