The Empty Sofa
by NorseGamer, HSM founder
If you’re under the age of, say, twenty — if the fall of the Berlin Wall was merely something you distractedly read about in a history textbook while wondering what color knickers the cheerleader sitting in front of you was wearing — then you’re going to finish this and wonder what I’m banging on about, concluding I’m some sort of jaded wannabe-curmudgeon, and go back to telling the world via Myfacesquareddit every single coffee shop you’ve ever been to.
No, really. It’s that big of a gap. Anyone born in 1990 or later has simply grown up in a completely different world than anyone born prior to that. If you’re a child of the ‘nineties, the internet has always existed. To you, having a device in your pocket that can access the entire breadth of recorded human knowledge is as fundamental as breathing air. You have grown up in a digital age, where we rushed headlong to connect with each other because we all had a collective fantasy of wanting to have exotic conversations with exciting people in Lhasa, only to settle for Chocolate Rain instead.
Meanwhile, if you’re even ten years older than that — if you were born around 1980 or further back — you remember the analog world. The world without progressive-scan television, e-mail, screen names, Google, and ATM machines. A world where DeForest Kelley could be seriously asked in an interview, “What’s it like to be beamed?” — because back then, special effects were still special, since the only people who knew how to do them had mysterious beards and lived in Marin County.
God, there are times when I miss the analog world. Yes, I know, I’m a game developer now, so I make my living in the digital world. And it’s fun and exciting. It is. To be fair, the real problem isn’t the internet itself — the problem is that it allowed us to discover the horrible truth about our own species: that most of us just aren’t very interesting.
See, here’s where the internet fooled us: it made us believe that by shrinking the distance between two points, we would ourselves become more enlightened and interesting. And that just isn’t true. All we’ve really done is give Randy Pan down in Podunk the ability to annoy more than just his neighbors with his incessant acne-fueled screeds about Mega Smegma. It used to be, in the old days, you would reach out and give the troll a good bootstomping. Hence, no trolls. Today, however, that requires getting on a plane and flying to some armpit of the country in order to administer the beating, which makes things a bit harder to justify when you’re in court.
And this does affect gaming. Oh yes. Because you could be an SAS commando with a record for Fan Dancing, but in Call of Duty, all it takes is one lucky shot from some pre-teen gangsta who listens to Skrillex all day, and all of a sudden you’re being “U mad?” teabagged by someone whose voice hasn’t dropped a few octaves yet. This will cause a certain amount of eyeball twitching. And now we’re back in court.
Ever watch seaQuest DSV? It was a fairly crap show, sure, but it had some interesting concepts. There’s one second-season episode, Playtime, in which the ship and its crew are pulled into a future Earth where there are only two teenage humans left — and they’ve grown up with nothing but the mother computer and gaming interfaces. They have no idea how to interact with each other, and the world has atrophied around them.
It was an episode which aired on October 23, 1994 — right as the world was truly beginning to shift en masse from the analog to the digital age. And in some ways it’s an eerily prescient parable. Remember that year, because we’re going to come back to it down the road.
This then begs the question: was multiplayer gaming better in the old days?
Rewind to 2002. The house is nearly completely packed up, and I’m about to move to Hawaii. One last get-together with old friends. And it’s Nick, Dave and I on the PS2, duking it out in The Bouncer.
(God, what a great game. People who diss The Bouncer need to be sterilized. Because the game really is that good, and it sucks how few people discovered it.)
It was, quite simply, some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a video game. And what made it fun wasn’t even so much the game itself; it was the communal joy of playing a game with friends you know in real life who are sitting next to you on the sofa.
…Ever since we really got into the digital age, it seems like the sofa’s been empty.
Ask: when’s the last time you had some of your mates over for a video game?
It’s that social, communal element of gaming that’s been missing in recent years. When you were a kid, do you remember the thrill of weekend outings and birthday parties at the video arcade? Playing Afterburner was so much more fun when you had a crowd around you, cheering you on. And do you remember the sunlit suburb you walked through to go to a friend’s house, where half the time you had to blow on the cartridge to make it work?
There’s none of that today. Not really. Now it’s plug and play. You get plunged into an amazing, photorealistic world with teammates you’ve never met before, who live thousands of miles away from you. It’s all just voices through a headset and pixels on a screen. And this is what we’ve settled for.
Who knows, maybe that’s enough. Not everyone reading this was fortunate enough to grow up in an area where there real friends who’d come over for gaming and pizza. And I’m the last person who will say that you can’t forge meaningful friendships (and more) via a digital medium — not when you consider that one out of every five couples in this country has met online.
