Let's take a trip back in time. The year is 1997. You and a group of friends are perhaps sitting around the TV, playing a match of Mario Kart 64 or Goldeneye 007 on your Nintendo 64. Perhaps it's 2001 and everyone is huddled around the TV playing a match of Halo on that shiny new Xbox, or Twisted Metal: Black on the PS2. Or how about 1994, when everyone was playing Bomberman on 16-bit machines with a 5-player multi-tap? Heck, if you're really old, perhaps you remember sitting down with Mom and Dad playing "pass the controller" with the original NES Tetris? Maybe sitting in an arcade or family fun center rings a bell with you: a group of friends huddled around an NFL Blitz machine, yelling, laughing, and trash-talking at each other?


Classic multiplayer party games through the ages...

Games have a long history of bringing people together—kids and parents, friends and relatives, brothers and sisters alike. It's one of the medium's strongest suits. Experiences like these are precious memories to many a gamer, yet fun-filled gaming sessions with friends are becoming increasingly rare with each passing year. Slowly, an invisible wall is being drilled in between people, and that wall is the internet. Online gaming, for all its merits, is also destroying the desire to meet up with friends and family outside the home for gaming.

Developers are dropping support for split-screen local multiplayer in their titles at an alarming rate with each passing year. I can't count how many times I've had someone over at the house to play with, yet we had to pass on a title because the developers neglected to include local multiplayer in favor of an emphasis on online functionality. Is online support awesome? You bet it is, but it isn't an excuse to cut local multiplayer options out of the picture. The belief among the development community seems to be that if next-gen multiplayer doesn't involve lobbies, leaderboards, and lag time, then it isn't worth doing. Not all gamers are hooked up to the coax cable in the wall, and not all gaming social circles are set 500 miles+ apart from one another.


There's quite a difference between being surrounded by friends during a multiplayer party, and being isolated in a room by yourself.

Each year, the back of more and more console titles read something like: "Multiplayer 1-16 players (Broadband Only)". Soon we will have PlayStation Home on the horizon, an experience that rewards players for separating themselves from their friends. It's yet another in a line of successive products that create virtual walls between people, like Second Life and World of Warcraft before it. What happened to the fellowship of gaming?

"Each year, the back of more and more console titles read something like: "Multiplayer 1-16 players (Broadband Only)""

Think back to March. It's pretty likely that you and some friends might have been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, one of the biggest titles of the year. But why is it so popular? The single-player sucks. It always has, and common consensus dictates that opinion didn't change much with the release of Brawl and its Subspace Emissary mode. Yet one of the countless reasons why the Super Smash Bros. series is such a popular party game is because it offers wild local multiplayer without compromise. Thanks in large part to the automatic camera that keeps everyone on screen at once, the conditions for a multiplayer match are the exact same as a single player event. Nobody has a compromised experience.

Unfortunately, this solution is unique to Smash Bros. (and a few other obscure classics) and can't be applied to most other genres. Vertical or horizontal, split-screen leaves you (and your friends) with diminished field of vision; a handicap if you will. It also knocks the level of detail in-game down considerably. You can choose to go online to avoid these inconveniences, but in the process you lose the physical company of your friends and are stuck with shoddy, sub-telephone quality headset communication, or in the case of Nintendo Wi-Fi, no communication whatsoever.

Now, I'm not trying to paint online gaming as the antichrist with this article. Online gaming is a powerful communication tool that bridges the gap between county, state, national, and oceanic boarders to let us meet people we would have otherwise never known. It's just nice to have a mixture of virtual and physical communication. Developers just need to realize that there is plenty of room for both local and online multiplayer in the core gamer marketplace. For some people without broadband (yes folks, they do exist), local multiplayer may be the only option.

In the past, we had arcades to carry the torch for public social gaming. That era died with the 90s. The closest thing any of today's gamers have experienced is the Xbox Live Arcade, and most of those games are online multiplayer or bust. Now, as we begin to write the last chapters on the first decade of the new millennium, the responsibility to keep social multiplayer gaming alive has fallen upon the shoulders of the home console industry. For years, consoles have done an amazing job filling that void, but recently a wall has begun to form between those who play with others, and those who play online.

Now that home consoles are the preferred choice for video games, developers have an obligation to keep social gaming alive, and a few are doing just that. Rock Band, for instance, is the most recent example. The Wii is also doing its part to help fill that void. Wii Sports brought families back together for perhaps the first time in several console generations. There's also the DS and PSP. Random portable game sessions with strangers have become a cultural trend since the DS and PSP have offered the ease of wireless "anywhere" multiplayer. Local Halo tournaments have taken a serious hit since the Halo series went online, but the local Smash Bros. tournament scene is alive and thriving (thanks in part to Nintendo's crappy online service). Ever gone to a Guitar Hero or Gears of War tournament at a local pizza place?


In the past, arcades served as a primary location for social gaming, but that era has long since passed. Home consoles have done a great job filling that role to date, but developers must realize that their job is not finished. Online gaming is an added feature, not a replacement for local multiplayer.

Mario Kart Wii is upon us. As you all head online with your Wiis, remember the fun you had back in the old days in 4-player battle mode on Block Fort. Remember the fun you had playing local co-op in Halo. It doesn't need to take a massive product launch to get gamers out of their homes. Just go out and meet people. You'll probably find yourself having much more fun than simply plugging in the headset and turning out the lights for another lonely night on the couch.