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VIDEO GAMES MADE ME TELEPATHIC - by Mr Biffo

24/3/2016

8 Comments

 
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I have two problems when it comes to playing games online with friends.

Problem number one is that most of my friends either play games on a different platform to me, or don't play games at all anymore, because I murdered them in their sleep, hilariously.

Problem number two is that the few friends I know who play games online seem to keep different gaming hours to me.

​Not that I even have regular gaming hours. I mean, it's a case of squeezing it in where I can find it. So to speak.

For a couple of weeks now, the great Larry Bundy Jr and I - if you've not subscribed to his YouTube channel, you should, because he's lovely - tried to find time to record a gameplay video of The Division together. We failed utterly, because we simply couldn't get our hours in synch.

This is a familiar story for me. Too familiar. Consequently, I tend to find myself heading online and playing with strangers. So to speak.

​I never know who I'm on a team with, beyond their screen name. Never know a thing about them. Don't venture to look at their profile. But I don't need to. See, these one-off friends and I... we share a knowing that goes, like, deeper than knowing.

​...I don't know what that means.

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OUT OF THE BOX
Basically, what I'm saying is this. People often mention that co-op only really works when you're playing with friends, communicating through headsets. Shooting the shiz, as these young people they have nowadays seem to say.

​I prefer the opposite. I like it when I don't have to make conversation, partly because I'm profoundly antisocial. I mean, I even bought a new headset last week, and I still haven't taken it out of the box. 

See, there's something that happens occasionally when you're playing online, that I find pretty amazing. It's been happening a lot in The Division, and the last time it happened for me was in Journey (a game which is almost entirely about nonverbal communication). And that thing is this thing: the players somehow unconsciously know what one another needs.

You don't tend to get it in your Call of Duties or Star Wars Battlefronts. Those games are too chaotic, too full of pyrotechnics. You see it when you have a game with a more considered pace, such as Journey, or one with a more strategic ebb-and-flow, like The Division.


The combination of bullet-sponge enemies, and a cover system means that the only real way to succeed in The Division is to suppress and flank; one player shooting at an enemy from the front, while the other sneaks around the side, like a dirty pig.

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THE STRATEGY
However, because I've become so profoundly anti-social, there's no way of being able to tell another player what I need from them, or being able to hear what they might need from me.

What's the strategy? Who's in charge? Who's doing what?

We have to communicate through subtle cues and tells; "Ohh... so that's what they want me to do...". Or I'll start doing something, and watch as a teammate hopefully follows my cue. And when that happens, it's a beautiful thing.

I don't even know why it's happening. I mean, we all communicate in the real world in a number of unspoken ways. Facial expressions. Body language. Even appearance; whoever coined a phrase 'don't judge a book by its cover' was clearly an idiot. Our appearance, what we present to the world, is always a reflection of something about who we actually are. It might be a way to invite the world in, or push it away, or project how we want to be perceived.

Yet you don't get all of this in The Division. It's stripped away. Alright, there's a modest character creation menu at the start of the game, but it doesn't exactly let you go nuts. It isn't Saints Row IV. Every player is reduced to some fairly limited sort of generic army man or woman.

​And yet... somehow... we're able to communicate without any of the sorts of tools we have in the real world. How? How is that? Witchcraft? Telepathy? What? How?

SIMPLY THIS
Is it simply this: because in The Division there's no room for lone wolves? You're there to achieve a common goal. You need to pull together, support one another. By helping someone else you're helping yourself.

Like in one mission, where my four man team and I tried four times to get into an enemy base, and each time we were wiped out.

On our fifth attempt, without anyone even laying out a plan, we held back. Picked the enemies off from afar, instead of rushing in. We learned that we had to watch one another's backs, and we learned what our roles were. I went up high and picked off enemies with my sniper scope. Two of my teammates crouched behind cover. Another flanked to the left and caused the herd to break up. From that point on, every skirmish was some version of that strategy.

I love it when that happens, and it has happened pretty much every time I've played. That's why I don't like playing with a headset, because I enjoy seeing that nonverbal communication, that trust and teamwork, develop between a group of players. It's something that can't be programmed into a game.

