Former Gamers Want More Social Games

Gamasutra is running a series of studies on what people from certain demographics want from games. Their most recent article takes a look at former gamers, from the age of 25 to 35, and how they view their old hobby. Many seem to have replaced games with social networking during their non-productive time, and they also tend to favor games they can play with friends in the same room, rather than anonymous online interaction. Previous parts of the study focused on family gamers and older gamers. "We had some of our test consoles rigged up to an internet connection to see how these Missing Gamers would respond to online play. But whilst they were initially impressed at the ability to play with other people all over the world, they soon picked up on the fact that many of the people they were playing with were either too good, or too immature to endure for any length of time. It wasn't long before the online games were abandoned in favor of the simpler split-screen local multiplayer offerings. The ability to nudge, rib, and cajole each other on the sofa (not to mention share snacks and drinks) was simply too much fun to resist."

Comments

Social networking replacing gaming

[internerdj]

I don't know about others but the kind of time I spend on social networking (compiling) is not well suited to being replaced with the kind of time I spend gaming (uninterupted). The gaming time lost now goes to spending time with children and a wife(yes, they do exist).

Re:Social networking replacing gaming

[Ogive17]

I'm 29 now and have been gaming for about 25 years. Now it's a struggle for me to sit down at my computer and play a game for more than an hour at a time... or I'll buy a Wii game, play it for a few days, then completely lose all interest in it again. If I'm not LANing with a few friends or playing one of the party games on the Wii, I just don't have the desire to play games anymore.

Split screen gaming

[elrous0]

Split-screen multiplayer ain't so fucking great when you don't have any friends.

Re:Split screen gaming

[Ethanol-fueled]

Some of us just want to play the games we grew up with(read: NES/SNES), not yet another dystopic space-marine FPS shootout using 20 buttons and 10 different joysticks PER CONTROLLER.

Even without multiplayer gaming, we can at get our 2-D nostalgic fix from games like Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night if we don't have an original NES or SNES with a shitload of games. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there are more of us out there who put gaming down around the time the original Playstation came out(well, except for Metal Gear Solid and the Final Fantasy series, heh).

Gaming in general isn't dead -- it just smells funny.

Re:Split screen gaming

[that IT girl]

Mod parent up--I miss the days where gameplay trumped pretty graphics. Sure, what they can do with rendering and polygons and all the rest of it is amazing, but if the actual game is boring and uninspired, it won't hold my interest. Back in the day your characters, weapons, environment, etc was nothing but a handful of pixels, you had to use your imagination, and online gaming didn't exist. Therefore the primary competition between companies, the sole focus, was on the actual game premise. As a result, they rocked (well, mostly. ET for the Atari2600, I'm talking to you). Now there are so many other aspects that the designers' attention is divided, and the games themselves suffer. In a nutshell, the spell is broken.

Re:Split screen gaming

[Ethanol-fueled]

Now there are so many other aspects that the designers' attention is divided, and the games themselves suffer. In a nutshell, the spell is broken.

I think it's more of an "EA Madden syndrome" type thing where there's so much money at stake that they have to stick with what sells. There's kind of a

You are a:
( ) Cyborg
( ) Ex Con
( ) Soldier

Fighting a:
( ) Evil corporation
( ) Alien mastermind
( ) Illuminati
( ) Zombies

At:
( ) Outer Space
( ) Post-holocaust
( ) Dystopia
( ) Ancient ruins


Kind of mentality to almost all action games. Too much of the above and not enough American McGee's Alice.

Re:Split screen gaming

[Dutch Gun]

Or it could be that, as an adult, your expectations have changes? I've been gaming since the 2600 days as well. You seriously need to go back and play some old games on emulators. Games that had me mesmerized for dozens or hundreds of hours have a hard time holding my attention for 15 minutes nowadays. You also forget that the ratio of brilliant-to-crap was about the same (ET was just the most exceptional crap).

The astoundingly powerful hardware we have simply opens up possibilities. Yes, you have the AAA titles that are expected to push graphical boundaries, but there are lots of titles that are all about the gameplay. I'll use myself as an example - in the past week, I've played three games on my Xbox that I can recall: Oblivion (playing through the expansions), N+, and Puzzle Quest. But the great thing is, now we have a *choice* of games. I occasionally enjoy a purely visceral experience. Do you think Dead Space would be as scary without the amazing graphics and audio? Other times, I hook up with friends for multiplayer N+. Other times, I just feel like relaxing with a slow-paced game of Puzzle Quest.

