RandV80 said:
Yeah just imagine sitting down to read an eagerly awaited new book like the finale of the Wheel of Time or the next A Song of Fire and Ice installment (hopefully before my hair turns grey) and having tweets and facebook comments popping up beside the text.
In other words these publishers can go screw themselves, let multiplayer be multiplayer and single player be single player. I'm not going to go to a movie theater alone, but I'm also not going to read a book in a group.
Why? Because its weird for a lot of people to see someone that wants to be alone.
Guys, most of you are hardcore gamers (else, wtf are you doing on this site?). Many of you are probably introverts.
I bet most of you can't fathom how there are many people out there who take their smartphones to the bathroom. Or worse, take them to bed. Seriously, people text their friends on the toilet, a place many of us associate with alone time (because who takes a crap with a second person watching?).
Further more, I've heard of people speculating that nightclubs aren't fun at all. Except that many people actually like them... because there is people... everywhere!
Some of you point out that Dishononered and Skyrim printed money this year. Many party games have printed out even more money this year as well.
Some of you are going to say that 'no one thinks its weird to read by yourself.' Well, aside from book clubs where you are reading in a group... but its more likely that most people don't actually sit and read. I can remember it being considered weird to actually sit and read a book that wasn't assigned reading by many of the student body, much to the chagrin of the teachers trying to get us to read.
Even in the single player one isn't truely alone. There are web forums and lets plays where one can make a single player experience less single while not truely multiplayer. I think someone on the Retsuprae troup pointed out that some of them were recording themselves play to feel less lonely be having the though that someone else would be watching their session later.
I remember the feeling of playing in arcades and having someone hovering over my shoulder watching me play. Some of you are probably perturb at the though of someone hovering over your shoulder as you played, even if it wasn't some porno flash game, but at the time, I figured that I was in a public place and to allow some leeway accordingly, that people will watch how awesome (or lame) I was. I did get some rude 'eff offs' from people in arcades when I did the same thing, and again, public place with people everywhere, this always baffled me, but there are people reading this who would think that was rude of me you watch you play if it was you.
I don't doubt that the likes of EA and that are milking this to stuff DRM into their games, but the idea that they are generating the belief that singleplayer is for socially maladjusted losers (or any activity that is done in solitude) isn't new. In fact, well look up the TV Trope "Loners are Freaks" to get a better idea of what we have always thought of people who want to be alone.
The reality is there are a lot of lonely people out there, and to them, they can't understand why anyone would want solitude. Then there are the people who want to be connected to other 24/7. Leaving us as a minority.
