A few years ago when I finished work, I would come home get settled and then turn on my Xbox 360; I could guarantee that there would be group of my friends online. We would party up and chat and keep in touch, we would sometimes get together and have a game of something or other. In fact I remember many nights were spent playing Resident Evil 5 for no other reason than, it was fun and we would have fun trying to get all the weapons and complete all the Mercenaries mode levels. Sometimes we would not even be playing the same game, it would just be fun to sit and chat and have a catch up where we could still talk but be doing our own individual things.
(Chris and Sheva in the Co-op Resident Evil 5)
Time has moved on a few years and we find ourselves at the current day with modern day consoles, unfortunately the new consoles divided my friends up a bit and now I can not contact everyone the same way any more. More than likely now when I come home from work people are finished for the evening or they will be sitting watching Netflix or a Blu-Ray. My friends and I are at an unfortunate time where gaming is not the top of our priorities any more, we can not sit into the wee hours of the morning and playing match after match of Halo. We are unfortunately a generation who have met the stage in life where we have to take a little step back and let reality set in, as we grow some of us become fathers, mothers, husbands or wives. I am not against growing up at all, it is something that can not be altered. Time is a force we can not change, though does this mean that my gaming compatriots have abandoned our old ways for good?
I find it difficult to get a group of friends online at the same time to play a game. My last attempt was successful and there was 4 of us playing Halo 3 on the MCC (Halo: Master Chief Collection) we completed the legendary campaign in 3 and a half hours. This was a brilliant but very rare evening filled with laughs and good times, I just do not want to think that my days of gaming with friends are past. I am in my late 20’s and find gaming still to be enjoyable, though I now have a full time job as well as writing for XBLG takes up a lot of my working week. I do still enjoy coming home and putting the Xbox on and forgetting about my day to day life for an hour or 2 at night and get onto a horse and become Geralt of Rivia instead of Calum …… sitting on a couch.
(Master Chief in Halo 3)
This whole article came into fruition around thinking of Halo 5: Guardians; more to the point it was around the 4 player campaign in Halo 5. I do not mind the pre-programmed other squad members always being present in the game even when playing solo, it just makes me wonder how often I will manage to get a full team of friends on to help complete another Halo campaign. I know I will have friends making an effort to come back to social gaming when we have massive blockbuster titles in our gaming catalogues again. When it comes to your friends though you are more than likely going to know each others abilities and who in particular is going to be the wild card ready to turn on the team for a laugh. These are the factors that change how a game is played when you have real people playing along side you instead of letting the computer take control of other characters. It feels like a different experience where certain parts of the game might change because you have your friends to back you up.
My Xbox One has not been used anywhere near as much for social gaming as I would have liked it to, though most games I do play now are single player RPG games that involve a lot of dialogue. In these cases I do prefer to not have a friend chatting in my ear while I attempt to follow a storyline or listen to what is happening on screen. When playing games like Halo online, I find it hard to strike up conversations with random strangers; in fact I more than likely try to avoid it. Though in games such as Dark Souls where your allies or opponents are silent can lead to a more mysterious and rewards experience where you have to trust a player or face off against a silent opponent.
(Fighting the undead curse together in Dark Souls 2)
I may sound extremely depressing in this article but I do not mean to, these are thoughts that surely many people experience. Gaming is not just about running about and blowing things up for a short period of time. Games are a form of escapism or stress relief, many people now play COD or Battlefield not to feed their aggression but rather to unwind and relax. Gaming can be a form of meditation where you give the front of your brain a task to focus on while the rest of your mind some breathing room to sort things out. I suppose a crude image would be a parent putting a film on to amuse children while they get time to complete a task.
Maybe I am the only person who thinks this much about how a games console helped me stay in touch with friends? Maybe it was easier to get everyone onto the Xbox at some point when we were all starting to grow up and go our separate ways? Am I the only person who misses getting your best friends to help build a town on Minecraft because you know it is going to be a riot?
I am not going to say that all games need to be social, there are some games that I totally disagree with the direction they have taken by making a game more social (The Elder Scrolls Online is one). Maybe it is not social gaming I am worried is dying but rather maybe I fear growing older and losing touch with my multiplayer friends from times gone past. There is a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin that I would love to leave this article on and it is “We do not stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing.“
If you would like to tell us about games that you and your friends used to, or still play then please get in touch on twitter @Cetrie or comment below and we would be nothing without our community.
Thank you guys for reading.
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