A recent house move saw me disconnected from this here interwebs for about 3 weeks. It wasn’t like I was totally cut off mind – the office handily providing a connection 9-5, but booting to my regular gaming rig without a connection was like booting up a husk of a machine. The internet is part of me, I love it, and I want to celebrate it..
Gaming, obviously, pretty much relies on an internet connection now. Sure you can just about get by without, but not for very long I would suggest. Installs often need activating and games need patching, but that’s just the fundamentals of it. The internet has advanced every aspect of our gaming – dlc was invented, achievements implemented and stat tracking carried out as we play so developers know what works and what doesn’t. It reminds us too that other people exist; online leaderboards, game forums, and just generally letting us hook up with other gamers. It’s far beyond being a tool to make games work, it’s integral to our gaming experience.
Often, it’s nice to have a little break from what you’re playing and just have a little chat through steam. Get some advice, talk about what you’re doing. Whatever. Playing none stop, purely solo, doesn’t feel right now. I’m connected to all these people, and I love that. Gaming has always been a social thing. Fun, I suppose, has always been a social thing (apart from that special fun time at 1.am which you can also thank the internet for) and we like to share it with people. When you’re enjoying something, you want to tell people about it. Hell, isn’t that why this and another ten billion sites about videogames exist? We like to chat, discuss and have stupid arguments while we play.
Multiplayer is the logical extreme of this, and one that has flourished because of this inter-connectivity. Left 4 Dead, Supreme Commander, Team Fortress 2 for gods sake. Never has interaction between complete strangers been so amazing. And it is amazing – all these people are having fun together, sharing an experience, and often making friends. Sprawling communities have been made out of multiplayer games, you only need to look to WoW or EVE to see some mind-boggling examples of it, and these communities spill into real life. Online Multiplayer is a spectacular, joyous experience and one that helps define pc gaming.
Using Digital distribution to actually get these games is somewhat of a revelation too. I hate disks, they break, they need my attention. Downloads though, especially through steam, just don’t. Double click, install, super fast download, play. It’s brilliant, especially when someone is requesting a multiplayer of something I don’t have installed right now. Oh, and auto patching. God that’s good. Not having to worry about version numbers or download sites or incompatibilities.
As I said earlier, sometimes you need a break from what you are playing, just a distraction for a minute or two. Whether it be a chat on steam, a quick browse at the latest gaming news, or 10 minutes on some weird flash game currently doing the rounds, there are plenty of things crying for your attention. Twitter is probably the best one though. I don’t generally do social networking but twitter, for me, is like one continually interesting thread on a forum that includes only people you invite. It’s effectively my gaming journalism hub where I can fire off little messages to the coolest people in pc gaming. And, you know, people are friendly on there, well the lovely people who I follow anyway. And sod it, I’ll drop some names – @jazmcdougall, @richardcobbett, @chrisevoevans, @chaossmurf and @the_b, these people are part of my internet, my gaming internet, they help make it wonderful and if you care about pc gaming at all you should be following them.
These people write fantastic words about this hobby of ours; the more successful among them writing for print magazines, sharing their thoughts with thousands. They all write on the internet though, spreading their delicious thoughts on gaming with the entire world. And these thoughts are funny, insightful, often enchanting, and when you combine some of the other fantastic places on the internet you see what amazing things there are for us pc gamers to read. Take narrative flood – a look into gaming narrative, or the blue casket – dedicated to game diaries, The Reticule and RPS – the only other 2 pc gaming blogs I take seriously, or even Jazmeister Central – a blog of a crazy person whose now hit the big time. They are all different and all worth your precious time.
The Internet is hooked into pretty much everything, and with gaming it’s omni present. It affects every single game that’s released, and it makes every single experience better. Whether it’s just making getting your games easier, making playing them more fun, or just reading about them more accessible and varied, the internet is there to help. And obviously this is an extremely fast and broad overview, because any of the topics mentioned above could make for an entire article unto themselves, and they would all be positive. I fucking love the internet, it is constantly surprising and amazing and it has changed the future of gaming more than anything else before it. We should all celebrate it.
I like the fact that the internet is there, but I don’t like the fact we’re starting to move to the point where it’s required. I’ve never liked the fact that I needed the internet for so many games. Even Steam I refused to use until about 2 years ago. The internet is good IF you have it. Otherwise you hate it silently.
But who doesn’t have the internet now? If you don’t gaming is probably the least of your worries.
I didn’t have it on this machine until about 6 months ago. I had the internet, but this awesome gaming machine I had was rendered for it’s primary purpose because of a lack of a connection.
You’ve already heard about the fact my wireless card is playing up at the moment, but I figured out that it’s only happening when my mum is using her laptop downstairs.
So get a couple of homeplugs and off you go. They do lan over power flawlessly. Problem solved.
The only alternative to this internet lark is going back to disk distribution – and who the fuck wants that? Get with the times man!
You assume that I have the time and/or the motivation to do it at the moment. Then again, I am planing on convincing the powers that be to update to homeplug. It seems to me that it’s the future.
The point still stands: The constant need for the internet is slightly worrying sometimes. Especially with GFWL: http://xr.com/093k
To me, that’s like saying ‘the need for cars is worrying at times. Look at skoda.’
It’s essential to the modern western environment. I don’t want to get into why we need the ability to instantly distribute and communicate; just because some people are doing it badly doesn’t mean that it’s the platforms fault.
For every thing that GFWL does wrong, Steam does something right. For every bad bit of net code there is a new indie game released for free, only able to reach the masses because of this wonderful thing.
I agree that Steam does a lot of things right, but as I stated above, if you have a connection everything is fine and dandy. If not, then you hate the world.
Lol.. the Internet is definitely great with games or without. But really I cant imagine how it would be if you don’t have the internet or its terrible slow. It would be like living a nightmare!