Is local multiplayer dead?
What happened to local multiplayer? I’m tired of dropping $60 (over 1/10th the cost of the console itself) on a game that I can’t enjoy with my friends. In the same house. Which you have been able to do since the home version of Pong in 1975.
Fight the guy you can’t see
I recently purchased the new UFC game for PS3, which is only single player locally, 2 player online. I have been having friends over and shit talking while kicking their ass in a fighting game since I was a kid, Karate Champ allowed 2 people to fight locally in 1984. We all grew up playing Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat in the late 80’s and early 90’s. How the hell is it that it can be 2009 and we are making leaps and bounds in the technology for these systems, but removing fundamental concepts that got people into video games in the first place.
Technology
We have wireless controllers, wireless internet, live updates of firmware, updates for gameplay. Game consoles with more processing power then some computers, projects have even been created to cluster them into super computers. Video games are output in higher quality then most television channels and even some movies. Cut-scenes have become almost cinema quality. Real time lighting and shading, and physics engines that make almost any action realistic.
Split-Screen
These days most people who can afford the expense of 7th Generation game consoles have large tv’s 50″-73″ some even bigger. We have been playing split-screen games when the biggest TV any of my friends and I had was 19″ and now that we finally have TV’s big enough that it does not matter if we split the screen we no longer have the ability to do so.
Massively Multiplayer
You can play 16 guys across the world multi-player but not the guy next to you, Some MMO’s are capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. You have voice chat, and buddy-lists to accomodate you interacting with friends, but there is nothing for you and your friends if you want to hang out in the same house and have a few beers.
I am just finding it hard to believe that with all this technology, and the size of our TV’s that game producers are ignoring a fundamental feature of video games. This is why many of us started playing video games in the first place. Video games are no longer something I can do with my friends when they come over, unless everyone is up for a game of Little Big Planet. There are very few games you can enjoy with your friends.
Anti-Social or Money Hungry?
Has society become this anti-social that the only important part of games is to focus on single person interaction. We don’t want to encourage people to invite their friends over for a friendly ass kicking in the newest fighting game, or racing game? or is it just that the corporations that develop these games are so hungry for money that they put people in a position to buy more consoles and more games so they can set them up in multiple rooms in order to get somewhere close to the same interaction they had as kids?
Whatever the reason, I hope this is a short phase that will soon be over. I wont be playing many new video games until I am able to look my friend in the face while I tell him he is a shitty driver, or that i’m going to school him in the newest boxing game or whatever it may be.
/rant








