It's not a particularly novel concept, but it is interesting to look at how we play games with our friends in terms of space and time. Are we playing together in the same room, or are we in separate places and competing over the internet? Are we playing together at the same time, or can our play time be mutually exclusive? It should seem quite obvious that the most popular form of multiplayer gaming is remotely synchronous. Every online shooter falls under this category, and it's this category of competitive gaming that companies spend the most amount of time and money on... Right?
Well, it's not entirely true, and I'll get to that in a bit. First, let's look at which realm the first form of competitive gaming was in: co-located synchronous. Spacewar! and Pong were both strictly multiplayer games that required both players being in the same room looking at the same screen. It's interesting to note this, because the next wave of arcade games were almost all single-player. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong; just about every other old-school arcade game you can think of is single-player, but they did issue in the second realm of multiplayer gaming: co-located asynchronous. While you were not directly competing against anyone, every game had a leaderboard, so you took turns going for the best score, and in that way you were competing against everyone who came before you and everyone who would come after you.
So, if you think about it, leaderboards are still the most common form of competitive gaming, but now they're all online. Just about every Xbox 360 game has some sort of online leaderboard, but when the boards are so expansive they tend to lose meaning. They're great for competing for the best kill-to-death ratio in Call of Duty or the for the highest Pacifism score in Geometry Wars 2, but they're such minimalist interactions that they barely qualify as competition. In fact, they're more of a meta-game than a game, since you don't play leaderboard. So, if you exclude leaderboards, the most common form of competitve gaming these days falls in the remote synchronous quadrant. While I would never complain about this, I would like to enjoy games in the other realms as well.
Party games, much like blockbuster PC games, seem to be a dying breed, which is just a shame. Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo: Combat Evolved pretty much mark the the last hurrahs of co-located synchronous gaming. We definitely live the age of online gaming, and the problem with it how impersonal it can be. Sure, split screen was and still is a nightmare, but we've become so spoiled by Xbox LIVE and the like that it's almost become taboo. Hell, Call of Duty and Battlefield won't even allow you take a friend online with you, which is almost unforgivable. LIVE games are great for keeping in touch with friends who've moved away, but it's ridiculous that if I'm hanging out with a group of friends and we all want to play our favorite multiplayer game, everyone has to return to their respective residences to play on their on 'Boxes. These days, the only company that seems to still encourage the party game is Nintendo...which not-at-all coincidently has the worst online gaming network.
So, there's my little rant about synchronous games, but what about the asynchronous? Well, if you take leaderboards out of the equation, they don't exist all that much. There are turn-based games like Chess or Advance Wars, but are they truly asynchronous? I guess I'll accept a "yes," especially if you're playing Advance Wars on a single Gameboy since people usually take turns observing the gamespace.
Something that I hadn't seen very often until quite recently is the asynchronous remote game. The first game of this type I remember enjoying was Scrabulous on Facebook. Now I play Words with Friends on my iPhone, and it's essentially the same thing, but I like it better because playing it on my phone is far more convenient. It's absolutely fantastic. For those who don't know, it's the classic Scrabble board game (with a few minor changes to avoid copyright infringement), but you can take as much time as needed between turns and simply play at your convenience. It's a way to throw in some quality gameplay with friends while you should be doing something else. I would love to see more games like this in the future.I'd love to see more original games of this type that aren't adaptations of established board games like Chess or Scrabble. Advance Wars (well, it'd have to be a copycat of it) would be particularly great.
So, anyway, I hope I've given you guys something to think about while I'm out of town this coming week. For those of you familiar with Words with Friends, check out the 1500+ point play in the picture above. Somebody had the play of a lifetime; although I suspect it didn't come about organically.
--Chilly P
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