Is Online Gaming Fun?

More and more big money in gaming seems to revolve around the online experience.  From Madden to Call of Duty to Injustice to Minecraft, game developers have committed more and more time to online aspects of games, often at the cost of the single player experience.

The most anticipated game of the new console generation, Killer Instinct, was released with no single player campaign at all (The game was rushed to coincide with the release of Xbox One and campaign modes will be available to the public in March).

While gamers are being herded in the profitable direction of online play by Sony and Microsoft there is one question no one has seemed to ask yet:  Is online gaming actually enjoyable?

Certain games are designed entirely around online play.  Games such as Skyrim, Minecraft, going all the way back to World of Warcraft are entirely built on playing in a communal world with other players.  These Massive Multiplayer Online role players (MMORPG) thrive on online play.  Players work together to accomplish goals and the highly customizable environments make it easier for gamers to police themselves.

In these cooperative style online games, players can literally create a whole world for themselves and, whether or not they’re your cup of tea, they are undeniably fun for those willing to invest the time.

It is in more mainstream games that things get a little more… tense.

Anyone who has ever spent an hour playing Call of Duty can tell you about the abundance, of cheap tactics, profane language, and obnoxious users that run rampant throughout the online community.  Now, the occaisonal troll can be pretty amusing if they're clever, but most of the time they just make everyone they run into miserable.

The offending parties seem to always have a few things in common:  They constantly accuse they’re opponents of using cheap tactics while they use cheap tactics themselves.  They very rarely are top tier players.  If they have a mic, they sound like they’re ten years old.  They are incredibly homophobic, sexist, and racist.

It is in this match based, competitive style of online gaming that people really see the worst of the gaming world.

It isn’t so unlike any sort of interactive community online that offers its users anonymity.  The only difference is that on message boards, other readers can typically remove offensive comments and moderators can ban any abusive members.  Xbox and PS3 do both allow users to mute other mic’d players and you can send in reports of abusive players, but aside from a temporary communications ban for players that receive several complaints there isn’t much done about it.

The game that suffers the most from this are fighters like Injustice: Gods Among Us.  The story mode is fairly repetitive and loses its appeal pretty quickly for most moderately skilled players.  The online format of the game is really where gamers are encouraged to log most of their time.

An environment where players are pitted against each other in an open, anything goes fight in which speed and simplicity are rewarded over grace and complexity?  What could possibly go wrong? 

The result is a game community that is so petty and combative that even the best players in the world get booed for “cheap tactics”.

Interestingly one of the greatest online match based game experiences comes from a game in which the multiplayer mode was originally just a tack on.  Mass Effect 3 was one of the most anticipated games of the last ten years.  Upon its release, fans had no difficulty picking it apart, but the multiplayer mode was left out of their criticisms.

Mass Effect 3 allows for a multiplayer match based experience that is both cooperative and varied, but also has the players working towards a final goal (unlike CoD’s similar Zombie games). 

When it comes down to it, online gaming only truly has staying power when you enjoy the people you’re playing with.  On games like Injustice and Call of Duty this typically means playing with friends.  In cooperative games, players are much more apt to want to get along.  Either way, playing with ten year olds is generally a bad idea.

2013 Year in Review: The Infinite Dilemma of Bioshock III

Few titles were more anticipated this year in the realm of gaming than the third installment of the Bioshock series, Bioshock Infinite.  Partly because the original Bioshock is widely considered one of the greatest achievements in modern gaming.  Partly because the trailers looked incredible.  Partly because its release date was pushed back multiple times because it just wasn’t awesome enough yet.  It finally came out early this year and, I just now got around to finishing it (twice).  So, was it any good?  Mostly.

The game play is injected with a faster pace and enough new gadgets to make it feel fresh while still being familiar to fans of the series.   The graphics and visuals of the world created by Bioshock Infinite don’t quite reach the level of imagination and creativity that made the first Bioshock so mesmerizing but the sky city of Columbia is breathtaking on any other scale.

