Why I Stopped Loving Multiplayer Games

foreign I have been playing multiplayer games religiously since I was a shitty little squeaker boy you see one day I moved to a country where I could finally have access to a most hallowed and fabled thing the internet suddenly a whole new world was revealed to my underdeveloped little mind Counter-Strike Team Fortress 2 Unreal Tournament Halo 2 I was instantly hooked my tiny child brain could not have fathomed the world of possibility that the internet would open up for me when it came to gaming I'd already fallen in love with single player titles Half-Life 1

was the first game I ever played from start to finish and Combat Evolved was my first ever console game so you could say I was already in too deep not to be sinking multiplayer however it changed everything see I was always really anti-social not out of some awkwardness in my own nature or an inability to make friends or communicate if anything I have literally no shame and I'm near and capable of feeling social anxiety it was more a case of I have always been very picky with who my friends are the internet changed this suddenly

I was hopping from Lobby to Lobby making friends with everyone from fellow squeakers like myself Mike speaking every shrill cry and swear to people three times my age juggling their free time so they could get one more game on Halo before the wife got back home with the kids this was quite frankly a golden age from Full Xbox parties on COD where everyone was discovering a plethora of new mother-related insults to entire weekends wasted on Halo custom games with the boys infection fat man Jenga if your brain could think it the community would have already

made it to this day there has never been a more welcoming and fun atmosphere in online gaming at least in my experience I still cherish many of the memories I made playing in these lobbies and some of the people I met I am still friends with to this day so when did it all go wrong when did all of what made multiplayer enticing and joyous to me finally curl up and die well I assume you're at least somewhat literate since you're operating your device of choice and clicking this video so you already know that that's

what we're going to be talking about in real explicit detail the money game the first point probably isn't news to anyone in fact it's an inescapable reality of our current video gaming industry and unfortunately capitalist society as a whole Money Talks baby oh yeah we're starting with good old-fashioned dirty greed have you noticed that as time goes on you're unlocking less and less and less and less in your online shooty bang bangs by actually playing the game is it starting to argue that we once had games would fully realized progression systems where you'd unlock through

actual play time and enjoyment a variety of class options weapon attachments cosmetics and other stuff that just made you feel that dopamine hit non-stop straight to the veins well fear no more little ones Papa greedy publisher is here and he's going to make sure to protect you from that scary scary dopamine no no no you shouldn't be allowed to Feel the Rush of progression and increasing customization without forking out some money it's for your own safety after all I mean what else can we do to protect you from this horrible and addictive chemical no no

don't look at that that's not important that addiction is fine this one is not move along now what's in the box what's in the [ __ ] box if your brain still processes basic information you're getting the gist of where I'm going greed has stripped down multiplayer experiences the absolute most basic form take OverWatch 2 for an example they've removed the terrible loot box system at least at the time of recording you know the one that encourages gambling and children and what do they replace it with ah right just hard cash you don't earn jack

[ __ ] anymore in OverWatch too no your rank go up or your rank go down that is the only real progression you get nowadays but why would they do this all these different developers and Publishers why would they take away your ability to organically earn things in their games and unlock cosmetics and other stuff that is shown to factually increase most people's enjoyment of the game yes you got me the answer is literally and will always be money they're greedy bastards they know that if you don't have any other way to unlock something you'll

feel pressured by that little crackhead inside your brain oh I'm sorry [Music] awesome 50 bucks here and there for a few meaningless cosmetics but they're not meaningless are they not to you because surprise surprise people like to display their individuality and personality through their online personas so easy money suckers you want access to the things that will allow you to differentiate your character from everyone else's cough up the no buddy boy this isn't progression to me it's not even close and it simply doesn't give me the same dopamine hit that the good old days on

