Gaming with an Expiration Date: The Ballad of Online Gaming

Gaming with an Expiration Date: The Ballad of Online Gaming

I’m a man of experience. Meaning, I love to experience things. Doesn’t matter if it’s an amusement park, Broadway show or just walking through a famous landmark. The experiences we have make up who we are. And likewise, the experiences we’ve had playing video games make up the gamers we are. Personally, I’m a fan of single player modes. I consider myself a video game connoisseur, so I almost view it as my duty to replay critically acclaimed and important games that had amazing single player campaigns. Doesn’t matter if it’s an N64 game or even a regular Playstation game. If I feel my knowledge as a gamer can benefit from the experience of a game then I’m playing it. That said, there is a certain aspect of gaming that this theory doesn’t apply to: online play.

More and more developers feel the need to put online multiplayer into games. In the beginning it started off simply as adding co-op to the campaign. But now, so much time and effort is spent beefing up the multiplayer experience that it dominates the overall content of the game. Whether or not this is a bad thing is a completely different story. But what I’m here to talk about is that this portion of the game is not permanent and in the future other gaming connoisseurs might not have the opportunity to experience it.

Gears of War MP

There are two ways that online gaming has an expiration date. The first and more immediate is because of popularity and age. Obviously, in order to have online multiplayer you need players. When a game first comes out people rush to play it so there are obviously going to be people online. But as time goes on gamers lose interest and the market for other players diminishes. For blockbusters such as Gears of War and Halo this will never be a problem. But for other lesser-known titles their playing field will eventually fade away with time. The shame is that some of these are really great games and their multiplayer was more than just an afterthought. Bioshock 2 was a blockbuster game when it first came out. And although the multiplayer really was fun, I can’t imagine there to be a never-ending list of matches to join now. And for something like Condemned 2, forget about it.

The other and more permanent of the two expiration dates comes when the men behind the scenes finally cut the cord connecting the players all around the globe. This could be when an MMO decides to shut down a server or simply stop people from hosting their own. The most well known example of this is when Microsoft decided to universally shut down X-Box Live for all none 360 titles. No other game felt the brunt of that decision more than Halo 2. Unlike its predecessors, the multiplayer experience of Halo 2 defined the online community. There was nothing like it before and (despite the technological and detailed advancements in online gaming) there will probably be nothing like it again. But unfortunately, gamers who missed the Halo 2 era of gaming will never be able to experience it.

Well, I shouldn’t say never. Through programs like GameSpy Arcade and X-Box Connect there are ways to still get a bootleg feel for online play. Also through remakes and re-launches there are constantly opportunities to re-visit things gamers may have missed out on the first time around, but it still won’t be the same. Halo 2 was the prime online multiplayer game in its day. Although it might still be fun in a re-launched fashion, things have changed. Technology has made games more detailed and in depth making H2 feel outdated. Also, Halo 2 came at a time when a breakthrough in the online gaming experience was needed. The atmosphere of the gaming community gave it an opportunity to be what it was and a situation like that may never arise again.

Halo 2 Multiplayer

But even more than the experience of the gamers, the main thing that gets to me is the hours and effort the developers put into an aspect of the game that isn’t permanent. Doesn’t matter if a novel is written today or centuries ago, a reader can still experience it. Same goes for a game. I still love to throw in an original Nintendo cartridge every once in a while for nostalgia sake. So the work the creators put into those games will never be for nothing. But when it comes to online gaming, sooner or later, that aspect of the game will be invalid. All the thought and effort that has gone into Gears of War 3’s multiplayer with the medals, ribbons, community, etc. will eventually fade away when the service is no longer offered. I don’t know if a situation like that has ever existed before in the arts, but as a creator, knowing that someday people would not be able to experience my work is kind of depressing.

Frank Martin is a contributing writer at flydrs.com.