'Seeking connection': video game where players stopped shooting, started talking

fooker

It has always puzzled me a little bit that shooting is a core mechanic in a majority of video games. Does this serve any purpose? Maybe it makes joining the military not too unappealing for teenagers.

dude250711

Mordhau is a bit like this. We also need Team Fortress 3 now.

klondike_klive

A while ago when I got Resident Evil on the Wii. I found myself really fed up and depressed with the pee and poo coloured levels and relentless misery (maybe I should have known better than to rent Resident Evil!) I had the idea of taking classic 3d videogame levels and landscaping them with flowers and benches. Executive function got the better of me, I but I still muse about it from time to time.

adzm

I'd love to mention the Endless Forest, an artistic game from nearly twenty years ago where you were a deer and there were no real goals and communication was entirely with deer gestures and sounds. The idea was great and it was fun finding random other people (as deer) and exploring the fantasy world together.

viktorcode

The game smartly sorts players into lobbies based on their aggressiveness towards others. And this is where it diverges from real life scenarios.

anthonj

I remember a lot of online servers from the Jedi Knight series where people would spend a lot of time talking (well.. writing in chat), messing around, making friendly duels or exploring weird custom mmaps. It was kinda weird considering the game type.

wafflemaker

When playing EvE online many years ago, I was surprised by one enemy militia player. Context: we were living partially in low sec systems where PvP was allowed. That's where PvP players from big alliances came when there were no 5k ppl fights for system control. I've noticed one enemy player consitently being very chivalry about fights. He returned loot to less experienced people he won a fight with and was always humble in both defeat and victory. He even once returned a very expensive module that dropped from my ship after he won a fight with me. And that showed clearly I wasn't a new player that needed taking care off. That taught me a lot about playing and general behavior in life. That it's not always about your results, but it's always about your style.

homeonthemtn

Hopefully we come full circle back to game lobbies. Game lobbies and fixed servers were the micro communities this article is dancing around. It worked remarkably well in the early days. I know I certainly miss it

Insanity

Many games with a dedicated servers browser back in the early 2000s just turned into chatrooms at night. I’ve seen that even in games that this article calls out as being just about “shooting” like cs. But it happened on ET, CoD, JK, etc.

incomingpain

Friendly Hoovies offer peace Sandviches and talk. Next level, you medic and heal the hoovies. Winning every round automatically by not fighting.

olalonde

The cynic in me is getting "submarine"[0] vibes from this article. [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

intended

Of all the recent video games, Arc raiders has been just good fun to watch. Cohh Carnage’s Arc Raider streams and saw many genuinely nice interactions, especially on rubber duck runs. Interestingly, Solo Arc Raiders has a very different vibe than team Arc Raiders. In the few group based streams I watched, players shot each other by default. In solo it was less competitive.

intended

Video games are incredible for the kinds of mini experiments and insights on human nature they throw up. Player driven economies are a case in point. Everyone joins the game at the same level, and same handicap. Yet you end up with the same power law dynamics of wealth concentration. Gaming is also one industry that does real research on online toxicity, and one of the more motivated sectors to finding a way to balance it out. This is something that makes the frequency of cooperation in Arc Raiders somewhat anomalous.

moribvndvs

Has this changed recently? I started playing at launch, and while initially it was a lot of fun and I had predominantly positive experiences, after a couple of weeks I quit because it devolved into little more than griefing. I don’t mind it getting a little sweaty here and there but I don’t have time for nonstop edgelords going lord of the flies in front of their 3 twitch viewers.

deflator

Reminds me of the coop mod for Half Life 1 years back. It completely removed PvP and set dozens of players against puzzles and waves of enemies.

jareklupinski

"It Takes a War" gets into the social part of multiplayer action games: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3919530/It_Takes_a_War/ (the store page and gameplay videos are purposely obtuse, its one of those 'dive in with no precognition for best results' kind of games)

melonpan7

I’ve always been fascinated about Arc Raiders since I’m more of a solo player these days. Might try it out next time it’s on sale, especially since I heard it runs flawless on Linux.