Every relationship has its ups and downs, and gaming’s relationship with the internet is no exception. These are just a few of those goods and bads.
Good: Online Gaming
Games like MAG are only possible because of Online Gaming
Perhaps the most obvious positive is the introduction of online gaming. People can play with friends and strangers alike across the world, in matches sometimes much larger than what would be realistically plausible with LAN parties or local play. There are new methods and genres of play that have sprouted entirely from the idea of playing with others- both at the same time and asynchronously. A strong endorsement towards the positive end of the spectrum, to be sure.
Bad: Less Focus on Local Play
But Online gaming is not without its sacrifices. Local play took a heavy hit as games focused on doing as much as possible online. Used to be, if a game had multiplayer, you were playing it with your friends on the couch. Nowadays, you rarely know for sure if you’ll be able to enjoy an experience with your local friends unless everyone has a console and copy of the game. Fortunately, games like Call of Duty, fighting games, and Nintendo’s line up all still offer the best in couch gaming. Local gaming certainly isn’t dead, but it unarguably took a hit in the previous generation.
Good: Seeing People’s Creativity
The ability to share screenshots and gameplay videos online has allowed everyone to express their creativity to a global community: we can witness other people’s incredible Minecraft worlds, watch Speed runners attack games in unimaginable ways, and see people play games in ways uniquely their own.
Bad: Losing Creativity
Of course, when people can see what other people do, they’re more likely to copy than to do things on their own. If someone builds a character a certain way in League of Legends, the community will follow that build to a T for months to come, until someone else finally breaks the mold and shows people that breaking the mold is fun. In Smash Bros, many fighters start playing the same, based on videos they watched online of better players. It makes, essentially, for a thin meta game. Used to be if a friend did something you’d never seen before, you could respect it. Now you can only wonder where they found it online.
Good: Meet New People
The internet has allowed us to meet new people, whether on sites such as MyIGN, or in game. The guy I played Journey with and I now play a whole ton of different games together, and my brother once met a dude from Ireland and a dude from Scotland while playing Call of Duty, and the three of them are now in semi-regular contact. And how many of us here have ended up meeting in person and becoming fast friends? Sharing our hobbies with so many millions of people is a joy, especially when it can sometimes feel like you’re the only one in your class.
Bad: Meet new people
But not everybody you meet online is a sunshine or rainbow. People speak often of the trolling, the flaming, the cursing, the racism, the sexism, the controversy- truly, there is an underbelly of gaming that has grown much too large. Best case scenario, you can point and laugh at them with the good people you’ve met.
Good: Share Opinions
Another glorious thing with the internet is the ability to share your opinions of the games you’ve played, and see unique points of view that may change the way you see a game. People have written some beautiful explorations of characters, design, and stories, things that can make you better appreciate the games you love. Not to mention, conversation and debate make all of us more articulate, and better able to understand even our own likes or dislikes for a game.
Bad: Other Peoples’ Opinions
But then you’ve got to trudge through the downers. People who confuse objectivity with subjectivity on a regular basis, whose past-time is to hate your favorite game and offer trite reasons for why it’s terrible, even if those reasons don’t have any merit. Not to mention the number of people who form opinions based on other peoples’ opinions, with no judgement or grounding of their own, saying game X or Y sucks or is amazing, without having played either X or Y.
Good: Find What You Need Online
The internet provides gamers with the largest and most easily accessible database there ever was. Stuck on a level? Google it. Can’t remember if Torterra can learn Rock Slide? Google it. Want to know which Gypceros you need to fight for the Gypceros Head? You guessed it: Google it. Everything you need to know is available almost immediately after (or sometimes before) a game launches, meaning you never need be stuck, lost, or wasting time ever again.
Bad: Loss of challenge
Then again, people no longer need to experiment or learn on their own. The spectacle of a stage, the sense of discovery, the sense of satisfaction- all of these can be lost as soon as that internet tab is opened. A game’s atmosphere is a fragile thing, as is its challenge and its pacing. Looking up answers to a puzzle, to a boss, to a challenge, can break all of those things.
Good: News
Many of us go to IGN or internet-gaming-news-site-of-choice every day- sometimes more than once a day (or hour!). The news is at our fingertips. No longer do we have to wait for EGM or Nintendo Power to arrive in the mail to learn all there is to know about upcoming games. We can watch trailers on demand. We can read previews and reviews and interviews and everything in between. We can watch live presentations. Previews of live presentations. Reviews of live presentations. All within minutes of the presentations’ start. It’s immediate. Gratifying. And we’re never in the dark.
Bad: Death of Magazines
But there are sacrifices here too. The aforementioned EGM and Nintendo Power? Like much of their brethren: dead. Gone. Unable to maintain their business as their primary use was outclassed by the internet.
Those are just a few of the good and bad things to come from internet's bedding of video games. Can you think of anything else? Are you happy with the path we've taken, or would you rather they file divorce papers after the kids go off to college?
