Gaming is Better with Friends
There has always been two sides to gaming. The single-player and multi-player. Now strictly speaking sitting in front of a screen and taking turns on Super Mario is not multi-player in the sense as we know it now. It still enforces how gaming is a very social experience. In the past decade though it has really blown up. With the addition of playing with players from around the world, via Xbox Live and such, it has become normal to meet hundreds of people in a single day.
So much so that a lot of games today base a huge amount of their actual game play around this. It is vastly becoming involuntary to play with other people but it isn’t that bad. It can even be fun and I am going to show you how.
For some, their first ‘live’ experience was on the GameCube playing Phantasy Star Online using an $80 LAN adapter that tapped into the phone line. It opened up a whole new world to those of us who had nowhere to go but our living rooms. It opened up the opportunity to create new friendships or simply mutually beneficial relationships. Some have even spoke about obtaining a weapon called Durandal, some of which are still coveted by the players to this day.
But that was one of the good moments in a mess of some less than stellar occurrences. A diamond in the rough if you will. That being said, it’s not too hard to sit down and just have a good time with friends online. Even making new ones is easy. Let’s be honest here too, it’s the New Year. No better time to make new friends like the present.