First of all, happy new year.
Second of all, this month's topic revolves around multiplayer games. Deathmatches, party games, fighting games, what have you -- everything's up for grabs. The topic itself is simple, but broad:
What do you love or hate about multiplayer games? What experience and emotions do they effect which can't be found in singleplayer experiences? What stories have you gained from multiplayer games?
Yes, that is technically three topics. When I say broad, I mean broad.
Anyway, you can hit the jump for a further explanation of the theme (with some examples), and the directions for how to get your themed article promoted to the front page.
Off the top of my head, I sort of want to write about Left 4 Dead, because I'm goddamned unoriginal. If you think about it, almost all multiplayer games are made up of what marketing buzzwordophiliacs would call "procedural narrative"; there's no actual story to CounterStrike or Team Fortress 2, but this frees us up to create our own and focus on the immediate events of the game.
When you talk about the time you killed eight guys in four seconds in cs_office, you're telling a story, even if it hasn't been meticulously plotted and structured by someone sitting at a typewriter (and by the way, please feel free to devote articles to telling these types of muliplayer-based stories). There are, of course, notable upsides and downsides to this sort of structure. This month's theme just makes me think about how Left 4 Dead sort of turns that on its head, while still keeping certain essential aspects of the multiplayer experience intact.
Or, you could talk about the competitive nature of something like Super Smash Bros Brawl, and how the dynamics involved in trying to learn wavedashing or whatever-the-fuck are unlike any in other games, or other mediums.
You could talk about games as sports. You could talk about how one's enjoyment of a multiplayer game is directly proportional to one's skill at that game. It's up to you.
The only rules are these: make sure to tag your community blog with the "Monthly Musings" category, and make sure to put "Playing with others: blah blah blah" in the blog title.
That's all. Any questions, comments?
I've thought of this before.
Rare is the multiplayer game where losing is as fun as wining.
I think its a design not many games incorporate into their multiplayer.
Usually, either you excel and pwn n00bz left and right, get your kick from dominating, or languish in a loop of quick deaths and respawns.
Help?
One example that comes to mind, besides a recent Left4Dead moment, was in Warcraft 3 2vs2. It's one those times when you have a complete keyboard-mouse-mind-meld-gaming-stream-of-conciousness moments. So you know from your and your partner's actions exactly what's going on, what needs to happen and when it needs to happen without even saying a thing. Moments when you honestly feel like you're at a breaking point and the only thing that can save your ass is if your co-op player comes to save you or vice versa. These are usually the moments upon ending the game, you can talk about it with the person that you just played it with, how fucking badass it was.
Ahhh.. good times.
Moments like that and cybering with someone you KNOW is a chick. That's pretty special too.
I love any team-play based online games though. I tend to shy away from non-team deathmatches.
That was, I think, one of the best semi-passive multiplayer experiences I've ever had.
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That being said, I've never felt more demoralized than when I realized other people weren't going to actually role play creatively in the MUCKs I was on.
(MUCK == MUD, no dice, just RP)
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