When Video Games Were Social
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- There used to be a time when almost any online video game you played would be considered "social". Roaming the air constantly in the gaming industry is how gaming has changed for the better or for the worse. One of the worst things to ever plague gaming in my honest opinion has been the decline of social features in multiplayer games (mostly bigger budget games).
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CREDIT:
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All mentions and links down below contains all footage and audio used in the video. Any footage I didn't give credit for is either mine or I missed it. Please let me know if I did miss anything.
Highlights (Footage & Audio / these are clips that are more than just background/filler):
@sacramentolove (Xbox reuniting/nostalgia)
@Hable (H3 old pregame lobby)
@Alexander-ry6ri (H3 jenga custom games)
@Thryxx (H2 old pregame lobby)
@FranksMuseumOfGaming (H3 Starry Night Upscaled Trailer)
@Conk25 (MW old pregame lobby)
@swiftor (MW border patrol)
@dahliadark (H2 old pregame lobby)
@T000L (H2 prox chat)
@XxCokeVanillaxX (H3 ice cream man custom games)
@extravagantrat (EFT immersive fight)
@otssmiteplayerwiththeboys9383 (Lethal Company spider scare)
@darriioyt (Phasmo "it's not a deo")
@Mightymaster123 (Crab Game soundboard trolling)
@fronsk7156 (BattleBit "I have a family")
@tarkovtips5522 (EFT guy gets sniped)
@brogers_ (BattleBit "CHARGE")
@Dongu_ (BattleBit "I'm just a boy")
@gritty00 (BattleBit heli crash)
@Bassrex100 (BattleBit scream)
@SuperDuperDuey (BattleBit scream)
@virtuea (BattleBit prox chat)
@Sealygaming90001 (Phasmo scream)
@Danumals (H2 pregame guy laughing)
@VanZeph (H3 flag run)
Footage:
@hvapex (Apex Legends)
@KryptekMuted (Valorant)
@Galizma (MW2023)
@ohtehnoes (GOW1 old)
@BroncoBoy89 (GOW1 old pregame lobby)
@Forsakes (MW2 old pregame lobby)
@XxBeastXxModeXx100 (MW2 1v1)
@GuyThatFunny (GTA V kid trolling)
@ChingyX (MW2 old pregame lobby)
@paperface1 (Spider-Man 2 swinging)
@OrbitalGameplay (Overwatch 2)
@BashyBush (Crab Game game chat)
@cathala10 (MW2 game chat)
@DuhChosenNoodle (EFT prox chat)
@TopeREC (DayZ prox chat)
@IMPREY (Warzone prox chat)
@wildcat (Among Us meeting)
@ch0ketv_ (Escape from Tarkov)
@stinkss6048 (Rust)
@SharpTongueFlat (H3 mongoose chaos)
@WhtButterflyLiz (H3 warthog smash)
@AvalancheFan133 (HR derby)
@VanossGaming (Skate 3 funny moments)
@RealSykes (BO3 paintjobs)
@BiasedGamerV (H3 smear the dude)
@adahalo (H2 private game)
@livedeadman (H3 jaws)
@GOWSeriesVideos (GOW4)
@psncoolpjhq (BO1 game chat)
@H2ODelirious (Among Us meeting)
Music:
(MW2007 Main Theme) • Call of Duty 4 Modern...
(Halo 2 Main Theme) • Halo Theme Mjolnir Mix
Pulled additional music and sound effects from these sites:
www.epidemicsound.com/music/f...
Thumbnail Artist:
Me, my skills are bad but you can't beat free
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CHAPTERS:
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0:00 - When Video Games Were Social
1:42 - Games Being Alive
5:03 - How Socializing Creates Fun
10:17 - Backtracking
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#videogames #socialgames #gaming #gamer #gamers #callofduty #halo #gearsofwar #lethalcompany #phasmophobia
Wanna join my Discord community? I am trying to build a server for all kinds of gamers, but mostly filled with people who watch my content (Halo, COD, Gears, etc etc). I want to be able to house gamers that play some older games, but also new.
