"Old School"

As Ciandi has pointed out, online gaming has vast potential to connect us all in crazy new ways. Xbox Live, and to a lesser extent the Playstation Network have completely changed the gaming landscape. I have spent hours crushing guys from Germany in Burnout: Revenge. I have witnessed 8 strangers working together as one perfect unit to crush alien scum in Resistance 2.

So why am I defending something old and antiquated like split screen multiplayer? Click past the break, adventurous reader, to find out.

I completely understand the addictive quality of online gaming. There is always someone ready to play. No screen peeking, no knocking the controller out of your hands, no one to punch you in the arm for grabbing the Rocket Launcher (again). Yet it is exactly those experiences that I miss the most.

The most fun I ever have playing games is when my friends and I are playing together in the same room, on the same T.V. Online can be amazing, but it is so much more rewarding to shoot my friend in the head when he is right next to me. I remember staying up till 5 in the morning playing Goldeneye, screaming at my friends and punching them in the arm and getting the controller smacked out of my hand for using the RCP 90. When I think about my favorite multiplayer experiences, almost all took place hanging out with my friends playing split screen.

With a headset, you can still talk trash to your friends, but it’s the difference between talking with someone on the phone and having them physically with you. It’s just not the same. In the parlance of our times, split screen is off da chain, or on da chain, or wherever it is supposed in regards to “da chain” to be good.

Playing online is like listening to your favorite band on the radio. Sure it’s nice, and in some ways the music might even sound better, but split screen is like going to the actual concert and experiencing the thrill of human interaction. The mere presence of others adds to the experience. Humans are social creatures after all. Simply having your friends with you changes everything from merely playing a game to having an experience.

I think that a smaller screen and some screen peeking are a small price to pay for the joy and fun that can only be had from split screen multiplayer. Using the tried and true scientific method of chatting with my friends, I have come to the conclusion that I am not the only one who wants split screen.

I understand the reasoning on the business side for not including split screen in your game. For Mr. Publisher it seems like simple arithmetic. If my buddy and I want to play a game: split screen = one copy sold; online = two copies sold. Seems simple enough, right?

Well, working in a video game store I cannot tell you how many times people have picked up a racing game all excited to buy it before putting it down sadly when they realize they can’t play it with their spouse. Some examples (for those of you into that sort of thing): Grid, Pure, Midnight Club and Need For Speed: Undercover to name just a few. And this is just a small sample of games from one genre. How many sales do publishers miss out on because the game doesn’t have split screen multiplayer?

Let’s explore another example. Halo is not my preferred FPS, yet every time I go to a LAN party and we try to brainstorm a game to play, we always settle on Halo because it accommodates multiple players on a single T.V. with a minimum of fuss. I don’t know if you are aware of this, but the Gross on the Halo series rivals some small countries GNP (or is it GDP? Either way we are talking the kind of money that Scrooge McDuck swims in.) Maybe a small part of this success is based on the fact that you can play split screen multiplayer?

It feels like every stride forward (Army of Two, Gears of War, etc.) we have another step back (Orange Box, Battlefield: Bad Company, etc.). The only way that we’ll ever get split screen multiplayer in more games is if publishers and developers realize that they can make more money by including it. We have to somehow convince them that they are leaving money on the table by not including split screen.

Tags: Army of Two, Battlefield: Bad Company, Burnout: Revenge, Gears of War, Goldeneye, Grid, Halo, Midnight Club, Need For Speed: Undercover, Orange Box, playstation network, Pure, Resistance 2, split screen, xbox live

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 9:46 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.