Get Out of My Video Game!
A few months ago, when I bought Titanfall for the Xbox One, I put the disc in with great anticipation. This was supposed to be the first great game for the new console. Great anticipation and huge buzz surrounded this title. But when I booted the game up for the first time, my greatest nightmare came true.
It was an online-only game.
I view video games like reading a book. I like to play the campaign by myself, in the privacy of my own home. I don’t want to share my experience with strangers from around the globe, and don’t care to have the fact that I don’t share the same gaming skills a some boy in South Korea that sits at home practicing for twelve hours a day. In short: if I can’t play a two player game with my wife, I’d rather just play alone.
In Titanfall, that wasn’t possible. I was immediately spawned into a world overrun with other online players, working through the same level I was. Could these prepubescent gamers shoot me in the head whenever they wanted? You bet they could. And it happened again and again as teams played against each other while they worked their way through levels.
I listed Titanfall on Ebay in under an hour. Literally.
Fast forward to last week. The second game I was excited about, Destiny, was loaded up and ready to boot. When I started the game, it told me that I was being connected to the server. No problem. That happens often when the game checks for updates. But when I began the first level and saw that it had “Fireteams of 1-3 players,” I was worried. For the second time, it seemed, I’d be forced to play with other players.
I was right. Before too long, a prompt showed up on my screen during a firefight: “WolfBoy217 waved at you.” A second prompt followed: “PutridCorpse pointed at something.” He pointed? Pointed at what? Since my mother raised me right, I didn’t just want to ignore the wave and the gesture by the two other players. I fumbled with the buttons, desperate to wave back. To point as well.
And I got killed by an alien.
I’ve since learned how to do those things, and there have been the infrequent occasions when I’m pinned down in a firefight and another player comes to my aid. But at the end of the day, I wish the companies that make games would allow you to choose to play alone or with other players…like they did just last year.
If video games continue down this path, I fear I may just give up on them and stick with playing pinball. What video game makers are doing by forcing you to play with other players is tantamount to me hitting the Start button on a pinball machine, and a four-player game is started…and three people from around the globe just walk into my house and take over the game. If that happened, I’d have to give up on pinball as well.
Maybe I should just stick to reading a book. But don’t ask if you can read it with me.
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