(title added for lemmy by mod)
Image description: 4 panel Loading Artist comic. 1: Blue guy stands behind Red guy playing a game on the couch “oh it’s a SINGLE-PLAYER game?”. 2: Blue guy scoffs “no thanks. Single-player games feel too lonely”. 3: Blue guy puts on gamer headset “that’s why I only play MULTIPLAYER games”. 4: Blue guy happily at his PC, while tweaking his game settings Voice Chat: OFF, Text Chat: OFF, Friend Requests: OFF.
(Originally published earlier today on mastodon.world)
Depends on the game. Just because verbal / written communication is turned off doesn’t mean there isn’t meaningful interaction in the game.
They say teabagging can say more than a thousand words.
Other than atmospheric games like Journey which already don’t have that, do you have any other examples of how they can interact and help you without talking, trading, or being able to do anything else than walk and crouch?
Anyone who has that stuff on and notices the person is mute/deaf settings is gonna move on and ignore you themselves.
It doesn’t make the experience better or even keep it the same. It will only make it worse. The meme also says/implies all interactive settings are toggled off. So no trading, no pings (which usually don’t exist in games with chat as well), no anything else than crouch and walk.
Players show intentions through actions.
You can turn off comms in FPSs and still communicate using game tactics. Smoke grenades to block off areas, laser pointers show where the player is looking, grenades to send sound signals, suppressing fire to block enemy players / signal your team to move.
Risk is an online game and players show their intentions through how they take their turns. What territories are they moving into, how far are they pushing, how are they fortifying at the end of their turn.
Chess has very common starting tactics that directly communicate the strategy they are going to employ. This is a type of communication without speaking.
These are all meaningful interactions, and are based purely on player agency within the game without comms.
That’s not how I interpreted it. Interaction is more than verbal / written communication.
Sorry, but in these cases you are ruining other people’s experiences so you can enjoy yours. You’re hampering them by being a handicap. There’s a reason why almost all people leave the lobby when one of these people show up.
Strange example, there is zero interactions other than what you do yourself. You’re not playing with people, that’s against.
Chess is same as above, and clearly not the type of games the meme is referencing.
No one says they are playing “multi” player games, than playing 1v1 games. They would say I’m playing risk, chess, checkers, etc.
The meme shows the three most common MP settings being toggled, what else would it be refering to here?
There is nothing in the comic that suggests co-op games only.
Competitive games require tactical interaction. Entities that are against each other are communicating with each other, even if they aren’t using words.
I would. If there is more than one human player, it’s a multi player game.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/multiplayer https://www.dictionary.com/browse/multiplayer https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/multiplayer
No one has stated that.
Which is part of the game and why they are playing it… that’s not what the meme is referencing dude… if you have a toggle to remove that function, the game no longer exists, that’s obviously not what the meme is referencing… sure maybe if there is some 2v2 versions of those games you would “interact” with your partner, but you also just turned all those settings off, and now you can’t coordinate, and circles back to handicapping and ruining their experience….
I think the meaning of this comic just flew right over your head. That or you are trolling and intentionally twisting definitions.
No one calls chess or checkers multiplayer games dude.
Except for the three dictionary definitions I provided. 😆
Yeah, that’s my original point. The comic is claiming that there is no communication in a multiplayer game when the voice and text chat is turned off. That a person can be “lonely” in a multiplayer game.
I’m claiming that there is still communication. I’m claiming that the comic’s premise is faulty.
I am arguing that it is possible to coordinate without voice or text chat.
Go tell one of your friends you’re playing a multiplayer game and see the look they give you when you say it’s checkers…. It’s not how people talk, it is “technically” but no one actually calls it that…
No it never claimed no communication, interactions. Since you can’t communicate with anything in a SP game… did you forget this key detail…?
You missed the intent of the comic, it happens, not everyone understands everything.
I’m moving on from this, peace.
Please explain, in detail, what you think the comic intends.
Again with the snide remark. Are you okay, dude? This isn’t that serious.
Nowhere does the comic say anything about trading, pings, or anything other than no voice chat, text chat, or friend requests. I don’t know where you inferred that from.
I agree with the comic about how stupid the argument that multiplayer games are more meaningful is when people turn all that stuff off first thing; however, as a girl gamer, I turn off voice and text chat and friend requests immediately in a game because I don’t need to be harassed while I just want to play a game. But there’s plenty of other ways to interact with players.
Take Dark Souls, for example. Famous for its asynchronous message system, but lacking any voice or text chat when you’re playing with other people. Your only forms of communication are any emotes or a handful of items that emit a stock phrase (like “hello” and “help me”) that you might get during your playthrough, and your in-game actions. This has led to the common friendly Souls greeting of…spamming the L1 button to wiggle your weapon back and forth. Or if you walk up towards a corner and pull up your shield, people might infer that you’re warning of an ambush around the corner.
Like seemingly everybody else in the world, I’ve been playing Helldivers 2 recently, and despite that game having a ping system, tagging of enemies and points of interest, stock phrases like “follow me,” and emotes, the most common interactions I’ve had with people have involved players just randomly diving into each other and running around in circles.
Without language, people will always find ways to interact with each other. And just because you’re not speaking with somebody doesn’t mean that they’re not enriching your gaming experience.
You are making other peoples experiences worse by forcing them to try and communicate with you in other means.
That time is going to cost them, you are ruining other peoples experiences when you do this.
Sure some people will put up with it, but there’s also a reason why most games are with new people. They bounce to get a better person to play with lmfao.
There is no meaningful interactions, only detrimental or people trying to make the best of a shitty situation. It’s not fun regardless.
Considering my experiences with in-game voice chat over the years, I think there’s a reason I have yet to run into even a single person with it enabled in Helldivers 2. And it’s not the poor quality that ingame voice chats usually have compared to dedicated programs like TeamSpeak and Discord.
I should correct myself and say that I’ve never turned text chat off in a game though. I can’t actually say I’ve ever even seen that as something you can do. That’s easy enough to ignore, or, like the text chat in Helldivers 2, is barely used by anybody.
You have an incredibly narrow idea of what constitutes communication and “meaningful interaction,” to the point where it’s clear that you’re a guy who only plays a very particular type of game where voice communication is key, or you only play with friends. The majority of people play games with voice chat disabled because of how toxic gamers are. Hell, LoL had to disable text chat and make bad behavior a bannable offense because of how toxic their community was. Being an asshole gets you put into a queue that’s only other assholes.
But go ahead and tell me how my and the rest of the team’s experience is enriched by having to listen to a kid a third of my age scream into his mic about how he’s going to face-fuck me for being a woman in a video game. I’m dying to know.
Pubg/apex/Warzone etc all have a ping system where you can tag things for your team mates, be that a weapon to pick up or an enemy location. They also have communication wheels where you can choose a pre selected chat message like “need ammo” or “thanks” for example
I played a mobile game for awhile called Brawl Stars and in it there was a mode that was FFA with maybe eight to a dozen players. You quickly picked up that there was this little dance people would do to communicate that they wanted to have a temporary cease fire with you so that together you could take down all the solo players not employing such a strategy more easily. The gaming jargon for this is “teaming”. Also by dancing I mean running or spinning in a circle, something that doesn’t really have preexisting meaning to players before coming across this phenomenon.
Okay so have you ever played Minecraft?