Female of the Gaming Species

It seems you can’t ignore the constant stream of conversations about epic online battles. Of sniping, shooting and laying sneaky mines around the enemy. When I used to play games back in the day, I would never of imagined we would be at this point. Where people seem to value their worth based on a 5/10 minute game window against people from across the world.

In no way am I condemning the mutltiplayer aspect, I am a recent convert myself, but find myself alarmed at the competitive nature of games such as COD4. After playing a game with some work friends and doing quite well, I got a message from someone I had killed simply saying ‘Emo’. Now I know this isn’t an insult, but I wouldnt take random abuse in real life yet through XBL I simply shrug it off and continue. COD and Halo are easily the worst offenders, I will always either be in a private chat with friends when I play or simply not plug in my mic to avoid the torrent of abuse and childish gibes.

A game is often valued now by its additional content, if the main gameplay is short(like cod) then people will forgive it for having a highly polished multiplayer aspect. Left 4 Dead was the first game that relied solely on its online aspect and was also the first online game I truly enjoyed.Why?Well, for the first time in an age I was working with people online  instead of killing each other. Naturally it is better when played with friends but I have enjoyed every session I played.

For me, I see games as an escape from my day to day, as a chance to immerse myself in another world, so multiplayer is always a fun side game to play with friends. If you think back to the first time you played FF7 or  MGS1, it needed nothing else to make it a great game and my worry is that we are now being fed a slew of average games that are forgiven poor game design thanks to a big multiplayer offering. And we deserve much better.