This is also Gen-X trait but only if you got bullied for not eating paint chips back in the day.
I want to do more than win a match, I want to beat the game. You can’t beat multiplayer.
Also, singleplayer exists to entertain me personally. I can pause, quit, restart, mod, cheat, and engage in completely counterproductive nonsense whenever I like. I don’t have to worry about game balance, fairness and making sure the computer has fun.
Also, while I’m sure a majority of people in multiplayer aren’t assholes, it can seem that way when the assholes are the only ones who do anything but silently play the game.
This isn’t a generational thing. I’m the same way, and I’m Gen X.
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Counterstrike and Starcraft used to be my jam. I’m less invested in the more modern games, where everything feels too frenetic and I don’t know any of the maps anymore. But I’m also deeply psychologically scared by the old TV show Reboot. You’re telling me every time I win a game of Mario Kart, a small neighborhood in the Computer World gets nullified? That’s horrible! I would never!
This is their personal preference and has nothing to do with their generation
As an “elder Millennial,” who do you think drove traffic on WoW, Half Life, Halo, COD, etc?
That’s definitely elder millennial more than younger millennial
I’m young x and I feel this way as well.
Yup, born in 1982 and I feel this way. I’m too old for competitive twitch-shooters (bloody shame that, I used to love them). Most other games are shit for online gaming.
Only thing I ever play online is survival games with my brother, who lives 500 km away from me. It’s more of a reason to talk for longer sessions though.
Same. I just watch StarCraft now. I was never that good to begin with, but playing now is likely to make my withered heart explode.
Started out on my Dad’s Atari 2600, and other than PvE WoW and a couple odd games, I never bothered with multiplayer as most apparently know it. The few times I set my flag to PvP in WoW taught me all I needed to know about it.
I was the opposite. I started playing wow not realizing there were different servers and just joined the one my buddy was on…when I got to the pvp point I realized that I couldn’t attack the horde players and was like “wtf is this shit?” And rerolled onto a pvp server. Lol
TIL that millenials are just Gen X nerds.
That’s fine and all but I’m technically an elder Millenial, and we definitely played online pvp games when I was in high school. I was there for the first counterstrike alpha/beta. My brother and I spent an entire week playing CS one time while my parents were in a trip, 10 hours a day with breaks for pizza. We had a system for sharing play because we only had the one desktop… lol.
We had quake lan parties and even did a quake tourney in our school computer lab because this was before they really sorted out locking the computers down. I feel like tribes and unreal tournament were out pretty quick as well. Quake arena. Half life multiplayer and then CS, day of defeat, etc.
Super toxic online was sorta a thing, but I feel like that didnt mainstream until COD lobbies on consoles, and the advent of voice chat. Or rather most of the servers I played on were specific servers, hosted by people with admins, and while people would misbehave, you generally wanted to not get banned and keep coming back—you knew the other names and such, so that had an ok moderating effect.
Oh thanks for the nostalgic trip! Tribes was so fun. CS was so fun. Day of Defeat was my jam! Did you ever play Pirates Vikings Knights? 😆
I think I missed pirates viiings knights, sad now!
It was a half-life mod just like CS and DoD. PVK wasn’t very popular but it was damn good fun. Three teams against each other, and each ‘race’ had three separate classes in each. Playing as a pirate captain and sending your parrot to go attack another was the highlight of my playing time lmao.
Edit here’s a game play video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpKxkIxnNsg
I had some pet birds when I was younger and played in those cesspool cod xbox lobbies. I would end up derailing the vitriol because everyone would be like, “the fuck, is that a bird? Why is there a bird?”
Hahah brilliant, love it. Definitely the best way to end that stuff—surprise them or confuse them.
I am 36 and my wife is 35. I do not enjoy online multi-player games, and my wife pretty much exclusively plays them. I think this is about people’s specific anxieties rather than age.
Wow, are you me? My SO and I are about the same age and also have similar tastes as you and yours. It’s almost like people have different tastes in video games…
As a mid-50’s genXer I wholeheartedly agree.
When I read this, I definitely pictured Gen X or elder millennial first.
There’s a reason xennials sometimes get call the Oregon trail gen
Also mid 50 gen-x’er. Completely agree.
I don’t play a lot of multiplayer, but I love co-op. That’s why my favorite game to play online is Monster Hunter. Lets beef at the computer together
For me, always has been
Honestly never understood the appeal of multiplayer as an older Gen-Z. I guess it’s like sports, some people just like the spirit of competition.
Exactly. I like and play sports a lot, I get my competition there. I didn’t need it in my games.
Yeah if you don’t like team sports you’ll never get it
Sports are an example of where I need multiplayer. The only way they can make Madden against the computer hard is by making opponents just arbitrarily blow through tackles, making (bad) opposing QBs have magic awareness of the field and silly accuracy, etc.
Playing other humans online allows a level playing field (well, if I didn’t use the Patriots this year) and makes the chess match of play calling actually meaningful. I can disguise my looks and mix up play calls and have it actually cause confusion, instead of having the computer complete unaware of context.
Also humans are much more interesting due to the variability of styles. Like bots tend to become predictable, as would be the case if you played the same humans every time…but having different humans makes the competition much more entertaining.
I’d love to get my variety from a franchise mode. Unfortunately, while the actual football sim is clearly and consistently progressing, all their game mode investment is into Ultimate Team trash.
But there’s just no middle ground on difficulty. All Pro is a cakewalk and All Madden has to cheat hard. Until they manage to get the AI to an advanced enough level, people are the only way I can play.
Most other stuff the AI works better. Stuff like Sniper Elite (on a completely unrelated note, the way they use the PS5 triggers is insanely satisfying), you can make extremely interesting with simpler, rule based decision trees because of the freedom you have to set up maps and encounters to use them effectively. Sports are just so constrained and high precision that “accurate” AI would involve 22 players on the field considering the play call, the history of play calls, the game situation, the traits (or at least archetypes) of every other player on the field, etc. It’s a lot more challenging than most people recognize.
Older millennial, I was a teenager when Xbox live started and I spent thousands of hours in various multiplayer lobbies. I don’t play online really anymore because of I’m burnt out on either supremely toxic mother fuckers or just try hards that only want to win and not enjoy the challenge and competition of a good match. So I’ll just go where I can have fun my way, which happens to be alone, or being yelled at by best friend as he runs from a monster either one.
