AJ wrote about this very issue on Arcadian Rhythms a year ago: The PC is businesslike, wearing a tie the console prefers to hang out with you on the couch. Electron Dance HQĬompare it to a console which wants access to your TV, automatically placing it in the heart of the household, the living room. Know that Electron Dance HQ is not a social place to be. A PC is a big noisy box with a fuckton of wires stretching out like an electrified Portuguese Man O’ War. The point is a PC is a blank slate until a user gives it meaning.Ī PC is about function. What do you use your PC for? A spot of word processing, perhaps. It’s a device without a dedicated purpose, which is why Microsoft associates itself with empty, non-specific slogans like “Where do you want to go today?” and “Your potential. A PC is not a games console, it’s a personal computer. I want to state the obvious, because it’s crucial. But there’s another problem here, other than just having bums on seats. I have two children and so family gaming will soon be back in style. (one controller for 2-4 players, two for 5-8 players) Right now, there are plenty of great co-located multiplayer games on the PC. I was really talking about gaming with the family, that’s what I’d lost. And that’s why I slipped up in the interview. The idea of playing a game with someone else at home seemed remote, anachronistic even. My gaming was devoid of multiplayer experiences aside from Half-Life Deathmatch and Team Fortress Classic. (This was my reaction at the time, I’m not making a grand point about console gaming.) At that particular moment, I felt liked I’d upgraded from cartoony, childish console games to something more adult. In 1998, I bought a PC to complete my PhD thesis and discovered the joy of PC gaming. I had no friends who liked to game and thus only bought single-player titles. My last console was the Sega Megadrive and although I often lost to my girlfriend when playing Columns (1990), that was pretty much the only two-player experience I had with the console. Playing multiplayer over the internet became the norm and co-located play was left behind… if you were on the PC. But as the internet matured, the need for LAN evaporated. This meant different players were still co-located. DOOM could be played with other players over a network as play over modem was relatively niche and expensive initially, participating in a LAN party was the best way to get involved. Duel (1995, published New Atari User #78)ĭOOM (1993) is responsible for the most important shift in PC multiplayer. I spent many hours playing co-operative Joust with my father on the Atari 8-bit and I even wrote a few multiplayer games myself. With the advent of home computer systems, single-player took off in a big way, although there was still a lot of social play. And also being a spectator was just as exciting as being a player the VCS was a stage for improv. Even ostensibly single-player games, such as Space Invaders (1980), were more fun to play in co-op mode. We had a period in which the Atari VCS was perceived as a very social thing, something for the family. With little room for complicated AI code, it was easier to let another player fill the role of opponent. But on the VCS, single player games were rare in the beginning as each one had to squeeze into a tight 4K. The Invasion of the Arcadians story from Load Runner issue #3 (1983 source)Īrcade machines were already being labelled a force for ill, with teenagers suspected of spending too much time pumping coins into videogames to the detriment of their social skills. One of them is growing up on the Atari VCS. My childhood memories are composed of many different strands, none of which seem to join up properly, but these parallel narratives are all important. My blind spot in the interview tells us something important about this problem. What we were actually discussing was Hokra, Ramiro Corbetta’s 2v2 sports game, and the difficulty involved turning it into a commercial product which needs four controllers and a PC. It was a ridiculous assertion which Doug countered with “millions of people are still playing FIFA”. As I don’t have a console, no co-located multiplayer experiences exist, QED. At the time, I remember feeling a little facepalm.
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