join the discord community >>> discord.gg/Nb5NfT6AWX
If you enjoyed the video, consider supporting me. These videos I am heavily passionate in making, but UA-cam doesn't pay well and isn't stable. No need to do so, but the option is there:
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Discord is what helped kill this but okay
Never forget the USS liberty and the men and women who died on that day
@@RUDY-COLEMANthought it was kinda ironic too
youre totally right here, but another factor is modding in single player modding. first there was forge mode in halo, making your own maps and modes, then there was skyrim with 700+ mods, literally hand crafting your entire own game
@@RUDY-COLEMAN true, though even before Discord we had Xfire, we had Skype, Teamspeak, Ventrilo... I'd say the bigger problem is you can't 'get away' with anything in game voice chats anymore, with stringent 'community guidelines' and the war on hate speech & harassment. people don't feel free to say anything anymore.
the biggest erosion of social games in my opinion is the lack of persistent lobbies. In games like COD, and halo the lobbies used to persist with the same players until they either left, or the server shut down. Nowadays, after every game you get kicked back into a new matchmaking queue never to see the people you just played with again. The fact that you could play with the same people game after game in the old days meant you spent more time with the same players and had an oppurtunity to form friendships, or rivalries. Thats all gone now.
It's why I exclusively play in custom lobbies on MCC.
Valve games aren't like that with the exception of Dota 2 I think (never played that).
This is what killed modern battlefront 2. Zero community. The game died the second the updates stopped coming whereas Battelfront 2 (2005) is still going.
That's amusing to me, and perhaps indicative of our ages and/or gaming habits, because I look at matchmaking and lobbies as the beginning of the end of when gaming was more of a social experience. They were a downgrade from community servers in that regard, and most others too (and one of the reasons console gaming was looked down on). Everyone lost their "club houses" because it wasn't feasible outside of PC.
Glad you had something that was better than what it's become though.
surprisingly, Roblox games from what I've seen don't seem to have this issue
I miss the guys hoppin on a party and just talking about life, making fun of each other, locking in. It enjoyed it more than the games half of the time.
It was something about the ease of “join our party” or “M2AFaR” that don’t exist anymore. Games like Halo 3 had so many “message to all recent players” from people just trying to play a chill game of infection or MW2 with quick scoping or “infected” before it was actually added to the game.
There was a small period for me, after games stopped being social, that I found a new game, and it was socially active, it renewed that social aspect for me... but the game is dead now... and not just low population, I went back to look at it, it has 0 players...
Any games with community servers are automatically like this, just see how different competitive servers vs community servers are in CSGO / CS2, honorable mention goes to modded multiplayer clients, like Skyrim Together, FiveM, SA-MP, and COD Plutonium.
get friends then loser
Me too man
Games nowadays are made for the engagement, not the experience.
They want you addicted to sweat matches and microtransactions.
They don't want you just hoping on and having fun experiences with new people.
They don't want gaming to be a fun hobby, they want it to be an expensive habit.
You're playing wrong. Or wrong games.
@@JonPL i play fighting games, an at its core competitive and sweaty genre. Other modern multiplayer games especially fps games are more sweaty to me even when I want to chill. Fgs playing games in lobbies against the same people or ranked feels relaxing. With other people you chat and learn from and with them, in ranked its competitive but you often get a good amount of down time to do some fun things or often run into the same person and have some sort of rivalry with them. Modern fps games you rarely see the same people multiple times and its a colder environment. Maybe its also the team based nature that makes sweat hit harder in fps games. In fgs its 1v1. So you directly interact with one person, get inside their head or they get inside yours. In fps games you don't get that chance and due to sbmm can often be more so in conflict with your team. The lack of people talking often makes it worse. And all you'd have to say is negative anyway.
@@JonPLNo he’s speaking facts
It's an issue with American culture and how much it dominates the global world. Look up the Protestant Work Ethic, the defining philosophy of the US despite it having been secular for so long. In effect, nothing can exist just for 'fun', everything must have some sort of functional component to justify its existence. Video games cannot exist simply as entertainment. They must function either as moral mouthpieces or money-making machines. This is why we've seen the explosion of the NFT/Play 2 Earn games; the gaming industry cannot accept the idea that video games have no functional meaning, so they attempt to give it meaning through monetary value. It also takes the form of aggressive monetization or simply arguing over which game is better via its quarterly revenue or the parent company's stock when neither make a good game (If you think so, then you have to believe Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are the best games of their series and cult classic games are actually garbage). The only side of the industry capable of ignoring this is the Indie scene, which brought you Battlebit Remastered, Risk of Rain, Beta Minecraft, and many more games solely built to be fun and not functional.
I don’t usually play a lot of games except WoW and fallout NV in my early years of late 2000’s but, what is a swear match?
