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[Lupercal]

So I was just talking to a friend about the merits and flaws of games like Call of Duty. Back in the "old" days of gaming (My youngest days were Dreamcast-era) you used to have to play with another 3 people, sit in the same room as them, same couch, play the game, interact. Nowadays, games like Call of Duty disallow a local party to go into the same match (I'm going to use Xbox terminology seeing as I have one). The makers of COD no longer want to see 4 people in the same room on one console being one team, they want 4 different people in 4 different places making that team. Yes you can talk to your friends over XBL or PSN, but surely that isn't the same as having them in the room with  you - when we used to "LAN days" we could never really be bothered to get COD4 out because that would mean the number of players diminished.

I think this also attributes why COD is "the biggest selling game of all time", because games such as Halo Reach mean that for one 4v4 game you'd only need 2 copies of the game - whereas for say, Black Ops, it magnifies to 8. I have a serious problem with this because I feel that it just degenerates the gaming experience - when can friends get together and play COD online? Never, really. Spec Ops on MW2, yeah that was a good addition. But its only 2 player.

I feel like this is probably just a huge rant but I'm wondering if other people feel the same - this isn't just a Halo vs COD argument, many other games that I've picked up seem to disallow the ability to play with guests. The days of getting in beers, pizza, and 3 buddies to sit down at the xbox seems to have disappeared, for online matchmaking anyway. There are still games like Left 4 Dead which have insanely fun mulitplayer, and Portal 2 has a coop mode, but I feel like games companies would rather destroy the social aspect of gaming rather than suffer a financial "pitfall" like making it viable for guests to play. I know that playing with your XBL friends is a social experience, I understand how hypocritical that sounds. But it saddens me to think that now people have to lob out £40 just to be able to play with a friend.

[est]

There are still plenty of games like this, it's just not fps/tps games.  Smash Bros style games and fighters will always allow two-four players, so it's not like "social gaming" is dying.

[Alex C]

The "dreamcast era" being the old days in particular is amusing given that prior to the n64 (which was released only two years earlier) you typically needed to go out and buy an adapter of some sort just to have more than 2 players to a system. If anything, I find this to be a sort of regression to the mean given that FPS games-- or any other title in which players benefit from hiding information, really-- have some fundamental issues with being played on a split screen. And I don't just mean squinting, either-- any game where you can benefit from keeping information hidden from your opponent benefits from a second screen, which is why even post halo my friends and I preferred the LAN party. So between that and the vested financial interest, I do not find it surprising at all that this is happening, especially with FPS titles. But I also think it's a case of missing the forest for the trees. As est pointed out, there's genres other than shooter and xbox live arcade and generally speaking there's more coop modes than ever.

[est]

Man, I love me some co-op.  I wish these fucks would get onto the whole cross-platform multi thing already and just get shit done.  It's 2011, let us play together!

[LTK]

Cross-platform play in conventional shooters has been explored, but the main problem that the testers ran into with console and PC players combined is that PC gamers, i.e. players who use a mouse, were consistently and substantially better than the players with controllers. That's the main reason the two are not mixed, I think. I expect that there would also be a ton of legislation issues with combining players using different consoles, but that's mostly guesswork.

[Alex C]

Yeah, control pads tend to fare best with hitscan weapons that do high damage per shot but have a low rate of fire.  A CoD rifle, for example, doesn't care if you keep a smooth bead on your target as long as you can get the reticule back on their noggin by the time the next shot is ready.

[imagist42]

PC versions of these games also tend to be subject to modding and whatnot, so that's understandable. I still agree they should be joining all console networks together, even if PC players have to be kept separate.

[est]

We've had this conversation before, and I think some console guys objected to the idea that they can't control their character as well with their preferred controller of choice.

And my take on it now is the same as it was back then, which is that I don't care either way.  Using that as a reason why I can't play co-op GTA4 or Borderlands with say, Jimmy on his xbox who won't give a shit whether I'm more accurate with my mouse or whatever is really fucking lame.

[Method of Madness]

They actually have keyboard/mouse controllers for PS3 and 360, I think.

As for social gaming, it's mostly been replaced with both "casual games", like Wii Sports (or really, Wii anything), and rhythm games (Guitar/Band/DJ Hero, Rock Band, DDR, etc).  And of course, there's still the fighting and sports games which work well in a social situation (there's a reason Madden hasn't changed that much in 20 years).

[est]

That is a good point.  I can plug four controllers into my xbox and play four-man co-op Fifa.

[est]

Or y'know, any combo of the 4 people vs each other.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I'm just unwilling to pay extra for the live membership basically. And also I would prefer to be able to play multiplayer games with my brother or my friends who visit. It's sort of annoying that I can no longer do this, pretty much ever now.