I have been gaming all my life. I have had 13 game consoles (including my 4 handhelds). I have hand built well over a dozen of computers for myself and friends. I have been to gaming conventions and even been in gaming magazines. These days however, I am seeing a disturbing trend in gaming. It's going to be a long read, but I think to understand my argument, you have to take the journey.
If you have gamed from the NES days or before up until now you have played thru numerous renaissances in gaming. Generally gamers that old have played the greatest of the greats. They played Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Contra, Kirby's Adventure, great games from the NES. If they were into Sega at the time the Master System delivered classics like the Alex Kid games and OutRun. Both systems supported 2 players and many games allowed players to play at the same time (as with Contra) or taking turns (as with Mario).
Contra back in the day, that code will forever be ingrained in my brain
Since I was born in the early 80s my first system was given to me in 1990, it was a NES and came with Super Mario Bros. 3. eventually I went on to get such classics as Contra and Kirby's Adventure. I can't tell you how many hours my friend Mike and I spent playing contra, and how much we treasured that famous code for 30 lives.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2, the first mascot game I played endlessly (and still do from time to time) After my NES when I was just a youngster my parents got me a Genesis with Sonic The Hedgehog 2 in 1992. I passed many days with my friend Greg playing Sonic 2. I would do the levels, he would take care of the bosses. We never actually beat the game, but we played thru the first 7 acts over a hundred times at least. We also got exposed to Mortal Kombat for the first time, a game that was probably the first competitive game I had where my friends and I could both play.
1997 eventually came, and that Christmas came the best surprise. I entered a contest at Target for 150 Nintendo Dollars, which was the going price of a Nintendo 64. The box was heavy with entries, but one day I came home from school (8th grade if I recall correctly) and we had a message on the machine from Target proclaiming me the winner in the drawing. I was ecstatic, my parents, not so much. I didn't get a game with the system sadly, but my friends helped me out, getting me Starfox 64 and renting Goldeneye for me. This is where the real story begins.
Starfox 64, the beginning of my life in multiplayer nirvana Starfox was the first game I ever had for the N64, the first game I ever played for the 64, and the first 3d game I ever saw. This game was everything to me for a long time, but the thing we shrugged off at first was what became the redeeming feature. Splitscreen Multiplayer.
Now, allow me to explain this if you aren't a videogamer. splitscreen gaming reduces the screen to two, three, or four views. One for each player. The game also uses a lot fewer visual effects to compensate for all the camera angles being used.
Okay, condescending technically talk done with. To us there was nothing like sitting on the couch and floor, huddled in front of a 20 inch TV with each other. You could laugh, shout, punch, do anything. It was fun, we were all there, hanging out, learning strategies, learning how we each played, analyzing each other. It was amazing fun. Flying around in that game was the best thing ever. That was until Goldeneye 007 on the N64.
Goldeneye is still considered a breakthrough in gaming, specifically in the First Person Shooter genre. It was the first game to have decent controls, good graphics (for the time), and splitscreen multiplayer with multiple modes. We spent days with this game, racking up kills, playing matches over and over, trying to get that last kill before the other guy. you could share everything with the friends around you, the awesome kills and the crushing defeats. As the N64 grew so did our options for gaming mayhem.
Mario Kart 64 hit eventually, something that sucked a lot of time from us all, but then came something we didn't expect, a chance for us all to face the computer (Mario Kart 64 has no CPU racers for 3-4 players games)... Perfect Dark.
Playing the multiplayer was like playing the single player story with friends Perfect Dark on the N64 was what we thought the epitome of gaming. It was a hectic first person shooter just like Goldeneye (wand was in fact done by the same developer and many of the same team) but during this split screen mode we could have CPU controlled players known as bots. the bots could be on our team, be free agents, or fight in a coordinated group. They could have various difficulties (some of which are night impossible), and now the game wasn't us versus each other, it was us or them. Man vs. machine.
Once again we had to have a strategy, a plan that was constantly changing but always had to work. As each match drew to a close it was either time for a rematch or sodas while we discussed it laughing at the craziness of the game.
That was the epitome of splitscreen gaming for me, nothing could ever some close, until the team that worked on Perfect dark split off from Rare Ltd. to make Timesplitters for the PS2 and Timesplitters 2 and Timesplitters: Future Perfect for the Gamecube.
Timesplitters brought everything we loved of Goldeneye007 and Perfect Dark and took it to the next level. 64 playable characters, better graphics, more weapons, more bots in a match, more levels, more modes. We sat around the TV again, plotting to show the AI who was boss, and once more we were thrown into battle with celebrations and laughing and more than a fair bit of frustration and challenge.
Since then things have changed though. Online has become the new thing and splitscreen is dying slowly. these days finding a good spliscreen game is hard. Call of Duty 2, 3, 4, and World at War keep splitscreen alive along with Halo 1, 2, and 3... none of them has bots to play against. In 4 player splitscreen it's you and your friends, nothing else.
The graphics might be amazing, but the multiplayer, while good, is severely lacking. When playing with 3 friends you can have views like this, with nobody around and no action for minutes at a time. That is no fun. It's a step back to 1997 and Goldeneye. Timesplitters is dead, Perfect Dark suffered a horrible fate on the Xbox 360, and it seems that people are trying to distance themselves from social gaming. It seems to me that gamers are reverting back to the days when solitary gamers would sit in front of the glow of a TV not dealing with anyone, except now they talk through a headset to a nameless person across the world that they simply know as Gamer128 or some imaginative name like 1337FPSKilla.
When I bring this up to my friends in the industry I am told that online is the way to be, I should play with my friends there. Splitscreen sucks because you have to look at a small screen. Well, I'm worry that not everyone owns the consoles and games I do, or that we actually like seeing each other and don't mind splitting a 30 inch TV up (you know how much we would have killed for 30 inches back with goldeneye?)
It is sad that developers are so drawn up in chasing reality and the HD hype that they forgot what made gaming great. The gameplay. The people you game with, and how you game with them, can just as easily make or break a game as much as the GUI, controls, or graphics.
Developers, if you are going to put splitscreen in, go the extra mile and put in bots as an option (even 4 bots to offset the 4 players would be fine.) If you are going to have maps for online gaming, make them for offline too (this is a major problem for Call of Duty 4 imho), and lastly, stop being afraid of not being super amazingly realistic with your graphics, your graphics can be a little less realistic to accommodate some multiplayer mayhem from one system (who knows, you might actually be visually creative again).
We still play this on LAN against the PC, and once in a while on battle.net when everyone can't make it to one location For a bit of reference, my friends and I still play against the computer on PCs in Unreal Tournament 99, 2004, as well as Starcraft, Command & Conquer 3, Command & Conquer Red Alert 3, and other games. Usually thru LAN, we'd rather be in the same room than miles and miles away listening to some voice.
I should say that purely online does have it's place, but it should not be the only choice for multiplayer gaming. Sadly that is quickly becoming the case.
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