Hating Multiplayer Creep

[Raggedstar]

Amen there. I do play games with friends the odd time (like Brawl or doing Portal 2's campaign), but I prefer to play alone. Always been like that. I'm an introvert, and I have enough fun alone.

It breaks my heart when I see Insomniac say they want all their future games to have multiplayer. I have All 4 One with the mindset that Insomniac is very competant in making solo campaigns (especially when you look at the entire Ratchet franchise, which catered mostly to solo play yet were also very replayable). All 4 One alone was an absolute bore. It was the shortest game in the series and it STILL felt long and monotonous. It doesn't even matter on the wonky character models. If the game was FUN I would've forgiven it and just get wrapped up in the pretty environments. I've heard a lot of people say it's fun with friends, but I don't have any friends to play this with! They all got scared away from it with the $60 price tag and Ratchet's giant bobble-head! The game has a solo campaign, so I expect it to deliver as such. I don't know about Yahtzee's opinions on the franchise, but it illustrates this point quite well (and I wanted him to rip it apart, though I guess Jim did a good enough job on his own).

 

[MaxFan]

I've played Borderlands 2 local co-op with a friend, but can't imagine why anyone would want to play a game with random strangers.

If you had a negative reaction to this article, it's probably just that you are not the intended audience. You can't "make" someone not an introvert and it's not a defect, it's just how we are.

 

[Frostbyte666]

I agree with most of what Yahtzee says, except that bit about strongbow, ack. Also if I didn't have exams the next 2 days I would having a glass of cider (usually magners) to relax with this evening. Now I'm thinking back to the beer festival and think I really need to get some of that fiery fox cider that stuff was damn nice.

The 1 game annoying me a bit at the moment with social rankings is Tokyo Jungle with every time I die being asked do you want to post your high score, to which my response is no why didn't you implement a replay button instead, It would be far more useful than navigating menus to play the same animal again and being mauled by a panther at year 15, damn this game hates labradors.

 

[Orekoya]

I find the games with the best multiplayer are games that had a great single player and included an option to bring along someone, if you want. Games like Saints Row 2 or Dead Rising 2 where you can go about the single player campaign as much as you want then if/when you felt like it, have someone pop in.

 

[RandV80]

It's true, though, isn't it? This is a society that demonizes the introvert. In movie tropes it's always the quiet dude surfing the internet alone in his room who you're supposed to assume is the potential serial murderer. Whenever there's a "lone wolf" hero, getting them to "come out of their shell" and "learn to love again" is always, always part of their character arc, usually through the browbeating of a more outgoing character. It's like there's this assumption that every introvert secretly wants to learn how to love clubbing or holding someone else's fucking baby but doesn't know how to ask, when in reality I find both those activities less enchanting than nailing my foot to the floor.

As a fellow introvert I gotta agree with the sentiment. I'm generally pretty easy going so it doesn't bother me really, but I function perfectly well in society until it's time to 'go out' or 'party' (I'm not talking about small casual affairs or family holiday get together's). I understand this is a great time for most people but the few times I've let myself go out I've found it just plain boring, not to mention completely against my frugal nature. Honestly I'd rather be home reading a book or something, or better yet out playing hockey. I think the best way I could describe it from my personal perspective is a 'night out' is kind of like the boring 'road trip' part of going on vacation.

In my opinion, for the attitude Yahtzee describes above comes from a problem of distinct personality differences. Introverts are just fine being on their own, but extroverts tend to really hate it. They try to convert the extrovert because they need to be surrounded by like minded people, and for heavy extroverts the more the better. So it can become something like a religious conversion to get you on their side.

 

[General Vagueness]

I'm glad to see Yahtzee explain his distaste for multiplayer more, and I sympathize. When I first got into multiplayer (beyond playing with one other person sitting next to me), it felt awkward and I felt like I was bad at it, but I stuck with it and it got more fun. I just hope he doesn't completely dismiss it in the future (at least in reviews)-- what I'd like is if he'd actually take the multiplayer into account in the review (maybe only if it's not tacked on), but that might be a bit much to ask, so he could at least not act like it's always inherently inferior to multiplayer.

 

[Noswad]

Well reading this article and the comments has made my alcohol riddled mind a lot happier, the vast majority of people I know are not introverts and if their one thing extroverts are good at it making us intro's feel like the freaks.

Fuck extroverts, for too long our people have been pushed to the shadows, taught that there is something wrong with us, I say no more. Look at the history book's, scientists, historians, philosophers and inventors, we were the one who pushed forward the fields off human knowledge. I say this is the day that we teach the rest of the world the power of the Introverts, this is the day we take up arms against our aggressors, this is the day that we step out from the shadows and drag the rest of the world into them. That is if we wanted to off course, I mean we could do it any time, but that's just not the kind of thing we enjoy.

 

[Scorpid]

Yeah. I agree it's the exact reason I've never understood the popularity of Facebook. If I desperately want my friends to know what books I like or movies I've seen recently I'll tell them as it's a much more interesting way to discuss something then impartially listing everything in one page on facebook. I don't keep brochures of random facts on me to passout for that very reason... though I suppose there is no way to monetize personal conversations, because most people don't randomly drop "this discussion brought to you by Coke Zero. Mmmhmmm that's refresshing!"

 

[dtgenshiken7]

This indeed. My "friends" are constantly hounding me in an effort to get me to go out occasionally, my grandpa (who I live with) is on my arse for being "depressed" when really I don't give a crap about much, and for some reason when I do go out I'm invariably filled with a burning hatred for my friends and end up slinking about five feet back from the group, waiting for the day to end. Apparently there's something wrong with me.

