Why we love gaming

I was talking to a friend recently who said that he would never play Fifa because he thought, if he ever felt like playing football, he would much rather get a ball and a few mates and head down the local park. This got me thinking. Is the reason we play games all down to escapism or is there something else?

Taking my mates comments in mind, if I wanted to play war games, surely I could join the Army. There, eventually, I would be given a gun and I would be able to run around a battlefield at some point, shooting bogies all over the place and making sure I kept my frag-score high. This, however, sounds more like scary, scary shit than jump-for-joy fun! I think the problem here is that if I die in real life, respawning ain't so easy. In fact, some might call it impossible. Since ending my life isn't exactly what I had in mind, the next best thing is to grab a copy of Call of Duty 4 and shoot the shit out of my friends. This is fair, I think.

Let's get a little bit more ridiculous with this. The reason for the controversy behind Manhunt and Manhunt 2 was that, if these acts were to be carried out in real life (Manhunt is about making snuff videos), one would most certainly be locked away for quite some time. Also, I don't know about you but I find the prospect of making snuff videos rather immoral. So, people who agree with me (that should be most of you) can play this game and get away with it. This obviously is escapism. It creates a world where the immoral and the highly illegal are allowed and won't get anyone hurt (except for the minds of young children everywhere!).

Grand Theft Auto has a similar means of escaping the real world. You can steal a car, drive to the gun shop, buy an arsenal, sleep with a lady-of-the-night in the daytime, kill some cops, run some innocent pedestrians down, smash the car up trying to jump over a river and calmly walk home and go to sleep. There is a way for Americans to escape everyday life too; fly a plane? earn some money? go to a gym? Anyway, my point is that escaping real life by committing crimes in a video game is something that occurs often.

Let's bring it closer to home. If I wanted to, I could go and buy a skateboard from a shop in town and I'll be skating in mere minutes. However, if I ever wanted to pull off a 360 flip to Crooked grind... well, it would never happen. So therefore, a brilliant game called Skate was invented so that I don't have to humiliate myself. This is a game that allows me to achieve pro skater status without ever falling off and killing my chances of procreation.

So here is where I prove my friend that he's an idiot. Take all of the sports that I can't at least reasonably well; skateboarding, golf, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, snowboarding, race driving, etc. All of these are sport that I could never play to a skilled level even if I practiced everyday. This is why I play them on consoles, because it allows me to play them to a skilled standard. The same could be said of the sports that I do play, even if I'm a bit rubbish; American Football, Football, Rugby. Playing these sports on a computer allows me to play at a level I could never reach. This still isn't enough to claim escapism though.

I think there's something else. Maybe I enjoy games on a different level than simulating what I want to do in life. Some games run on a narrative and then the game turns into something more like a film where, instead of escaping my own life, I'm involving myself in someone else's. This can't be said of sports games, however. Some games are just about playing. Pacman has no real-world values and no narrative but I love playing it. The same goes for Tetris. Maybe sports games are the closest things we have these days to arcade games and, while they play no real part in escaping our lives because we could play them ourselves for real, they are fun to play. They don't need to replace the real thing, it isn't a choice of one or the other, they are both there for the enjoyment of all.

Games are fun and we enjoy them, sometimes because of the escapism, sometimes because of the narrative and sometimes because we just do.

Where's the multiplayer gone?

I've had a little bit of a revelation recently. I had a few mates round for a bit of a lads night, beer and Xbox, like old times. I was reminiscing back to days of Mario Kart and Golden Eye, four player madness, laughing like never before and frantic shouts, basically getting carried away. These memories are my fondest of gaming. I hadn't had a night like that in ages so I arranged it. There have been a lot of good games out on the 360 lately; Call of Duty 4, Skate, PGR4, all of which I had really enjoyed online (except for Skate, EA can't seem to do online justice) and I was really looking forward to taking a few mates to school. Here's where the disappointment came in. Game developers don't care about offline multiplayer any more.

All three games have severely stripped down versions of the online multiplayer for offline play. CoD4 has allowed you only to choose its pre-set classes, has fewer of the game modes and fewer maps. The classes do not have all of the perks and not all of the weapons. You cannot custom make your own classes. This is very disappointing. The game was still amazing fun, and I really cannot slate the game apart from this (see my review).

Skate, on the other hand, only allows players to play the type of games where you take it in turns. This, to be honest, is fucking shoddy! Their choice to do this might have been to do with not wanting to split the screens but I was really hoping to have competitions of "best trick" or freeskate and such. On the other hand I'm brought modes like "Spot battle" and "S-K-A-T-E". These modes are tedious as they need players to take it in turns. While appreciating your mates tricks is probably the idea, it can incredibly tedious. I certainly wish there could be death races or spot battles, some of the stuff that's on the online multiplayer.

PGR is the worst offender. I don't particularly like the game, I don't like racing games really, but I thought racing against mates would be fun... if I was actually allowed. The game only allows for two players to race against each other. This is SHIT! I'm sorry but when four controllers can be connected to an Xbox and you can probably have 8 players in a race, why the FUCK can't we play four player? This is just fucking stupid!

Anyway, I was very disappointed. I hate being disappointed. I know that it must be difficult for game devs to make a complete game in little time these days. There's the extra side to gaming these days, online gaming, which must take a lot more programming than before. I understand that this must make the work load double but these are just excuses to me because in my opinion they have taken a half arsed approach to one essential part of any game.

There's another thing. Wii has no problem making great offline multiplayer games, in fact, some may argue that all it has is great party games but for some reason it can't seem to get the online right. Is this the choice I'm going to have to put up with in future, one or the other? It makes me feel quite annoyed that I may never be able to play Warioware offline or that I might never play Skate with mates in a way that it was meant to be played.

Maybe I'm being silly. Maybe I should get with the times. Maybe I should just realise the facts that I have argued here. I just can't help but feel slightly cheated.