Editorial: A Menagerie of Multiplayer Modes

My game is best played in a pitch black room with the soft glow of my television piercing the darkness. The battle cries of obnoxious ten-year-olds do not tear through my eardrums. I do not waste time with team members who have no desire to play correctly or fairly. Silence and solitude are freedom; gateways to platinum trophies, 100% completion, and a committed relationship with the game in the disc tray. So why am I forced to venture into the sordid world of multiplayer whenever a new release beckons to me from the wild of the retail storefront?

Because deathmatches, “exclusive” maps, and the relentless verbal abuse of other players are what the people want. In a market crowded with cookie-cutter space marine shooters, derivative platformers, and minigame collections, social interaction must be the only way to keep players revisiting games purchased weeks, months, or even years ago. Right?

Wrong — at least, for some of us. Pithy, transparent elements such as perks or exploitative glitches are not enough to keep us satisfied.

We need more. The allure of the perfect headshot cannot quell our thirst for breathtaking landscapes, complex worlds, and charismatic party members you grow to love and understand like a living, breathing companion.

The merits of multiplayer modes aren’t exactly opaque. The tendency to tout knock-down, drag out brawls that can be experienced between friends across the street or across the planet rather than single-player adventures is certainly understandable. Fragging can be an absolute blast. And we were doing it years ago, even if we had to drag over our friends to our houses to play. We thrived on the hustle and bustle of arcades, rife with competitors and potential allies in the world of gaming. We made friends through heated Pokemon battles, LAN parties, and tournaments.

Multiplayer modes were woven skillfully into the very fibers of the games we devoured; well thought-out twinkles rather than afterthoughts. Passing the controller to your brother or sister in Super Mario Bros. 3 was natural, as were rousing GoldenEye 64 matches. Adding another person to an already great experience wasn’t the gamble it is now. Quality mattered. Perhaps it still does, but as far as today’s society is concerned, cash and instant gratification matter more.

As gaming continues to evolve into even more of a social activity than ever before, it’s inevitable that multiplayer will become ingrained into just about every experience imaginable. And why not? Developers want to augment their finished product with anything that could possibly extend their its shelf life. I can’t fault good business sense, but I can decry the act of phoning in lousy multiplayer modes simply to turn a profit.

Unfortunately for us, memorable aspects take money and manpower to come to fruition — and lots of it. It’s simply not feasible to pour even more time into them when there are so many sheep in the world to capitalize on. In their pastures they’re grazing on regurgitated war games with the same modes of play again, and again, and again.

It’s a disconcerting sign of the times when games we took to with so much gusto in the past — Dead Space, anyone? — are now being saddled with multiplayer modes that seem absolutely out of place in relation to the atmosphere and tone that the original title set in the first place. Even stranger, BioShock 2’s insistence upon a multiplayer mode detracts from the qualities I found its predecessor to possess. The fact that you were forced to play alone lent a morose, somber tone to the journey that echoed throughout the entire game; through the halls of Andrew Ryan’s underwater Nirvana to the Big Daddy suit players filled near the game’s completion.

So what, right? If I don’t like it, don’t play it? That same principle is one I have applied to many a situation in my twenty years of living, and each time I find it to be more and more of a cop-out than ever before. It’s easy to ignore the fact that quality titles are dragged through the mud with the inclusion of bug-ridden, glitchy abortions of multiplayer options that require new patches every subsequent week. It’s easier to lie or to pretend that we, as gamers, are okay with this practice. It becomes easier still to believe that it’s okay — genuinely believe. And it’s frightening to think that so many of us are so used to this sharp drop in quality that it’s starting to become the norm.

When a game’s multiplayer forays are so mind-numbingly dull they force you to reconsider your experience with the single player campaign, you know you’ve got a problem. And like the key you know you missed during your first run of the Water Temple, a solution that benefits all parties will be difficult (and tedious) to find. I’m in it for the long haul, but how many more years of this are to come?

Let’s party up. It’s time for change.