I think you can find plenty of examples of fantastic gameplay that matches or exceeds anything the past can dole out. You need to take off the rose-colored glasses.

I'll get off your lawn now.

Prime time for social life

[Wiarumas]

25-35 is a pretty prime social time where many people find their significant others and are getting set in having their circle of friends. In addition, I would suspect that their careers are beginning to blossom and are probably demanding more time than their "gaming" years.

I'm not suprised by this study, in fact, I believe I may be a classic example of why this may be. I have a gaming PC, xbox, ps2, gamecube, n64, NES... but most importantly I have a Wii. Me and my fiance primarily play this together (Mario Kart online) or whenever we have company (Karaoke, DDR, etc). But I also have a secret life that my girlfriend doesn't know about - I play EVE Online with a few HS buddies that she has never met. We are states apart and grew completely different apart (one is getting his doctorate in physics, the other is getting by on his HS diploma) but this is the one thing that keeps us socializing.

I wish I had more time to play games like WoW but I honestly don't anymore. I wish I even had time to talk on AIM anymore, but it seems as if those days are over. So before when my gaming time was an introvert activity, its now more of a social event where I can catch up with my friends while getting my video game fix.

That's me, in a nutshell.

[NeutronCowboy]

I've been playing since the Atari 2600 games. My favorite game? Battle tank, against my friend who owned the Atari. I've pretty much played every game type since then. But there are two trends I noticed in my gaming:
- time to game has gone down steadily.
- tolerance for internet asshattery has gone down as well.
- more and more people game.

The result? Gaming is now a social activity for me. My favorite moments are when my friends and I sit around a table and play some random WC3 mod or beat each other up in a game of VF5 or Halo. I still play single-player games, and I still play network games. But the #1 thing I look at in games is how well it will work with friends in the same room.

Do you hear that, Blizzard? No LAN play might look like a good idea, but you're completely ignoring the current social trends. It's indeed possible to play everything over the internet - but the fun factor of playing L33tH4x0r666 over my internet connection pales in comparison to the fun factor of beating my buddy in Halo. Or crushing them in Starcraft. If you truly want to make the best multiplayer experience, include LAN play. It's a must.

Forced social games

[Animats]

OK, you want social interaction, we'll give you social interaction.

The big time-sink games, like Everquest and WoW, where it's necessary to get everybody on line at the same time for a raid, could be made even more intrusive with a mobile aspect. If someone raids your fortress, frantic messages go out to all the defenders phones, demanding that they get on line immediately and help with the defense.

When you really want to annoy another guild, raid them at 4 AM.

This would probably sell in Singapore.

Re:Forced social games

[Sporkinum]

MMOs killed my favorite.. LAN gaming. We had an active group of LAN gamers that got together about every other month. We had about 50 or so people show up to game and talk smack and drink bawls. Then Evercrack, DAOC, and finally WoW whittled away the people that showed up. When the LANs finally died we had about 20 or so people, and about half of them would log into their MMO accounts.

One bright thing though, there is an annual LAN coming up next month, and since it is rare, there is less MMO bullshit going on.

Co-op versus Multiplayer

[Quantus347]

I have to agree. But even more, I would like to see more cooperative multiplayer in games. So many games have a primary "campaign" mode, the standard game itself with all the effort in large scale maps and objectives and such, but when it comes time for the multiplayer option, it a purely competitive arena style thing, where large differences in skill/familiarity with the game ruin the fun for the noob that gets incessantly poned or for the expert that cant get anyone to play out of past frustration. Some games have accomplished this very well (Halo, Gears of War to name a few), but I haven't seen it much outside of the First Person Shooter genre.

What I wouldn't give for a truly cooperative Real Time Strategy game. And not just a basic alliance, which usually just means a non-aggression and map-sharing pact. But imagine for a moment full resource and control sharing. At that point you can differentiate roles and responsibilities. One person to manage resource and production while the other leads the military defense/expansion. Imagine Spore Space Stage if you could have one empire, with one player as the Minister of War, another as Minister of Commerce, and a third as Minister of Colonization. Or even a good military type, but were you can organize a hierarchical military system, with your infantry, munitions, and strike team special forces. The complexity players have achieved in tactics of WoW raiding or Call of Duty, etc. prove that given the freedom to do so, players will plan, cooperate and organize well beyond what you may anticipate.