Multiplayer games I also understand, especially where good single players have a multi player crowbarred in if only to "fit in" with the rest of the big names. I only ever go on one online server, but the people I know there are pretty much family to me, and I never go on any other multiplayer. (I spend most of my time chatting on it rather than gaming anyway).

 

[maninahat]

I hate the way jobs demand employees be extroverted. They want out going "work hard, play hard!!", TEAM PLAYER types, because apparently they are the only people capable of working in call centres or filling out databases.

I can see why employers do it, but they fucking shouldn't. Everyone knows how to communicate, or work with others. Who the fuck doesn't? Grave diggers? As an introvert, I fucking hate this attitude, and the constant nagging I have to deal with to "go out and have fun". I don't like going outside all that much, and I don't like the implication that my anti-social attitudes are an inadequacy. I love staying at home. And counting my money.

 

[Scorpid]

Whelp. That sure was a rant from the ranty mc rantpants ranter of the rantlands.
He does have a good point though. A point that I'm just gonna go ahead and stab in the carotid artery.
Society hates the introverted, and always has. Always will. 'Humans are social animals' is a fucking cliché way of putting it, but it's the truth. Expecting fair treatment as an introverted person is like expecting to have an actual chance at olympic archery without arms. I can certainly understand being really fucking angry about it (and indeed, said really fucking angriness is well justified), but it will never ever accomplish anything.

TL;DR: Apathy hurts less.

Yeaaah...no. Not even close to the same thing. Being a social animal means that when we see another human we don't automatically have the urge to hiss and start spraying piss at each other, it doesn't mean it's healthy that we should have the urge to be kept up to date with the mundane thoughts, opinions and activities of 60+ people on our friends list.

 

[Shocksplicer]

This installment of Extra Punctuation is brought to you by the crisp, dry taste of Strongbow.

 

[warrenEBB]

The introvert is not fully human. Society abhors the introvert because he doesn't contribute to society. it's nothing new.

I remember being thunderstruck by this passage near the end of The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
(skip to the near-final chapter "The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation")

"... the individual is necessarily only a fraction and distortion of the total image of man. ... the totality - the fullness of man - is not in the separate member, but in the body of the society as a whole; the individual can only be an organ. From his group he has derived his techniques of life, the language in which he thinks, the ideas on which he thrives; ... If he presumes to cut himself off, either in deed or in thought and feeling, he only breaks connection with the sources of his existence."

Campbell goes on (and on).
But basically his point seems to be that cutting yourself off from the rest of humanity makes yourself less of a real human. You're a leach in the bit torrent sharing structure of culture.

Which is depressing for us introverts. but hopefully suggests a justification for TRYING to allow outsiders into your play time. (I enjoy playing L4D with strangers, for example, because it's fascinating to see the weird things they do, and the awful ways in which they act.)

might seem a bit extreme to claim introverts are shitty human creatures. But i'm just trying to think it through. I think it's a major problem in modern times, because the whole fucking world is becoming one society, and it's hard to make time for billions of neighbors. hmmf.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

I'm prone to hyperbole, but this is one of the best things Yahtzee has ever written. I feel like I am this person (to an extent) or at least was. I'm changing, not because it's "better" or anything, but because I am just a different person than I used to be. However, I still don't play multiplayer games for exactly all of these reasons. This is my "me time" and I really don't need a 15 year old howling in my ear about nonsense. When I do play online, it's never in depth and I never feel like I learned or accomplished anything.

 

[The Random One]

A rather interesting article. Not that I care what YOU think!

It seems that games like Borderlands & Son, Brink[footnote]Trying to remember Brink's name, my brain went: Starts with B... it has something to do with 'edge'... BADGE![/footnote] and maybe even Diablo III are having the opposite problem as the single player games with multiplayer tacked on: they're multiplayer games with single player tacked on. And it's even worse because all they do is let you play without being connected to anyone. Games like Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor are great fun even without anything called single player, but publishers are adamant to get a sale from the guy who only plays single player games even if there's nothing their games can offer that he'll like!

 

[Norix596]

Look on the bright side, Dishonored won't have any multiplayer at all!

 

[Dangit2019]

Yahtzee, I am disapointed. You had the opportunity to make everyone's free time disappear by linking to tvtropes and you didn't do so.
I must correct this at once! [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl]

STOP MAKING ME WASTE TIME! I would like to think I had things planned.

 

[Zeikcied]

I can't agree more. I have very strong social anxieties. I have, however, played a handful of online games and enjoyed some of them. For the most part, though, those games were built for online multiplayer, not a single-player game with a multiplayer component. And I didn't bother with voice chat, because that's my biggest pet peeve with online gaming, as well as the most anxiety-causing feature.

I'm really bugged by all the multiplayer creep going on. How much better could Mass Effect 3 have been if they didn't spend all that time and resources on the multiplayer? Why shoehorn a multiplayer mode into a traditionally single-player genre or series?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

"... the individual is necessarily only a fraction and distortion of the total image of man. ... the totality - the fullness of man - is not in the separate member, but in the body of the society as a whole; the individual can only be an organ. From his group he has derived his techniques of life, the language in which he thinks, the ideas on which he thrives; ... If he presumes to cut himself off, either in deed or in thought and feeling, he only breaks connection with the sources of his existence."

Sounds like the kind of rubbish Margaret Thatcher would say. There's no such thing as the 'fullness of life'. These 'techniques of life' you talk about are nothing to do with the sources of existence, just survival mechanisms for living in a group, which has an obvious advantage over living alone. Life in society means people trying to get you to do what they want you to do for their own sake and vice versa, nothing more.