Global Videogames

Technology has come a long way, and videogames have changed and grown with the technology. When I first started playing videogames, they were just a way for me to escape reality and relax. I hid by myself in my room in the basement, content with my single player games. A few years after that, I began playing with my friend Bryce, who lived down the road from me. Videogames became a social activity for me as well, as we would spend hours killing each other playing Super Smash Brothers. A few years after that, I finally was able to enter the 21st century, and I bought a computer and DSL, and was able to play with people all over the world. The new technology opened up a lot of doors for me, helping me to get a lot better. I was able to interact with people who were a lot better than me, and learned from them as they killed me.

My first real experience with a “global” game was World of Warcraft, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). Playing an MMO is an entirely different experience than playing a videogame alone in your basement. There are add-on programs that people download and use in order to talk to each other on headsets, so that they can coordinate their attacks, or just casually chat. People form and join large guilds of players, so that at any given time, there are people online, playing, chatting, and available.

World of Warcraft is very similar to MySpace or Facebook in a lot of ways. There is a huge emphasis on community, teamwork, and interaction. Some quests or events in World of Warcraft require that you be in a group of people in order to complete them, and your group has to work together in a coordinated way to accomplish a goal. In some ways, it is strange to be playing a game in my basement, and run across some mage from Australia, killing boars in the woods.

Computer technology is advancing at an incredible rate. We really do have a global community through the internet. It is crazy to think of all of the millions of people across the world that you might accidentally run into while playing a game in your home. For me, videogames have gone from being a solitary activity to being something I did with my friend at his house, to something that I can do with a person from Japan that I have never met before. The ability to play with people anywhere, at any time adds a lot of interesting aspects to videogames. Being in a “global” videogame means that there is always someone to interact with, always someone to help you accomplish a difficult task, or always someone lurking around the corner, waiting to kill you. One thing that I have noticed is that playing first person shooter games online is a very different experience than playing against the computer, even on the game’s hardest settings. Artificial intelligence technology is growing better each year, but it does not compare to the “real” intelligence of a seasoned player sneaking up behind you to shank you in the back. Playing games online with real people is the best way to get really good at a game really fast. The technology of being able to interact with people from all over the world has changed the ways people play games.