Halo unlocking Recon through vidmaster challenges did the feeling of hitting Max rank in Modern Warfare 2 the old one and having access to every weapon in every Loadout because I had earned it by playing the Damned video game I don't have fun in the long run if there is no tangible progression in the game I simply get bored and I leave I can only play the same Maps over and over and over again with nothing changing so many times before I just don't care anymore but for every angle and every tactic is old hacked but

progression used to at least provide some incentive to keep playing to try different crap and experiment no more I know what some of you have been shouting at your screen but all great and venerable law what about season passes don't those offer you some sort of progression well you wouldn't you know it little guy I was about to get onto that right now season pass systems and fomo I don't think there is a single implementation of a system into video games that I hate more or will ever hate more than the season pass I know

that was a really hard-hitting statement wasn't it but of course you're wondering why I despise season passes what's such a burning passion you'll argue that at the very least they're better than predatory loot boxes and gambling systems and yeah you're not wrong but that doesn't invalidate the new and to me much more infuriating issue that they create stick with me here I know most of you are probably too young or too lazy to have ever worked a real job trust me I feel you here work sucks which is exactly why season passes also suck let

me try to put this into simple words I already have to work a job to survive and exist and trust me I love every [ __ ] minute of it I don't want a second job or a third or a fourth that's what season passes are see Publishers started feeling that gambling heat when it came to the loot boxes so there needed to be a new system one that was still just as predatory and unfun but at the very least didn't encourage an entire New Generation to become gambling fiends don't worry we have twitch streamers

to help with that anyway well here comes fortnite yeah do the funny dance emotes woo fortnite arguably popularized the season pass system where you'd buy a pass for each season and unlock stuff while playing a game that was of course free to play look I'll give epic and fortnite [ __ ] until the day I die but at the very least you actually complete their pass relatively quickly it's not the worst deal in the world at the time it was a big step up from loot boxes especially if you knew you'd sink that time into

the game anyway the issue arose when more and more other games started adapting the same system you see when every [ __ ] multiplayer game in existence implements a season pass suddenly you're starting to run into an issue time is precious at the very least mine is you might not value yours at all but that's your problem if you play more than one or even two multiplayer games actively then you suddenly experience this Dreadful thing that is clearly a hundred percent intended by the devs and Publishers good old fear of missing out say you're a

completionist and you play oh I don't know Destiny 2 and you like trying to keep up with content getting everything in terms of items and such and honestly enjoy hopping on with friends and grinding every so often now imagine a seasoned past system suddenly shows up and you now have a limited time every season to either play Destiny 2 enough for it to almost feel like work or miss out on loads of [ __ ] worse though it's [ __ ] you've paid for that if you don't complete in the allotted time is gone forever

now I get it the effect this has on many is the intended one which is they start grinding like crazy and burning insane amounts of time on these games because the fear is too strong they need it they need the time limited cosmetics and items that will disappear into the void forever they need the crack cocaine I don't need it I don't need it I definitely don't need it I don't need it I don't need it don't need it I need it I don't I don't like feeling pressured to play a game when I don't

want to I don't like that stopping for a few months just to do other [ __ ] you know like real life [ __ ] means you can miss a bunch of crap that will forever remain empty on that in-game tick box of stuff you want to collect the only Effect season passes have ever had for me is that they make me drop a game almost permanently I'll come back for large expansions and maybe play it with my friends are on but I will lose literally all drive to go and run on the hamster wheel

for measly rewards because oh no time is running out it is the quickest way to sour me on a game that is otherwise an enjoyable experience to somehow turn what should be the enjoyment of playing into the same feeling I get when I have deadlines for work I don't want or need a second job and any video game that tries to make itself into more of a job than a game for you this [ __ ] isn't worth my time look it would make sense if you only played one game ever but I don't I

enjoy variety I like to hop between different engaging experiences all the time but when every single multiplayer game starts implementing these trash passes I would rather just not touch them at all even worse when they do [ __ ] like valorant and Halo infinite which by the way I have uninstalled so I won't even show footage of where you have to do specific challenges to even level the past challenges that force you into game modes you don't like or to play with weapons you aren't good with or even classes or Heroes you dislike just to

progress that is atrocious not only is the game trying to stress you out with a time limit for unlocking crap you have paid for already it is also making you play the game in ways that you might not enjoy at all this mountain of [ __ ] is why I hate season passes I rarely if ever spend money on them anymore because I would rather dedicate my time to things and experiences that value that time you want to see a few good examples of how this system can be implemented well look no further than the