Being a gamer in your mid 30s is fucking depressing
Worse when these new kids don't acknowledge how absolutely backwards the gaming industry has gone
What shows how delusional some gamers are is how game most AAA companies have made record breaking profits the past 4 years yet people defend the ever increasing prices and monetization in games.
26 and I still feel it
The worst for me is vr, it's such a young market you can easily notice how we adults built it up, made it great, then the quest 2 Christmas launch caused the child infection of vr, effectively shoving all the adults out or into quiet corners, unwilling get burnt a thousand times by goblin toddlers.
We could have had a great thing. Now all the hope is left with valve, pcvr remains the land of proper vr, and vr social interactions, because it's so dang expensive to get in. Only the passionate people are willing, so the quality is high.
Its the mid 30s that have been feeding these trends by mindlessly buying activision garbage every year. Blame yourself first.
Yup. Or they tell you it's "Free to play" so you can't complain. I don't think any of us asked for shitty free to play versions of our favorite old games@@reethardio6432
Pretty much. You're right at the age where you're going to notice more and more that products don't cater to you, they're going after the young money.@@MrHocotateFreight
I believe this is why Lethal Company blew up. Not only is it fun, but it kinda forces you to be social. And the proximity voice chat definitely helps a ton, it’s downright hilarious.
Exactly without proxy chat and the social aspect the game wouldn’t have a Identity
Exactly like Hell Let Loose.
Battlebits
Most popular games are team games already you're supposed to be working with your team??? This is the problem man, people are just clowns, they don't care to talk or try and have fun OR try and win it's ridiculous. Neither situation is common anymore lol
No, it’s a co op game nothing forcing you to be social.
I told my friends long ago that introducing "party chat" was going to be the end of socializing in online games. Today if you don't have a squad to play with, you'll discover that game chat is pretty lonely. Everyone is in party chat, likely with people that aren't even playing the same game.
This!
Discord too
@@skinnybuggo Yep, even though it came out way later than the Xbox party chat feature. It didn't help the problem.
It has nothing at all to do with party chat. Party chat has been around since like fucking 2005 maybe even before idk. The main difference is 90% of these games if you had a mic plugged in, you were automatically connected and forced to be in game chat unless u muted out or went to a party chat. Now 99% of the games have it turned off by default to where you have to go into the settings and shit just to get to game chat……back then you were forced, now it’s optional, big difference
@@Foggycallabasashillshelicopter Which still leads back to party chat. Yea, make it optional since everyone is using party chat features anyway. Also, there was no party chat on Xbox live in 2005. Private chat for you and one other person. The thing is what do you tell the kid that's new to online gaming. What if they don't have friends on discord or Xbox live yet. Since game chat is now an option that's off by default, why should they be force to add discord and jump around different channels just to make friends to socialize with while playing a game?
i feel like so many companies thinks voice chat is toxic and have made so many restrictions on voice chat
They have. Everything is catered to children and now you have to watch what you say all the time to avoid being banned for like 3 weeks :(
@@Goober2564pedo corporations would want to cater to children playing 18+ games
@@FlamespeedyAMVthat’s a pretty great point, I think these devs are forgetting that l.
I do think the amount of harassment and toxicity in the golden age wasn't always so great looking back on it. You definitely want some room for trash talk and fun, but is there any line there? I think it depends on who you ask.
@@FlamespeedyAMV😂😂
Let me tell you, Halo 3's proximity chat was something special to experience. It's too bad Halo and voice chat are essentially dead.
Only game i see with an alive voice chat is cod
Although people still talk way less than back then
@@skidmarkgameing5034 The only time people talk on COD is to either say they f*cked your mom or to call you a racist slur.
Try Battlebit Remastered
@scythegaming99 same mass reporting problem as overwatch
There were so many times I'd hang out on the PS3's social platform, Playstation Home, and just wander around picking up people to play games with for the night.
I'd introduce myself, we'd find out the games we liked to play; then I'd friend them, send 'em a message, and we'd go grab our copy of whatever game we wanted to play, and gamed for most the night. It felt so satisfying getting to do such a thing with random people around the world. It also helped that back then, PSN was free. So the barrier to entry and socialization was much easier.
I'd argue that these days however, people are a lot more adverse to striking up conversations with strangers online, than they were back in the day. I feel like my social gaming experiences in the mid-2000s was partly an aspect of the times. Idk if something like that could ever happen again.
I have fond memories just like yours, most kids nowadays don't know how to have a phone call and don't even know what a controller is, so eventually it's just going to be us keeping the games alive..
