Hi everyone, and welcome to a new segment I'm creating called VG Trend Source.

Throughout this series, I am analyzing and critiquing new trends in gaming. It's part prediction, and part scientific, but it's mostly just a fun platform for new ideas and discussion.

With that, I'll begin my first episode of the series.

At its best, multiplayer combines a competitive drive, social interaction, and hours of additional entertainment, and from its worst stems annoyance, distraction, and compromise. Sure, multiplayer games are fun; we know this objectively based on game sales. In fact, games written with multiplayer in mind tend to become extremely good in generating sales, and it really doesn't take much more than a developer sitting down and asking the question, "how do we use MP (multiplayer) to improve the value of this game".

Unfortunately, a big problem with this type of question is that it's easily answered incorrectly: 'Deathmatch' is all too often the baseline, only seconded by a far less used, and underrated 'Co-op'.

See, these are easy answers...even lazy. Requiring little to no creative thought, coupled with an industry full of deathmatch vets, it's a first resort conclusion to upping the perceived value of a title. However, these kinds of attempts, mimicked and slightly tweaked in virtually every single player title lead more often than not to a 'tacked on perception' by the consumer. Moreso, it can lead to feelings of compromise in the single player. "Resources were wasted on this". MP, especially deathmatch, is broken. It's not society, and like art, good entertainment reflects what we want in society.

So what does our society reflect right now? Well, it reflects socialization. Developers take this to mean deathmatch because, 'hey, everyone is talking to each other and having a good time as a team', but that is incorrect, because competition is not the mass market. Competition is the old guard. Being number one in the round, having the best ranking in the ladder....that's stale. I'm not saying it isn't growing, I'm saying it's decreasing in comparison. People want to compete for things that have real rewards, like working out with a gym partner, or having a writing group.

What you can expect
Expect to see a shift in the way multiplayer is handled. A serious amount of ground movement is working towards massively multiplayer online experiences. MMO in itself has trended toward free to play, and has been expanding in varied ways, notably through apps and phone games. This expansion of the virtual world will influence most genres and create new ones. Just in the way that the arcade experience, stemming from experiences like call of duty, influenced the onset of single player/multiplayer combination titles, MMO will begin taking over. But how should this translate to the gaming community at large? Well, the first question that needs to be asked by every developer is, "how do we make this game come to life through multiplayer". That is the real question that needs to be asked. Developers need to stop focussing on giving the vaunted 'core' nostalgia gamers what they think they want, and give them something that works.

Some developers are already doing this properly-
Journey - the multiplayer makes this game, and the only thing better than the MP, is watching new players realize halfway through the game that their little companion is another player. The #1 response you will hear is "I usually don't like multiplayer games".
Demon's Souls - The multiplayer in this game fits the mood completely. Seeing spirits brushing past, watching gruesome deaths, players leaving warnings in blood on the ground...that's community. But wait, in one level, another player might actually subsume the main boss, deciding if he wants to go hard on you, or take it easy. You may even get invaded, or assisted. The MP in this game truly encapsulates the light/dark eerie atmosphere of the game, without feeling extraneous.
LittleBigPlanet - LBP handles multiplayer in a very social networking kind of way. You promote your friends, give likes, and work with others to create content and have fun.
Animal Crossing - While not as fundamentally linked in to the idea of passive MP, it does reinforce the kind of system in which MP enhances single player quality.

These are games that all demonstrate how a game can be built alongside the multiplayer experience without getting in the way of the single player experience. More importantly, these approaches actually improve the single player while remaining a distinct separate entity. This is what is meant by passive multiplayer, and something you will be seeing a lot more of.

Well, there it is, the first ep. I hope you enjoyed it, feel free to provide critique and discussion below.

Bumping this now at a slower time of day, hopefully it sticks a bit.

It was overall a nice read and I agree with most of your points.

"Competition is the old guard. Being number one in the round, having the best ranking in the ladder....that's stale. I'm not saying it isn't growing, I'm saying it's decreasing in comparison. People want to compete for things that have real rewards, like working out with a gym partner, or having a writing group."

I don't really agree with this statement though. Competition has always been around like in various sports football, soccer, etc. In gaming, they are some of the dominant forces like with the cod and bf franchise. They sell more and more every year due to there competitive multi. Being number one or having the best k/d ratio drives these gamers to keep playing.

What I mean by that is that the social aspect of gaming, the big picture, while relying on elements of competition, favors more cooperation and inspiration. The mainstream, and by that I mean, the expanded audience cares more about the experience of winning, or rather, growth.

For example, look at the sims. People played a game which became massively popular just to grow their characters. Competition was never a factor in that game. What sold it was having friends in your town, growing the characters, and having fun.
Even looking at call of duty, that game does its best to level the playing field by having things like perks and kill rewards. The idea is that the average person has a chance to win. This is a stark contrast from past typical fps games in which skill dominated everything. Games like quake and unreal and counterstrike.
No, the bigger draw to cod is the unlocking. The valie a player finds in having golden weapons, the growth of their character in relation to others.

I guess what I mean is that cod in many ways provides single player goals within the context of a multiplayer game. Your main reward system is on growth rather than winning matches.
It could even be called a passive single player experience because for many, their aims were to move up in prestige, rather than move up in ladder.

Ahh alright, I see your point with the whole prestige system that cod has. A real game changer on the console side is prob going to be destiny. From the previews it seems like the world is alive mmo style.

Huh, I had really not read much about destiny until now. It's exactly what I'm talking about. Fancy that.