But there’s just something missing from internet multiplayer gaming, isn’t there. It’s a bit like driving those BMW “EfficientDynamics” engines: you are told that they are simultaneously more powerful and return better fuel economy, and you want to do your part for the polar bears, but then you put your foot down and discover somebody put a condom on the engine. Because you’re just not getting the full sensation. And then all you want is the roar from the old straight-six, and to hell with George Monbiot.
To an extent, that’s what online multiplayer is: the safe, sterile, convenient alternative to the thrill of going out into the real world and letting someone into your home. Online multiplayer does everything it’s supposed to, except the one thing it needs to do: deliver that fizzy thrill that connects the back of your brain to your hairy bits.
Give you an example. Sony VASG’s Cutthroats. Phenomenally good game for Home. But you know when I had the most fun with it? When we were QA testing it at the office, and it was a bunch of us sitting in the same room, all shouting and cheering and lobbing good-natured taunts at each other. All of a sudden, the game was alive. It wasn’t so much that the game itself had changed — it was that we were all enjoying it together, in the corporate equivalent of a full sofa. And hence mic chat channels were introduced to the game, in order to try to duplicate that effect in Home itself.
From AT&T’s “You Will” ad campaign
Let’s go back to 1994 for a moment. Remember the AT&T “You Will” ad campaign? It all seemed like science-fiction, didn’t it. And now most of it, in the last two decades, has now happened. Except the one thing that really needed to happen: for us to truly, actually feel more connected with one another, and to be people worth listening to.
This is one of the reasons why a console-based social MMO for gamers is potentially so lucrative, if it can ever be done correctly. Home was — and is — an amazing experiment, and it’s the closest to digitally recreating a full sofa as I’ve ever seen. But it’s still a social experience at arms’ length, and I doubt we’ll ever get closer until the day comes when we can have a console experience that provides optional picture-in-picture where you’re gaming with your friends and you simultaneously chat in real time with them via webcam. Who knows? Maybe that console interface will one day arrive. Right now it takes two machines — a console playing the game and a laptop open with Skype — to achieve it. Someone will make a lot of money when they figure out how to integrate it all.
Because here’s an interesting truth about the games industry: we’re at a point where, until the technology sufficiently advances for truly photorealistic graphics, the consumer isn’t necessarily motivated by the shiniest new toy any more. Adults and kids alike can play cheap mobile games to get through the boring parts of their days, and there just aren’t that many full-blown AAA single-player experiences which warrant that kind of investment any more, because the scènes à faire are all starting to feel a bit formulaic. As the next console generation emerges, the games — and platforms — that will win are the ones which figure out how to sell us what games originally sold us back in the analog age: the thrill of a full sofa.
May 15th, 2013 by NorseGamer | 3 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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I was pretty afraid of what the internet would bring to our lives as I watched it unfold. On the same coin though, I wanted it badly in my life. In the 90’s my lifestyle was that of a hobbo really, hell, I was lucky I had a TV and a SNES -- forget about that new-fangled, super-complicated thing that makes the phone cry and a screen do… something? The fact I could play the amazing Star Fox with its “Super FX” graphics chip built into the cart and the clever SNES enhancing that with its funky Mode-7 abilities, topped off with my stereo plumping’ out the soundtrack to Top Gun as I played -- I was already in the future!
Ever play Micro Machines on the SNES? That had 4 player mode. I know, big woop right? Damn right big woop! FOUR players on one screen was hardly ever done! In fact, it was so far ahead of its time consoles didnt even have enough slots for that many controllers, instead, two people had to share a pad -- imagine trying that with 3 other mates equally pissed as farts. Super fun was had, and there’s NOTHING any modern console can do to match that particular kinda hilarity, trust me, I’ve tried.
Great read Norse, thanks for the nostalgia trip! See ya at the board-walk arcade?
I can remember playing Duck Hunt with my brothers and Pong as well. Playing with others in the same room will always be a better option than playing alone, though I do love to play online with friends, especially Red Dead, it is too much fun chasing bad guys or tearing up a town together. I like the private options they give you in that game, so you can set up a session to play with only those you invite, so no pimply faced gangsta wanna bees to deal with there. Wish all online open world games gave that option. Many might, I don’t know as I haven’t played all that many myself. Great read as always Norse.
Maybe today people are too lazy to walk to their friend’s house/apartment to sofaize?
Bring back the days when people actually did the real thing playing baseball/softball at a local stadium or fields. Leave the video games for old people and those unable to participate in athletics.