Yea games are usually better with other people, the social side of gaming declined for some reason. Games only spread because it helped people socialize.
My Gen Z coworkers hate talking to people. They prefer text chat if at all. Makes the headlines of “Highest youth loneliness” despite being digitally connected make more sense.
@@lexc1560 I think society peaked in the 90s, it's just been downhill from here
@lexc1560 I hate texting as a Gen Z. It gets boring. I try to be more social. In person connections. I'm awkward, but I enjoy it so much. I miss social games. 😭
As a gamer who started in the mid 90's, watching the decline of the gaming industry is just sad. Going mainstream was a death sentence. It's only going to get worse from here.
its pityness that struck gaming tbh doesnt matter what game well theirs some games where you can meet and talk to people like rec room vr chat but shooters are just shit now its about getting better and talking shit rather then say wanna add eachother and play again 10 years later your friends with him now but nowadays its just gone
@@Ichi_takumi2 If you got some time on your hands then I recommend Squad. It's similar to battle bit but with IMO a better game play loop. The game is heavily focused on communication between players. A mic is required to play it and the community is very friendly and 95% of players are willing to help new players if you just ask!
i can see AAA games becoming luxury and sub base and the secret is they want to fight hackers messing up the in game economy
Going mainstream doesn't have much to do with it imo, they didn't have to change anything about the social features but they did it for more money. They got teams of psychologists and shit out here making algos and ways to milk every dime off us. Even if it wasn't mainstream this was always going to happen. Making people alone and isolated makes them buy more shit. It's just how it is.
@@W-G”did it for money” goes hand in hand with going mainstream. Appealing to as many people as possible alienates the original demographic
I'm 16, never had the luxury of experiencing social lobbies like you guys did, I'm jealous
One of the closest experience I'll ever have to this is Club Penguin in the late 2000s and early 2010s, so sad to see it go
Me too
Same
Damn man, I’m sorry.
If you’re on computer, almost everyone on Gmod has a mic cause it’s a pretty social game. No party required just pick a gamemode. Been playing since 2013 and it’s still the same just a little less people. This video made me realize that’s why I still play it; can’t get everyone with a mic consistently anymore
i'm 18 and ive always had moderately social lobbies and still do, just join tf2 servers with alltalk idk
An issue I've had, is that as it's become more difficult to be in voice chat or games have become less social, the people that end up using mics almost always end up being super toxic in my opinion. Some trashtalk can be fun but it used to be broken up with more fun interactions, which I don't experience anymore. That's led me to stop using voice and often just mute all when I enter a lobby. No point in interacting with a team mate that is just going to complain and whine all game.
Same here. I would love to interact, but if I’m interacting with a COD lobby in 2023… I’m good.
i think its because of all the forced niceness we see. never thought fascism in gaming would be an issue but here we are, where cod, the centerfold of toxic assholes in online gaming is banning people for being "jerks" whatever that means. i miss the days when i could talk trash without worrying about getting banned, so now i go overboard with it out of spite. if youre gonna make me be good ill show how bad i can really be
Yea you become a target. People don’t use mics because they’d rather not be harassed or blamed for team performance
@@ThePhantomGodofNightikr? So many people put on a facade to pretend to be nice and virtuous. But in reality, they don't give a damn and are actually the biggest assholes just trying to get brownie points. It's sad.
yeah i feel that. i don't usually use voice chat because i have a feminine voice and i don't like to risk the "GAMER GIRL" reactions. i tried to play rust once and i used voice comms to talk to my friends. two weirdos immediately came over, started following me around and making uncomfortable/graphic sexual jokes nonstop until i eventually had to mute them. it feels like whenever i leave voice comms on in other games, it usually just results in some squeaker saying "ggez shitters" in post-game and not much else. feels like more risk than reward
It was so special to grow up in a pre-Instagram/social media era. Xbox and PlayStation WERE our way to connect after school!
As a 17 year old, I'm glad my parents didn't get me a phone first but a PS4 going home after school with and hopping on to play BO3 and Minecraft, I miss that alot
On the Xbox 360, I ended up deleting most of my friend's list of people from school and randoms once the introduced the Netflix app. About 70% of my friend's list stopped using the Xbox as a gaming console and more of just a streaming box. There'd be people I'd play CoD with after school for years and then for about 2 years until I deleted them when they all just watched Netflix
I’m 28. This was some of the most fun I’ve had gaming and I do believe, the golden era of gaming. Where we had actual map packs and expansions that contained all you needed as extra content for games and it wasn’t NEARLY as predatory as it is today. It’s not just a- back in my day thing, back in the day, games were just made with more passion and love, and the community showed that in the lobbies
im indian.