Master Chief collection and deep rock galactic in the MCC your season passes are all free and they never expire so you can play the game whenever the fancy strikes you and you'll just unlock stuff as you play lovely simple no fomo no stress making me feel like my time would be better spent doing literally anything else Deep Rock Galactic again because you bought the game full price offers every season's reward tree for free but even better if you miss any one season and don't get all the items they then move from the season pass into

the game's loot pool so you can still unlock them with RNG and game currency over time would you look at that non-predatory seasonal content systems Color Me impressed remember how a long time ago around the start of this video I was talking about all of these positive social experiences I had on multiplayer games even when I was a child interacting with people who had no reason to be cool welcoming and embracing of me into their little friendship groups yet still were I have not had an experience similar to that in any multiplayer video game for

what feels like a decade since except for co-op games which I'm going to make a separate video on have you I don't know what the [ __ ] happened to gaming communities but these days all you run into is toxic sweat Lords on literally every damned video game all that you ever see in text or voice chat is people screaming slurs at each other raging at their own team or just being massive toxic balls of feces all day every day in all their matches what happened I'm asking genuinely on this one I don't know I

can't begin to guess is it just the increased access of people to these games has allowed the dregs of humanity to wash in Maybe I've even had theories that maybe the creation of communities on stuff like Discord results in everyone who isn't a horrid little Gremlin just finding personal communities dedicated around the games they play where everyone is just overall nicer to each other so all you're left with in public matchmaking in terms of people who actually use the in-game comms is honestly just the worst people you could ever imagine I do a little trolling

myself and I'll be equally toxic at someone if they spend an entire round flaming me but I don't go around framing my team in ranked all day or constantly seem to just be trying to start toxic arguments in every single match I'm in just depressing I live during a time or even with the infamous pre-game lobbies of people telling you they're going to [ __ ] your mom a majority of the people I'd meet would be quite alright they'd be capable of having conversations they wouldn't take the damn game so seriously it's like people's ability

to have fun has just [ __ ] evaporated they all want to be Esports players and they think they're hot [ __ ] so they'll act that way in all the games they play it just isn't fun anymore multiplayer game lobbies are in general so miserable that you have to wonder why any of these people in these matches are even bothering to play the games at all anymore like unironically Go the [ __ ] outside and touch some grass the dream of the Esports wannabe one Trend I noticed as Esports was becoming more and more

of a big deal was that players lost their minds trying to emulate these people in professional teams and the more they tried the more they turned into the stinky sweat Lords that infest online games nowadays people who think they're gonna be the next shroud so they're on there clenching their cheeks as hard as possible literally [ __ ] and shaking the entire match because if they didn't win then how could they possibly be having any fun these are the people that will shout at you in unranked matches for picking non-meta characters weapons classes Etc people

who have warped their idea of fun to such a pathetic degree that even when they're like not Platinum rank in whatever they're playing they'll still act like they're in Grand Masters I've always despised playing The Meta it's boring you want to see how boring take a look at OverWatch and how a stale and Incredibly boring meta to watch and play pretty much kneecapped the competitive Esports scene well now you have millions of little troglodytes trying to mimic their favorite nerd from Esports and constantly playing Only The Meta [ __ ] and raging any time they

lose while playing that meta or the even more terrible crime is committed of someone not caring about the meta at all blasphemy how could you possibly be playing this game just to kick back and relax what do you mean you're gonna play an off meta character what do you mean you're using that terrible gun for the fun of it what is wrong with you unbearable of course Esports gave rise to another terrible thing for multiplayer gaming and that is developers and Publishers who see the money in that industry and suddenly want every goddamn game they

ever make to be an Esports what does this mean well suddenly everything needs to be balanced and the way terrible developers do this balancing of course is nerfing crap constantly nerfing anything that might be fun or interesting into the ground because if the game isn't balanced that it can't have a competitive scene right you see this with pretty much every single modern shooter you have Dev teams constantly badly balancing and then rebalancing the game to a degree where it's almost comedic one week your main character might be asked here and the literal next week he

