The idea of video games becoming a social experience has been a major staple of the current generation of consoles. Games like Rock Band and Wii Sports have broken the barriers of traditional gaming audiences and have friends and family of all ages lining up across couches everywhere to play games together. The integration of social networking tools into game consoles combined with the growing broadband adoption rate means that playing with friends is as easy as turning on your console. The majority of games released these days include some type of online multiplayer and co-op modes. The real question is, outside of the causal games, has all this massive multiplayer online madness really brought people together or is it pulling us further apart?
The current trend in the games industry continues to gravitate towards providing more and more features that enhance online experiences. Meanwhile, other components like split screen multiplayer and local co-op game modes are becoming a thing of the past. I agree that current online options have made split screen gaming a less desired feature, but I don’t like to see it disappearing from the back of the box. There are a lot of households that own a single game console that is shared amongst multiple users. In this scenario split screen game modes are still important. As an example, my wife and I have been playing video games together long before we were married. In the beginning of our relationship, I believe playing games helped us grow closer together and strengthen the bond we share. A lot of people laugh when I credit games as something that brought us closer together but before you pass judgment on this comment give me a minute to explain.
Obviously, any activity two people enjoy and can share with each other is important to a healthy relationship. The credit I give to games in helping our relationship goes a little deeper than that. Playing cooperatively helped us improve our communication skills and taught us how to work with one another as a team. At the start of our marriage we spent a lot of evenings playing Halo together on the original Xbox. We played through the campaign mode from start to finish fourteen times. Games are not serious by any means, but playing Halo at the higher difficulty settings taught us to stick together and work with one another to overcome challenging areas. My wife and I are good team in real life and I think gaming is a big part of why we work well together. There have been other times in my life that playing games side by side with other people was important. I have two younger brothers and playing video games was one of the few things that we did together. The three of us are far enough apart in ages that doing things together didn’t always work. One of us was either too old for something or the other one was too young. Video games are one of the few activities that broke the age barriers and brought the three of us together.
In both of these relationships, gaming has been an influential activity and the evolution of games and the internet has been good and bad for both of them. Thanks to the availability of online gaming my brothers and I still play games together. We no longer live close to one another so playing over services like Xbox Live has been great way for the three of us to hangout together. On the other hand, my wife and I live together. It’s getting harder and harder to find games that we can play together using the same Xbox. We both enjoy playing games cooperatively and competitively, but fewer games allow us to do so using the same console. Recently games like GTA IV, Ghostbusters, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare have been games we wanted to play together only to find out that multiplayer and co-ops modes were not offered in split screen. I have thought about buying a second Xbox to get around this problem but part of the fun we have playing together comes from sitting next to one another on the couch.
Owning two consoles still wouldn’t eliminate our problem, we would need two copies of each game we want to play together. The sixty dollar price tag on games would make this an expensive proposition very quickly. Not being next to each other would take away from the conversations we have while playing games together. My wife and I spend a lot of time talking to one another when we are playing. Our conversations consist of friendly insults towards one another, “did you see what I just did?” comments, and a lot of shouting for help. When we get good at a game we start carrying on conversations that have nothing to do with gaming. Using headsets would take away from our back and forth chatter as neither of us wants to broadcast our personal banter to everyone else in the game. Playing with friends online is great but when we get together at each others houses shouldn’t we be able to share the same experience? I am sure many people out there share a console with someone and they are experiencing the same pains we are. If there isn’t an option of playing games with friends and family in the same room, is gaming really becoming a social activity?
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