How Multiplayer Sometimes Does More Harm Than Good

It was Canadian Thanksgiving here last week. Which was strange, because no one really seems to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. All the shops and restaurants and bars and poutine vendors are open, like any other day. The post office and the banks are closed. But otherwise, it's a day off for people, little more.

I met Thumb-Blaster for breakfast at the White Spot on West Georgia Street. White Spots are the Canadian version of Denny's, only less cheery. They smell vaguely of bleach and depression. Strippers and old people eat here. Everything on the menu is incredibly cheap. Thumb-Blaster and I both got huge piles of cheap, terrible food for less than $10.

The project T.B. is currently working on includes a significant multiplayer component. So he witnesses, in a very tangible way, what building multiplayer does to a development team. At best, it sounds like a nuisance. At worst, it sounds like a time and energy sink-hole, a Kafka-like act of futility and despair for the people working on it.

T.B., despairing a little, asked me why game reviewers inevitably subtract points from a game's review score if multiplayer isn't part of the package. "Faulting a game for not having multiplayer is like faulting a movie for not being in 3-D," Thumb Blaster said. "Imagine a movie reviewer saying, 'This movie was really great, but since it is not in 3-D, I'm docking it a couple of points. Next time, MAKE IT IN 3-D, YOU DOPES."

T.B. had a point. Remember BioShock? (How could you forget? I seem to refer to it in almost every post on this goddamn blog.) Nearly every review across the board fawned over the game, but at some point included some variation on the following disparaging sentence: "There's no multiplayer in the game, which seems like a missed opportunity."

The fact that BioShock 2 included multiplayer--you asked for it, you got it, reviewers!!!!!!!!--is one of those things that will pain me until the end of my days. It is complete and utter shit. No one is playing it. No, not even the reviewers who asked for it apparently can be bothered to play it. And the people who worked on it? They've probably have either hanged themselves, or gone insane, or now manage a Borders in Pittsburgh.

While leafing through the October issue of Game Informer, I found a short interview with Ken Levine, who is given the bulk of the credit for making the original BioShock so terrific. (Note: He had little to nothing to do with BioShock 2.) The question put to him by the writer was this: What is Irrational's approach to multiplayer in BioShock: Infinite?

"Our approach hasn't changed," he says. "Every game we did prior to BioShock had a multiplayer component, and I don't think it mattered. It always came out of a request of a marketing department.

"If you look at multiplayer, either you are going to do something that's profound, or you're wasting your time. Absolutely wasting your time. Because what are people going to do? You're going to have a couple thousand people play it for a few weeks, then they're going to go back to the great multiplayer games [like] Call of Duty, Gears of War, Halo, Left 4 Dead.

"My feeling always has been if there is an idea that is organic to the product and is profound and is going to move people and excite people and really add a dimension to the product that is not just good for the product but stands on its own as a game, then you do it. If you don't have that, you don't do it.

"At this point, we haven't made a determination about whether or not we have something that's profound enough, or what exactly our thinking is here."

I love this sentence so much, that I think anyone who crabbed about the lack of multiplayer in BioShock should be forced to read it once a day for the rest of their lives: If you look at multiplayer, either you are going to do something that's profound, or you're wasting your time.

Go ahead. Read it again. And again.

Thumb-Blaster and I ate our syrup-soaked pancakes in silence. I noticed that there were no windows in the restaurant. It was midday outside, but inside it was gloomy and damp, as if the whole building was submerged at the bottom of the ocean. At a nearby table, an old man let out an overly dramatic, Big Daddy-like yawn...

My Multiplayer Phobia

So yesterday Vic and I rolled up our sleeves and dove controller-first (not head-first) into Lost Planet 2. We played a bit of split-screen co-op. Vic has a 52-inch plasma that has single-handedly made him nearsighted. Yet, in LP 2's co-op play, we had to make due with split screens that were at best 17 or so inches across. Much of the screen, for some inexplicable reason, was taken up by 1. black space and 2. a pair of useless compass-map things.

I couldn't tell where I was, or who or what I was shooting at. We endured a few missions together, then I cabbed it home, promising Vic that I'd jump online and play over the Net with him.

As soon as I got home, I ate a pickle. Then I fell fast asleep with one of my cats curled up on my chest. I woke up around 6:30. I turned on the Xbox, and got Lost Planet 2 working. I texted Vic, asking him if he was ready to go. He said he was busy downloading the Halo Reach beta, and that I should join him there. I said, "No."

Now I'd read that Lost Planet 2 really doesn't offer much in the way of a single-player experience. No matter. I tried to play a bit more of the campaign on my own, with three A.I.-controlled partners rounding out my party. The A.I. was just fucking worthless. I had to do everything on my own. Idiots.

A few hours later, presumably after he'd tired of Reach, Vic pinged me. He was ready to get online. Suddenly, I was overcome with some kind of videogame inertia. The last thing I wanted to do in the world right then was go online and play more Lost Planet 2. I don't know how else to put this other than to say this: I simply was not in the mood.

And that's my problem with multiplayer gaming in general. I need to really feel up to doing it in order to, you know, do it. I despise all the time-wasting you have to do in lobbies, waiting for other players to check in, or log on, or update their 360s or whatever. There's always a ton of farting around that needs to happen in order to make a multiplayer session work. There is nothing I hate more than sitting in front of my TV, stupid headset on my head, waiting for someone to join my party.

I can feel myself slowing inching towards death in these moments. This is the exact opposite of a good time for me. And this is the exact opposite of why I enjoy playing games. I play games because I want to get wrapped up in the fiction; I play games to escape. I play games because, frankly, I need a break from the world, and, to be more specific, from people in general.

People. I love them, but sometimes they wear me out. Even my closest friends.

I also despise the inherent competitiveness of multiplayer gaming. Even in cooperative situations, like Left4Dead, there's always that load-out screen, where kill numbers are tallied and your performance is quantified via various stats and data. I call this the Mine Is Bigger Than Yours moment. And yes, I hate it.

Vic, partly out of frustration, texted me last night saying, "I'm adding multiplayer gaming to your list of phobias." And you know what? I think I do have a weird phobia around it. I absolutely dread it.

I attribute some of my dread to the fact that I grew up with a brother who was only a year younger than I was. In school, in sports, he and I competed constantly. It felt like the first 18 years of my life was one long competition.

So I don't seek out competition now, not actively. Yes, it's nice if you're at the top of your friend leaderboard for Street Fighter IV. I don't want to fight you. I don't want those Mine Is Bigger Than Yours moments. I don't need them. So you guys have your fun online. I'm happiest, and most comfortable, playing offline, solo, doing my own thing. Seriously, I am.