Exactly, I feel the corporations that took over don't allow the creativity that devs had back then
@@turkeysandwich1998 exactly, unfortunately
Man, I miss whenever games were social, I made so many friends and I'm still in contact with some of them today.
Playing Halo Infinite vs remembering what Halo multiplayer felt like growing is rough.
The social playlists are filled with people that are sweating to level up battlepasses rather than just trying to enjoy the fun modes.
Nobody talks anymore, you never really get messages after lobbies from randoms asking to stay partied up.
I'm sure there are still times like that but it just doesn't feel as common unless you buy CoD every year.
Halo 2 was my first online game and I was really good at it from playing system link and campaign on legendary. I'd get so many friend requests and party invites from random people
I miss going onto games TO meet new people and be social. I still see it this way sometimes and my heart gets broken when i go an entire night without talking to anyone.
Hey bro idk what platform you’re on but I would be 100% down to play with ya I also used to do that but gave up when I went a whole week straight in Cold War and no one talked at all
It’ll never be better than peak Halo 3. Hop into lobbies, talk to some people, party up for a few games, start a custom lobby and invite all of your recents. 16 mics blaring while you all play Fat Kid. It was awesome man.
Everything is so true. Its why a game like Lethal company has skyrocketed. It brings back the social aspect that everyone sorely misses.
Exactly
Battlebit was sooooo much fun for the first 2 weeks or so, the voice comms were so big of a draw for it, everyone was so friendly and the mood was always light. The gameplay is alright, the progression is kinda boring, but the community was hilarious. It killed my attention as soon as I noticed the people that were still playing were the ones taking it too seriously and the funny hyjinks werent really there anymore
😢 RIP BattleTits.
@RNG-esus also the blizzard like insta ban reports
ban waves ruined it within 2 weeks. low T betas cannot carry the torch
Taking it seriously and roleplaying in voice chat fun. What i have noticed in Battlebit, is nobody even talks anymore. I think a lot of those early players probably got permabanned due to their antics in voice chat.
@@olso8621 nah, think they just moved on like I did. No one I played with religiously in the first few weeks plays it anymore. It was a fun game but the progression didn't really feel rewarding enough to keep us hooked
It really is like a great aspect of social gaming is going out with a whimper. I remember playing modern warfare and halo as a teenager and being caught off guard by it. I was an only child that had really only played single player games on a GameCube or PS2 before I got the 360. It was like a revelation that I could meet new people, meet new friends, that I could hang out with whenever.
I had it continue on with R6 when siege came out. The fact you would always eventually find a group, your group. But as time went on matchmaking changed and a lot of the player base changed, unfortunately I just didn't fit it anymore. Nowadays I usually play co-op games with my gf, but I'm still hoping for a reemergence of social gaming of the same caliber. Hopefully I'll see you guys there too
At my middle school, COD MW2 was THE game. One day the quiet kid in my math class overheard some other classmates and I talking about it. At the end of class he slipped me a note with his gamer tag on it. All he said was "hey let's play today after school." I still remember our first game was Domination on Afghan. After getting off the bus that Friday, we played, laughed, and shit-talked other players for HOURS. He ended up being a homie that I would play many subsequent CODs with. After COD fell off and I changed high schools I never heard from him again. NinjaXP hope you are doing well bro!
Last time I interacted with someone random online was in Halo 2 Anniversary earlier this year. They made a multiplayer map using forge and I showered them in praise with how amazing the map was. We chatted for a good 30 minutes before I left.
Discord killed it a little bit by kind of making it easy for us to fall into our bubbles. Back in the day with in-game chat and custom games, we made friends in 15 minute and joined custom games to where we would join a custom games where we only knew one person
Not to mention guild chat in-game is dead since everyone is sitting on discord and most guilds require you to join it anyway.
This is why ive been loving VR again, everyone is social and experiments with it, it's fun, and the games are designed to do so
I agree with this, but I find that VR is a lot more limiting in quality for games. I am yet to find a VR game that can be enjoyed for extended periods of time, and it makes me sad that we can’t fully develop this frontier at a better pace. VR is great, but it has too many issues.