said dear because some professional nerds complain that they're broken this also leads to balancing Based on data but that needs to be an entire video all on its own look at the blog post the OverWatch devs released recently to the time of this recording where they discussed how they balance off data such as hero pick and win rates you want a quick and dirty example of why balancing off win rates is a terrible [ __ ] idea because there can be a lot of bias in how someone reads data for example they could see a

hero who has an incredibly High win rate that means they have to be busted right so let's Nerf the [ __ ] out of them when in reality they're a niche character who sucks so nobody but the people who have mastered this character will ever pick them thereby High win rate yes because the only people who can even play the crappy character are the ones who have learned them inside and out the balancing rabbit hole is infinite and it only gets worse all the time so we're not going deeper into it without a tab of

acid on hand instead let's shift our Focus to the problem with Team games now I'm no top player in the world at pretty much anything but I'm also not total crap this creates a massive problem for me you see skill-based matchmaking systems do in fact punish good performance and I experienced this in about every single multiplayer game I ever dedicate time to I'll do good for a few matches and suddenly I'm facing a team of absolute Gods while my teammates are doing their best to keep oxygen cycling in and out of their lungs this incredibly

aggressive type of matchmaking has only become more and more prevalent of late when more people pointing it out and noticing it in the past I didn't mind it or even notice it as much because games used to actually reward skilled play I know what an idea whether mechanical skill map knowledge if you were good at say Halo or Cod or any game really you could feasibly carry your team on your back and still eke out a win and it felt good you felt like a Chad the issue nowadays is that so many games are designed

around forced teamwork to such an extent that if you have a single person not playing their role properly you are doomed to failure you're a good tank but your healers are bad welp GG you're a great healer but your DPS is incapable of killing any of the four different people using you as a makeshift pinata welp GG compare this with any single match of Halo where you can honestly be getting more than half the kills in a match by yourself and still managing to at least stand a chance as a result of your own effort

being rewarded you can't do that anymore in most games because design has shifted into these hero and role-based games that encourage Esports style team makeups even if you're good most of the time you'll feel like the game is actively punishing you for having the goal to have above a 50 hit accuracy how dare you multiplayer games you're dead to me I have it a jumble of thoughts and words made Manifest this is how I felt completely out of love with a genre that I was once honestly obsessed with I don't know if I'll ever feel

the same drive I once did to play these kinds of games again maybe I've just outgrown them or maybe the plethora of issues I've spent this whole video outlining have so completely tainted the idea of multiplayer in my mind but there's nothing left for me to go back to whatever the case I'll always cherish the thousands of combined hours I've spent finishing the fight in Halo hitting sick op shots in Counter-Strike pulling off insane feet of mobility in Titanfall 2 and the many friends and communities I became a part of along the way the good

games will always remain good even if nothing worthy comes along to replace them in the meanwhile I'll be spending my time having fun in the oh so many Co-op Alternatives that offer far more enjoyment far less toxicity and way more bang for your buck oh yeah you know what that means rock and stone so yeah I I hope you guys have enjoyed this video even though it was a very negative topic I just really did want to rant about this for like nearly half an hour it's one of those things that I've just it's been

building over time you know I keep playing multiplayer games and I'm just like what the [ __ ] is going on why do I hate this why am I not having fun so I just compiled all my little like gripes and thoughts into a little video I don't care if you agree by the way this isn't for you this is my channel welcome I am Lawrence you get the joke now literally law it's because I'm Lawrence and I write these stupid videos yeah I'm a creative guy and by that I mean I am the law

I know if you liked the video subscribe leave a like do all that dumb [ __ ] I will make more videos now that I've started on this channel especially because piano I have a lot of ideas I do want to make more stuff a lot of it will be way more positive stuff I even mentioned in this video I do want to make something about co-op games at some point and I have a bunch of other like ideas for videos so stick around you don't know but you might enjoy what I make from time

to time you know [Music]