​It's something that only comes from an element that's outside of the developers' control: people being people. Sometimes we're awesome.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
VIDEO GAMES: A PRIMAL INSTINCT - BY MR BIFFO

THE FEEL THING BY - MR BIFFO
​

REVIEW-IN-PROGRESS: HAVE A LOOK AT THESE SHITTING BABIES WHILE I TELL YOU WHAT I THINK OF THE PS4 VERSION OF 'TOM CLANCY'S THE DIVISION' THUS FAR


8 Comments
Damon link
24/3/2016 10:24:12 am

For the most part I play on the same platform and the same games (at least somewhat) as my friends. I work mornings and every other person I know works nights. I hardly get to talk to most people I know much less try and play a game with them. By the time they're home I need to get to bed.

Also I can't play co-op team games because if a rando is rude to me then I will passive-aggressively make sure the team loses.

Reply
CdrJameson
24/3/2016 10:34:34 am

Trousers make you menacing and closed minded?
I shall rid myself of them at once!

Reply
Col. Asdasd
24/3/2016 11:39:37 am

Great post Mr. B. I'm a mad keen Dota 2 player, which is crazy because it's an ultra-competitve team game and I'm a chicken-hearted recluse.

I have to wade against fears of a lifetime of bungled social interactions to use my headset. Success in the game all but demands intense voice-comm communication at the higher levels - which I've comprehensively not reached, but am beginning to graze against, with much the same pleasure provided by grazing against a shin-level jutting brick in a poorly built wall.

I find that many of my anonymous teammates are similarly reticent on the comms. Instead, what passes for planning is an amalgamation of 'pinging' variously at enemies, allies or points of interest on the map, hastily-typed text in an exciting variety of languages, and a selection from a of stock phrases bound to a mouse gesture that are auto-translated for everyone depending on the language of their client.

And, of course, the secret and most satisfying ingredient, which is the telepathy you've described in your article. As rewarding as it is to hash out a proper plan, and as much having someone leading the team with their mic does to disperse the anger and anxiety that the game engenders, the highlights of the game are nevertheless those magical team fights that spring up out of nothing, everyone using their abilities in perfect sync like a routine out of West Side Story.

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Ganapanes
24/3/2016 01:37:02 pm

Thats exactly the reason why I love multiplayer in Dark Souls! There you have only a limited number of gestures to communicate and on X360 you were kicked out of group sessions if you tried to connect via voice chat. Even with a limited selection you can interpret the same gesture differently depending on context. Communicating successfully with raw/few tools is kind of rewarding I guess!

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Euphemia
24/3/2016 09:38:19 pm

Beat me to it, man. This to me is why Dark Souls gets the multi-player right. You can only be a total dick through your actions, and in combat coordination with others becomes intuitive pretty quickly.

And I don't have to listen to children angrily letting me know what they'll do to my mother when I take them and their stupid, giant, compensation-swords out with patience and a tiny blade.

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tinyswede
24/3/2016 01:46:36 pm

When internet gamers band together it is this: very lovely. I've had lots of great Division teamies, I've also been shot in the face and guts in the Dark Zone too but that's the nature of the beast.

Another great example is Bloodborne: lots of helpful notes left by people and there's always people to help you with Bosses. Even when PvP-ing there's the etiquette of the Bow/Wave/etc - stab - stab - stab - Bow/wave/etc. No teabagging here, Mister Watkins!

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Superbeast 2097
25/3/2016 08:09:33 am

I prefer randoms at times because if I have to leave, want to do something else or just get tired (my attention span has dropped with age) I can just drop group and not feel guilty.

It is great in mmo's though especially on hard content where you join a group of randoms who by sheer luck all know the score and you storm through with perfect synergy and no one saying or typing a word.

Would it be better or worse if it were just really good AI and not a real person? What if you didn't know which you were playing with? How do you know the others in Journey are real?

If developers could create such an AI would I stop playing with real people?

When playing with friends we get to talk about our experiences in real life after. With randoms you don't get that. I guess in that sense good AI could be as good as randoms.

I've become quite attached to AI companions in games before, even if they were just glorified ammo dispensers or mobile storage crates!

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Cc
25/3/2016 09:09:13 pm

Sunglasses - Hiding something, but what?
I'm guessing your eyes.

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