Reasoning for The Online Player

I can only tell my own story, and hope that some identify in some small way. I'm sure there will be many commonalities between my experience and other players from my generation. Mine was perhaps the first generation to have videogames a part of their childhood, the Atari2600 when I very young, then intelivision, Commodore64 and Coleco. My generation was before the 8bit wars, in fact we kind of smirked at the 8bit consoles. They were just repeating what Coleco and C64 had already done, nothing really special. There was the Amiga series that great fun in the early 90's too, but I bought it for the video toaster. I took the high road and side stepped the 8bit wars entirely.

But in the mid 1990's there were two titles that caught my eye, GTA and Syphon Filter. All of a sudden, there was a reason to own a console again, so I promptly went out and picked up a Playstation. I was then in my mid-twenties. All of my buddies had one as well, and we had hangout sessions at each others houses, mini competitions. With the loser handing off the controller to the next guy, winning meant you got to play longer.

This was when players began to emerge. You see, in arcade standup's, the quarter wars were heating up. Fighting games and other competitive titles were going strong. In NYC at least, and I'm sure in other major cities, kids were wagering quarters on matches. When the ps2 hit shelves playing was already taking a very competitive direction. Being very good was in many ways a double edge. Every clique had maybe 10 players, and there was always 1 or 2 people who stood out. Being one of the alphas, I could tell you I noticed people getting bored of losing to the same person over and over again. I often found myself finding an excuse to hand off the controller early, even though I could've gone all night, if I hadn't people would've started to make excuses to go home. The oldschool version of a ragequit.

But there was resentment on both sides. Newbs hated losing to players, and players hated being resented for being good. There were sometimes tourney's at arcades but I wasn't into Fighter games, too much cheese in my opinion, and the quarter wars were mostly Street Fighter type stuff. Something had to give, and indeed it finally did, in the form of the internet. I had played alittle CS online, quake and doom never did it for me, you have to understand I had BMX and Graffiti growing up in NYC. Big city, women, cars, that was better than vids for me. But once the games could actually emulate dangerous living in somewhat good graphics, there was suddenly a reason to go online.

There had been a battle between consoles for interent community from 2003-05, I would say the PC won, because yes the breakbox had stronger cpu but their games were crap, and Sony had better games but crap outdated cpu, the PC had good selection of titles and great cpu, PC hardware was/is a scam though. But it gave me a chance to finally flex. I didn't have to be nice to newbs anymore, they weren't my childhood friends, I didn't have to LET them get a few kills to keep them happy. I could actually put my game face on a tear it up and wow you're leaving the server? You hate me because I'm good? Cool, someone else is looking for a match and you'll be replaced with a new victime in mere minutes. See ya!

But this killed the local LAN multiplayer experience, with beasts now kicking it up a notch, and unwilling to turn down the skill level, newbs huddled together for safety. I actually felt like the big bad wolf going from house to house. I wish there would've been more LAN tourneys for consoles back then, but honestly, looking back, I don't know how many more I would've gone to with the internet having such a hold on my playtime.

Something weird is afoot though. There should've been a progression on the competitive side of playing for this recent gen of consoles, but we haven't seen it. The titles that pass as tourney worthy kind of suck. It's almost as if there's a directive to avoid making a purely competition grade title. Developers could split their efforts, make a few kidsy titles for the lames, and one hardcore title to build the sport. But developers seem to shy away from making anything too skill oriented, they seem obsessed with balancing things out so that lames don't get destroyed because they suck. I mean, those who suck don't have to stay lame, they could apply themselves and improve, but it's simply not in their nature to do so. But developers don't want to go without their money.


So this is my reasoning for the online player, why local multiplayer can't satiate the beast, why players need challenge. We're in a curious place at the moment though. We haven't seen a developer step up and make a title that can really hang in competition. It almost seems as if a few players need to finally make the next step in evolution and ascend from beast player to developer...