@@wyvrius agreed all the best games are PCvr mods like Left 4 Dead 2, Red Dead 2, Risk of Rain 2, FF14, Res evil 2,3,7,8, Deep rock galactic, etc.
Notice only 3 of those are online social friendly L4D2, FF14, deep rock
But notic
I will never forget the Deus Vult meme where it was almost midnight an my friend and I where put into the Knights army just yelling at eachother via emotes for about 2 hours I can still hear "Roman Catapults" in my sleep
im an introvert, always have been. I usually mute all mics worry of some negative people. But the odd times id make some cool friends, with the changing of system in voice chat like "less negativity, less toxicity" potential to be banned or something like that, i find voice chat has been coming scarce, sometimes listening to the conversations in games like COD, Battlefield, Halo, etc, was funny to hear even if I didn't join, it just seems like the gold of the early 2000s in the social gaming community is dying with simplicity in most things.
I miss the old days honestly being born in 2000 and getting into games at around 4 to 6 and playing through as the stereotypical squeaker, I made so many friends that I no longer speak to anymore, how I wish I could go back to those days
Private voice chat is what turned people away from talking in lobbies. This created a natural open room for people communicating with one another.
Before Xbox Live party chats were huge, I was very much vocal in game (I was in my teens around then). Now, hardly anyone talks and I just want to sit in silence as I play my games. Sad, because I use to love talking to others now I don't want to bother.
I'm the same way. I loved the social aspects but now even if someone is talking in game I don't want to engage with them because they're probably the reason I'm not having fun, and unless we add each other and group up I'll never play with them again so taking to them is a waste of effort.
I still remember my first social experience as a kid in the 90’s getting online on a 56k modem.
It was for a game called Subspace (now Subspace Continuum, still free on Steam), I named my guy ZzzzzzzZZzzzzzzzzzzz and the first person I ran into on my team I freaked out and started typing to them like crazy. No clue what their name was but I kept trying to get them to talk to me through text but they wouldn’t do it, so I kept following them for 5-10 minutes.
Still remember that. And wanting to play online to interact with others. I wanted to play Duke Nukem 3D in MP and Warcraft 2 so much with people online I pretended to in map editors and made things for Mp matches.
Nowadays? Everyone’s a sweat lord and nobody plays for fun, it’s all ranked or matchmaking to try and be the best. It’s not for social interaction anymore, even games like DRG 4 player coop people rarely interact by typing or voice chat.
We’ve never been more connected but everyone feels so alone.
I think this is why I really enjoy foxhole. The fact that every one is an actual person and they can all talk to you with proximity chat is awesome. I mean you can even talk to the enemys. It creates good memories and brings me back to a much simpler time like Halo 3 lobbies lol.
I think VR is the rebirth of social games because most of them have proximity chat and are focused on communicating with mics on by default, and in vr headsets have a mic by default and allow people to do gestures with there entire upper body, the main example I think of is Pavlov ttt, I have countless hours on it and the best moments are not winning or getting cool kills, it’s the b\standout social interactions that stick with me till this day.
Pavlov yeah but the rest eh. Like I've had fun with vr chat but that's honestly a different crowd than the guys you would shoot the shit with back in the halo cod days.
That era of gaming wasn’t the golden age of social gaming. It was its sunset. When 12 year old kids burst in to what used to be for adults and climbed over each other to try and be the edgiest edgelord in voice chat, it stopped being fun.
Yeah but they were funny
Great video. Another major change is the shift to matchmaking over community servers, they created tight-knit communities since you’d often end up playing on the same servers for years on end with the same people, it was amazing.
Personally I’ve been into Insurgency for the longest time, that series had a tight knit community to start off with since it was so niche, add to that community servers & proximity chat (one of the first implementations circa 2006) and you got yourself one of the best gaming environments in history. I miss it.
While we don't have OG Insurgency on console we do have Insurgency Sandstorm and while yeah it doesn't live up to it's predecessor it's still better than most games when it comes to socializing I mean just yesterday I was playing and both teams had people were talking and it was some funny shit I mean had people talking shit and communicating strats and it was great especially cause it doesn't normally drop people after matches we grow on each other and come to recognize each other even after stints of not playing it's honestly a beautiful thing
What i notice is all of my friends from this generation of games still use mics, but a lot in our group that are new gamers or younger dont even buy them.
I remember when the 360 would come with a mic..