 Yeah, it looks good. (actual screenshot)

While the game play itself can be intense and challenging at times (good thing) and one of the first things I noticed after the game got going was the increase in gore (decapitations galore!) the decision was clearly made to move the game away from the survival-horror genre that helped to make the first game so memorable.  One of the most impressive things about the original Bioshock was the atmospheric sound editing and voice acting.  The nerve racking sensation of being trapped in a dark room with five bad guys and only four bullets in your gun; you know they’re in there, you can hear them, you just can’t see them.  Haunting images like the Fort Frolic bathroom and Dr. Steinman's Operating Room stick in the player’s head long after they turn off the game.

 Take a moment to digest this, then understand this is one of the mild images from the twisted world of Rapture.

The story is…

Well, the story is compelling enough to keep you playing and maybe even want to play it again when you’re done.  The voice acting is fantastic, just as in the rest of the series.  The ending is probably the most talked about ending to a videogame in years and while it is woefully convoluted, it will certainly leave you thinking (more on this later).  The place where the game falls tragically short of it’s two predecessors is in the department of characters and atmosphere.

Bioshock Infinite has two, interesting, complex, well written characters.  Booker DeWitt is easily the most fleshed out protagonist of any game in the series.  Every other character, however, is completely one dimensional and exists only to further the plot and the story as it relates to those two aforementioned characters.

 We learn a lot about Booker and Elizabeth, but what about everyone else?

One of the best parts of the game experience with the Original Bioshock (and to a lesser extent, Bioshock II) are the many side stories and characters that the player learns of while exploring the city-under-the-sea Rapture.  Just from listening to a few clips of dialogue from audio diaries - left behind for the player to discover – so much is learned of characters.  Their daily lives, what motivates them, their goals, their fears, their dreams.  It creates a world for the player that feels like a real place, that has a history, rather than just one room after another filled with bag guys.

The original Bioshock also had the advantage of being connected to a famous piece of existing literature.  The entire world of Rapture in the game is built up to be a scathing critique of Ayn Rand’s libertarian fantasy, “Atlas Shrugged.”  It is fascinating to see the creators of the game bring Ayn Rand’s dream society to life only to have it devolve into a ruin of drugs and corruption filled with megalomaniacs and psychopaths.  There are even two characters named after Rand (One, Andrew Ryan, a primary villain of the game.  Another, Anya Andersotter, a minor character – who bears a strong resemblance to Rand herself - that exchanges sexual favors with lowlifes in order to try and gain information for killing Ryan).

The Ending:  We've been here before and we'll be here again.

Bioshock Infinite perhaps was trying to make up for this lack of source material with its highly ambitious ending.  An ending that borrowed themes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and John Gardner's Grendel just to name a few. An ending that was nearly terrible, but ultimately just missed out on being truly great.  I could talk a long time talking about the ending, but in the interest of keeping this spoiler free (and under 50,000 words) I'll control myself.  It was saved from being terrible thanks to a post credits scene that brought the theme of the game full circle (pun intended).  But fell short of great, because even with the post credit scene soooo many questions were left unanswered.

The Coin Flip. It's a exercise in trying to change the inevitable and probably the most important scene in the game for understanding the ending. Only problem is that it happens in the first half hour of the game and is never referenced again. 

Ultimately, Bioshock Infinite is a fun game and one that I will return to play again, and probably more than once.  But, I’ll never be able to disconnect it from the first two games of the series enough not to think of it as a heartbreaking missed opportunity.  I really wish I could’ve learned more about the world and the characters that made Columbia what it was.  And what’s worse, the parts were there to make these things happen.  There had to have been more to Comstock than the player discovers.  It was plain to see that character like the Lutece twins and Preston E. Downs had fascinating back-stories that the game only would have benefited from sharing.  Much of this ironically was probably held back because the creators were worried it would take away from the impact of the ending when, in all likelihood, it would have made it that much more satisfying.  The original Bioshock games were great jigsaw puzzles of mystery with pieces strewn about for the player meticulously put together to create a beautiful story.  Bioshock Infinite tried to do the same thing, but the final product was missing just a few key pieces.

The more a world opens up to you, the more invested in it you will become.  So much of Columbia remains a mystery for the player, when it could have been an exciting and fascinating place.

At least we’ll always have this totally badass trailer.  *AND* This beautiful version of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".