Friends are gamers, but we rarely play online.

[Fallingcow]

I'm not a "former" gamer, but better than 95% of my gaming time is in single-player games or in multiplayer with people in the same room (Smash Brothers, Wii Sports, things like that).

The only time I play online with strangers is when I've also got at least one friend in the game, which doesn't happen too often (most of my friends have the same gaming patterns as me and prefer living-room multiplayer, playing a single player game together, or just playing alone to playing online).

I get much more enjoyment out of a marathon playthrough of a single-player game, switching off with a friend, than I do playing an online FPS or whatever with said friend. My wife loves JRPGs, so we usually play those together, even though they're single player. Done similar things with a couple of the Zelda games, and with some 3rd-person games.

The rest of the time (the majority of it) I play PC-RPGs (single player--I *hate* that this market is so small, since it's produced some of my favorite games), strategy games (currently enjoying Hearts of Iron 2), and single-player atmospheric or story-heavy FPS games like the Half Life series, Deus Ex (I replay it every year or so, took me several playthroughs over a few years before I finally felt like I'd experienced the entire game), Portal, the Thief series, Bioshock, etc.

Exactly right.

[EWAdams]

Why should I tolerate the abusive behavior of some pimpled 13-year-old virgin online when I can have a good time playing with someone I genuinely like?

The behavior in persistent worlds will only improve when they begin to impose cash fines for obnoxiousness on players' credit cards, doubling in amount with each incident. Failure to pay (i.e. card declined) locks up the account.

Get off my lawn!

[eddy the lip]

I used to spend a fair bit of time playing FPS (mostly Quake and UT) online. Shooting real, unpredictable people and having a bit of a rivalry is much more fun than taking it out on some lackluster AI.

I still play the same kind of games, but I haven't been online in years. Reason? The advent of voice integration. I don't mind playing against a bunch of immature 13 year olds, but I don't need to be continuously reminded of the fact by some snot-nosed momma's boy whining in my ear to stop circle strafing him. (Ok, that time it was funny.)

I know, you can turn off voice chat, but voice did help usher in a new era of team based games. I enjoy the extra strategy and team play of those, but you can't get by without the voice now. Even in an FPS, there's stuff going on on chat you need to know about.

If it all felt less like elementary school playground, I'd probably get into it again, at least occasionally.

Re:I tried to read TFA but stopped at Integrated S

[Hatta]

My point? Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats face to face.

I dunno, doggy style is pretty awesome.

Re:"they also tend to favor games they can play...

[Chyeld]

So you are saying Quake is like a gateway drug, leading to such unsavory professions as Gamestop employee? Dear me, I'm glad Jack Thompson is disbarred, he would have had a field day....

The wii rules in this arena

[jollyreaper]

There are lots of games on that platform that I called "party games" before someone else coined the name "social games." By my definition, a party game has short play times between controller turnovers, are easy to learn and hard to master, and allow even the people who aren't playing to feel involved, usually by capping on how awful someone was at the game.

Soul Caliber was a great example of the 'hotseat' party game; only two people at a time could play but the rounds were quick and it was easy to hand the controller to someone else after you lost. I'm sure the same could be said of other fighting games but I never liked any other fighter as much as Soul Caliber, not even the SC sequels with their impossible balloon tits.

The various Wii sports titles take that fun aspect and moves it beyond the realm of traditional gaming genres, no robots and zombies and T&A. My mom tried out the Wii and it's the first system she's liked since the Odyssey. A system like this has huge, huge multi-generational appeal. Personally, I get a little bored with the Wii Sports games but I also don't like Microsoft Solitaire and that's the most popular Windows game ever so you can see why I don't trust my own opinion on such matters. :)

I see they've ported the old TMNT arcade game to the 360 and I assume they've included four controller support. That's another game that would kill at parties. There's also a Gauntlet port I see, one of the original four-players in the arcades. Pair that up with the big-screen TV's, party gaming can't help but to take off.

It's kind of funny, the basics of racing games haven't changed all that much since Pole Position: try to go fast, stay on the track, don't crash. But the graphics between then and now, heh! Amazing how much things have changed, the games look a thousand times better but it's still the same mechanics -- go fast, try not to crash.

These party games will go the same way, trying to present classic play mechanics in new and interesting ways. The motion controller was a genius move since many people find moving something around in the air more intuitive than pushing a joystick around, especially on today's fancy controllers.