Slashdot Mirror
On The Failure Of Online Console Gaming
Thanks to GamesAreFun for their editorial discussing why online console gaming isn't ready for the masses. The author pinpoints his set of reasons for this alleged "niche" appeal, including not enough broadband penetration ("the fact remains that gaming on dial-up is excruciatingly slow"), lack of online titles with mass-market appeal (citing "a pattern that precludes the more casual gamer from caring about online console gaming"), and limited modding abilities for console titles ("players will become bored... playing the same maps over and over and over again.")
console online games generally need you to own a pc(who buys a broadband connection just for the console?) and when you have a pc you're more probable to play the online games on the pc. not to mention that you have to be a bit geeky to arrange to get the console to hooked up(which goes against the basic premise of that you just "hook up the console and play"). not to mention pay extra for the (unnamed) console maker just to play online.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Biggest problem I have with online gaming? Other people. Everybody I bump into on X-Box Live tends to fall under two categories.
One: People who really get off on acting like complete jerks, ruining your gameplay experience with abusive behavior and cheating. These are the punks who 'pull' on Capcom vs. SNK 2 (quitting the game at the last possible second, thus giving you BOTH a loss in the rankings) and trash-talk endlessly. I have a factor I call the 'Zero to Cocksucker' factor for an online game, which is exactly how long after connecting for the first time it takes for someone to call me a 'fag'. Record is currently 45 seconds for the bundled motorcycle racer on the XBL demo disk.
Two: People who are absolute masters at the game you've selected to play. You die five seconds after respawning, you're beaten down with endless combos you have no hope of countering, you generally get utterly annihilated with no hope whatsoever of getting a single frag/hit/point in, much less winning. Yes, the answer to this is "Get skillz" but it's hard to get skills when you can't find anybody on your level to practice with beyond the useless computer AI.
So in the end, I'm either so annoyed or so frustrated that I go play a single player game or I find something else to do with my time.
Solution? Better matching services to ensure reasonable skill level mixes (and attracting a stream of newbies to keep the population as a whole from being too advanced), making the player feedback actually mean something so you can tell ahead of time if sixty thousand people have branded someone a jerk, etc. There are means to reducing these problems, even if they can't be eliminated. Most games just aren't designed with that in mind yet.