Gaming with your own kind
Xbox Live is a great platform for online console gaming but there is one problem that consistently rears it's ugly head every time I attempt to play a game's multiplayer feature: other people.
This may seem like a bit of a paradox to some. Why would I even bother to play a game online if I lost a little faith in humanity every time I loaded up a multiplayer game? This is because many A+ quality games are mainly designed to be played with other people. For example, Left 4 Dead 2 is a triumph of the co-op shooter genre but due to the common denominator of the general Xbox Live populace being so dreadfully low it makes it next to impossible for a normal person to enjoy.
Imagine yourself (a grown adult) playing a game with a room full of nasally 14 year olds that feel to need to describe every action they are performing (I'm climbing down this ladder now guys!), trash talking 20 year olds that spew forth a stream of expletives in response to every source of stimuli in the game, and that one guy that plays the game 10 hours a day and is so much better then everyone else that it is almost pointless to play. That is what joining a public game on Xbox Live is like. Fun? No, not for me.
I believe the reason that Xbox Live is home to the dregs of gaming society is simple: accessibility. All someone essentially has to do is go to Walmart, buy an Xbox, go home and plug it in to their internet and they are online. It is the most popular console on the market in terms of playing games online and technology has advanced to the point where almost everyone has high speed internet in their home. The high price of Playstation 3 has been a barrier keeping out many gamers and the price and technical aspects of maintaining and upgrading a PC prevents many people that aren't tech savvy from gaming on that platform.
There is an interesting article in the January edition of Game Informer where Marc Whitten (the GM of Xbox Live) is being interviewed. The interviewer (Matt Helgeson) asks "This is more of a cultural issue, but there can be a nastiness in the community on Xbox Live... Is there anything you can do to alleviate that?" Marc Whitten's response is essentially "I'd like to get better about telling you that you're walking into a bar and not the zoo." This makes sense to me and I'd love for them to persue that line of thought.
When an adult wants to relax or have fun they don't go out to Chuck E. Cheese or a college student lounge. They find people their own age to hang out with or go to a bar or a restaurant or something of that nature. To a kid McDonald's is the height of culture and Chuck E. Cheese is their Mecca. They would get kicked out on sight at a bar. A college kid hangs out in dorm rooms or lounges or parking lots and aren't quite adults but not kids any more.
Gaming has become a mainstream norm and the business of video games is now bigger then both the movie industry and the music industry. Modern Warfare 2 just eclipsed 1 billion dollars in sales. I think it is time for the game industry to upgrade their moderation department. There are enough people playing games now that it makes sense to break them into different groups rather then clump everyone together in hopes that enough people are available to fill games. Breaking people into different age groups online should be getting serious consideration from game developers out there, especially for Xbox Live.
On a platform like Xbox Live you should be presented with the option of playing with people in your own age group or playing with anyone else that doesn't care about their age group. The age groups should look something like this:
I'm not sure if a change that big could be worked into the current version of Live but it should be something that developers are looking at for the future in the next generation of consoles. In my opinion it would be a drastic improvement over the current service they are providing.
This may seem like a bit of a paradox to some. Why would I even bother to play a game online if I lost a little faith in humanity every time I loaded up a multiplayer game? This is because many A+ quality games are mainly designed to be played with other people. For example, Left 4 Dead 2 is a triumph of the co-op shooter genre but due to the common denominator of the general Xbox Live populace being so dreadfully low it makes it next to impossible for a normal person to enjoy.
Imagine yourself (a grown adult) playing a game with a room full of nasally 14 year olds that feel to need to describe every action they are performing (I'm climbing down this ladder now guys!), trash talking 20 year olds that spew forth a stream of expletives in response to every source of stimuli in the game, and that one guy that plays the game 10 hours a day and is so much better then everyone else that it is almost pointless to play. That is what joining a public game on Xbox Live is like. Fun? No, not for me.
I believe the reason that Xbox Live is home to the dregs of gaming society is simple: accessibility. All someone essentially has to do is go to Walmart, buy an Xbox, go home and plug it in to their internet and they are online. It is the most popular console on the market in terms of playing games online and technology has advanced to the point where almost everyone has high speed internet in their home. The high price of Playstation 3 has been a barrier keeping out many gamers and the price and technical aspects of maintaining and upgrading a PC prevents many people that aren't tech savvy from gaming on that platform.
There is an interesting article in the January edition of Game Informer where Marc Whitten (the GM of Xbox Live) is being interviewed. The interviewer (Matt Helgeson) asks "This is more of a cultural issue, but there can be a nastiness in the community on Xbox Live... Is there anything you can do to alleviate that?" Marc Whitten's response is essentially "I'd like to get better about telling you that you're walking into a bar and not the zoo." This makes sense to me and I'd love for them to persue that line of thought.
When an adult wants to relax or have fun they don't go out to Chuck E. Cheese or a college student lounge. They find people their own age to hang out with or go to a bar or a restaurant or something of that nature. To a kid McDonald's is the height of culture and Chuck E. Cheese is their Mecca. They would get kicked out on sight at a bar. A college kid hangs out in dorm rooms or lounges or parking lots and aren't quite adults but not kids any more.
Gaming has become a mainstream norm and the business of video games is now bigger then both the movie industry and the music industry. Modern Warfare 2 just eclipsed 1 billion dollars in sales. I think it is time for the game industry to upgrade their moderation department. There are enough people playing games now that it makes sense to break them into different groups rather then clump everyone together in hopes that enough people are available to fill games. Breaking people into different age groups online should be getting serious consideration from game developers out there, especially for Xbox Live.
On a platform like Xbox Live you should be presented with the option of playing with people in your own age group or playing with anyone else that doesn't care about their age group. The age groups should look something like this:
- Children up to 12 years old
- 13-18
- 18-25
- 25-35
- 35-55
- 55+
I'm not sure if a change that big could be worked into the current version of Live but it should be something that developers are looking at for the future in the next generation of consoles. In my opinion it would be a drastic improvement over the current service they are providing.