The original 360 headset that would kill your ear if you used it for too long.. Man do I miss that thing. Although I remember when my dad got himself the fancy wireless earbud style one, and I was so jealous. Him leaving me with the OG headset was like giving the "Madcatz" controller to your little brother lmao.
Thanks for crediting my clip!
Awesome video, very well done. I miss the old days.
This is what led me to play VRChat pretty heavy. I've slowed down a bit because I have other things I really wanna do too, but there's been many many many moments that reminded me of those old Halo 3 custom game lobbies from back in the day. But the social nature of the game means it's fine to just hang around and chill. I've met a ton of great people and made some great memories. One of my favorite is just chilling on a beach in a world a friend made, just standing around the fire playing some drinking songs and a little bit of alcohol. Woulda been a great night without the alcohol too but it was all just a vibe.
But I really do miss games being more social. And I could probably attempt at just being more social in games. I usually don't because i'm watching youtube in the background or "i'm only gonna be on for a few minutes" and then it's hours later and I coulda been doing something. Or any number of reasons like that. Eh...
On top of the voice chat stuff you mentioned, even games that didn't have voice chat had some awesome social interactions that i don't experience as much with the way the landscape has changed.
RuneScape was awesome growing up cause I could just wander around and stumble across people who would start conversation and kinda just hang out for a while. Eventually we'd go our separate ways.
Nowadays a lot of the time if i try an MMO a lot of people are just running around and grinding their asses off, chasing whatever FOMO driven attraction the developers introduced. Not as many people experience the world and take it easy between the action. Most people just stick to talking with friends on discord or not at all and don't engage in text chat for casual conversation.
Just something I noticed over the years which made me nostalgic for my early online gaming days. Good vid, subbed.
You have made multiple videos on this, and your points have remained true. I believe that a social aspect can save games like halo and COD. Great job on the videos man, keep it up.
I think you put this so simply and I love that. You are completely correct, the 'living' part or the human part of the game is what we all miss. You forget that behind every character model, and every kill, and every death was some other guy enjoying the same game you are having fun in.
Lethal Company has reminded me a game doesn’t really need to be fleshed out with amazing mechanics and gameplay. The prox chat alone has made many great moments and memories that reminded me why I play games in the first place.
This is why indie games have become so popular. Among us, battle bit, phasmophobia, and most recently lethal company have all picked up the slack in a range of genres.
with the newest of newest games i can say it doesnt help that everything is deemed "toxic" and a bannable offense and cod now has its AI voice detection too to make speaking alone a minefield to be banned
but it is for sure something that extends out to the modern social culture of so many people getting "triggered" or whatever like it by boyish social chatter and then also that games are to be made competitive now and a second job with non stop dailies and battle passes instead of games made to be fun first and foremost
The mobile game I started playing had proximity chat on by default and it was fun. We joked a lot even though we were competitors. The developers changed that in a recent update. It’s quiet and soulless now.
What game?
@@480darkshadow Farlight 84
Started online gaming in 06.
Met so many friends on RB6 Vegas, CoD and GoW. Played with them for YEARS.
Point of the video is to focus on social features that made games feel more "alive" as I describe. I feel a strong difference in plenty of indie games compared to numerous big budget ones. It seems to me that indie games provide life into their games that bigger budget ones just don't do anymore. Not all, but most. This topic first arose when I made a video called "Halo Fans Need to Move On" that dives into the social element of Halo. This franchise used to be one of the best, if not the best, to ever do it in providing a social experience with plenty of content. Big budget games used to be able to provide both social interaction and top-tier gameplay with plenty of content. Pluck away that social interaction and we get left with a more dull product.
CREDIT:
I used lots of clips for this video, please check out my description where I give credit for all these. I try labelling what they were used for so you can pinpoint it.
Hey you might want to pin this message, it's getting kinda lost in the comments.
I was literally 10 years old on Gears of War 1 online its hard to believe when thinking of the gaming landscape now I had so many friends online and rivals I would see again since the community was smaller. I really think the focus on competitive gaming and metaprogression and how the monetization aspects contradict the competitive ambitions really make most big online games not the same as triple A titles back then.
This video was put together extremely well. I remember when I played Black Ops 2 on my PS3 back in the day trickshotting with the boys and playing search and destroy. It never got old. Playing Bo2 on PC or even on the PS3 now is boring because there is no one with mics. The old games were fun, I could just sit back and just listen to the people on game chat all day every day and be entertained. Also, to all my fellow cod trickshotters, I salute you for bringing a whole new side to cod that caused my addiction to gaming today.
