Are the days of fun online community gaming over?
There's a certain type of online community, one epitomised by Call of Duty: Modern warfare 2 and Halo 3, which is fun and toxic in equal measure. I recently fired up Black Ops original on back compat mode, and to my surprise found a few games, complete with a glorious symphony of swearing, laughing and raging.
The death of these communities, and this way of playing online, can't be attributed to a single cause. But amongst them were the one-two punch of Ghosts and Infinite Warfare, the Xbox One and PS4's inferior community infrastructure, and also the change in demographics. My favourite FPS games of last gen, Titanfall and Battlefield 1, I have played for hundreds of hours each, yet I cant remember ever encountering a single person using their mic.
I've found a handful of communities which do carry the torch to some extent. Sea of Thieves' belated popularity, while being a decent game in itself, I put down to a really fun community of people and game design which actively encourages it.
