Social Gaming and the Death of Physical Interaction

 In the early days of gaming, before video games existed things we’re different. A young group of friends would gather together at their usual place. They would get out a deck of cards or a board game and have a fun time eating junk food and laughing together. Later they would say goodbye and head off back to their own homes while remembering the fun social time they just had.

Is this our future?

It’s the year 2044, you are alone sitting on the couch in your house. Your neural implant brings up a notification through your optical interface. It is a message from your friend Michael. You read the message hovering in the upper corner of your vison “Hey Adam, want to join us for a game of capture the flag?”; “Sounds like fun” you reply. With your hands you navigate through your GII (Google Internal Interface) and select the capture the flag game. The game world appears before you and your avatar spawns beside Adam. The timer counts down from 10. “You ready?” asks Adam. “Yeah this’ll be easy, I’ve been practising offline” you reply.

Now that future narrative may be a bit of a stretch but is it completely unbelievable? There is a stark contrast between those two scenarios. As things are today social gaming is quite mixed between physical and digital. As I write this the World Cup is going on, being watched by millions across the planet. People are watching real athletes in peak physical condition expend all their energy trying to win game after game.

Fans watching The International DOTA2 tournament.

At the same time as the world cup, another big gaming event is taking place. The playing field for this one however is inside a computer generated virtual world. The International being held in Seattle Washington is an e-sports tournament where participants play a competitive video game. At the time of writing the prize pool for the winners is over $10 million, with first place winning nearly $5 million.

While the majority of people watching both of these events is viewed through video streams over the internet. There are the diehard fans that make the trip to the live events to cheer on their favourite team in person. What is so interesting is that while the people attending the World Cup are watching their favourite athletes running around after the ball. The people attending The International are watching people sitting at their computers clicking away at the screen, moving their digital avatar toward victory.

Of course video games can be a social experience too. Looking back to the board game example of a friends meeting at one of their respective houses to enjoy each other’s company, video games can be like this too. A great example of this would be the recent release of Mario Kart 8 for the Nintendo Wii U game console. Mario Kart is the type of game where you want to have four friends together on the couch interacting and engaging in friendly trash talking.

Though games where you can get your friends and physically play together do exist, they used to be much more prevalent. Unfortunately ‘couch multiplayer’ games are somewhat of a dyeing genre. With the Internet so ubiquitous across the world, the majority of games are played online and communicating with your friends via a headset.

Who knows where technology will take us in the future. Are we headed towards a time where digital interaction is the norm and physical meet ups are few and far between?

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Sean McParland

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15QPfuUAdug#t=245

http://www.dota2.com/international/overview/

http://files.tested.com/photos/2013/10/07/54018-31949-led_eyes_teasre.jpg

http://morganc4.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/7914517682_e50e60dbd4_o.jpg