I agree with a lot of what you said. One of the biggest turn offs from gaming for me was no longer being able to stay in a lobby with the same people once a match ended. It was so much fun to play with the same people over and over doing silly stuff or trying to rematch and best them. I also think skill based match making has had an effect on this. Before you could match with people way more skilled than you and learn stuff from them and in the same match have fun with someone who is just learning the game and doing stupid funny stuff. I think playing battlefield 1 in a party with my buddies was the peak of gaming for me. We would talk nonsense and life and then switch into serious mode to win a game last minute. We would also play against rival clans match after match(since bf1 has a server browser and you stay in the same lobby once the match ends) which was so much fun talking trash while not being too serious.
This video got me talking about it with my friends, who I've been squadding with for roughly the past 15 years. It was a bit nostalgic, talking about our lobby days in Gears, D1, D2, Halo, Battlefield, Monster Hunter, L4D and so on. But it didn't take long before we all started wishing we could've had the lobby experience you described. None of us are white. Most of us aren't men. Several of us don't speak English as a first language, and a lot of us are queer. The main reason most of us even got on mic in lobby was because we never played alone; most of the time we got people who just shouted slurs or griefed when we ignored them calling us slurs for being clocked as Different on the mic. Playing on mic alone was more annoying than fun.
Lobbies were exclusionary for a lot of us who didn't fit a certain few molds. I very rarely have good experiences when I'm playing alone over the past 17 years I've been on mic, and I'm definitely one of the people who peeled off into Skype/Party Chat/Discord the second it was available because I was just tired of 8/10 games being toxic to the point of being unfun. If I was playing with trans friends or friends who spoke English second, the whole vibe would sour the second I switched languages to translate or if someone clocked me or my trans friend on mic. Which isn't to say we stopped hot mic altogether, but that even with me still trying to give game chat a chance, most of my encounters are still overwhelmingly Bad.
The option quickly became: Do I go hot mic and get treated like trash, or do I go in with my friends or on silent so I have a better chance of enjoying the game I'm playing with what little free time I have to spare? My friends also make that same decision every time, and more often than not? We'll choose the devil we know.
The newer waves of proxchat games are fun. The indie titles definitely bring back a lot of that charm, maybe because they're not built with the level of sweatiness inherent to AAA Competitive FPSes. I'm less likely to get a tween trying to do a Hard R speedrun in Battlebit than I am in OVW Ranked. But you're right - the dead mics are sad! Even if I'm probably going to switch off, I miss hearing someone on the other end and considering the opportunity to vibe. After all this time (and a lot of terrible experiences), I still seek it out, in memory of those few really cool people I found in lobbies years and years ago. It's something special, and I just wish it didn't suck so much for so many of us trying to just have a decent time on chat.
THANK YOU. The loss of open voice lobbies wasn't some "woke pandering" by corporations, it was corporations realizing that the toxicity in the average lobby was scaring off potential customers. The myth that girls don't play video games is not because girls don't want to play competitive online games, it's because the moment they open their mouths and non-male sounds come out of them they get flooded with sexual harassment and unwanted DMs, so girls have to either avoid those games or be silent and pretend to be male. I also can't imagine hearing the hard "R" every thirty seconds was all that fun for people of color, either.
Honestly I know y’all hate this but vr has kinda given back the social energy I used to get from older games like bo2-1. It’s literally some of the best shenanigans I’ve had in gaming.
making me want to invest in one
How does one start in VR! is the quest really the way to go? I had a gen1 vive but the headset screen broke before I could give it a good try (i bought it used which was my mistake). last I heard, VRChat was cracking down on skins and mods which was (apparently) causing the community to shift. Dont know how things are now though as I havent looked into it since I heard that 'news'/rumor
@@drawster00 If you are not sure about VR, start with Quest 2. Its not the best, but a cheap and good start. And yes, you would need a good PC to experience VR, so prepare to invest even more if you dont have one, cause some lobbies in VRC can be reaaaally heavy on your PC. About VRC: yes, they fucked up mods, but the avatars, or skins, are essencial to the game, they cant delete them. Its worth trying if you are looking for social experience and fun. I cant tell how its like for public lobbies, but Friends+ lobbies with right groups are amazing.
I miss when games were social, before everyone and their mother were trying to be an esports streamer. The last games I met long term online friends in were The Division and MW19, which was arguably the beginning of the decline in socializing in game. Now games come with VOIP automatically disabled and no pre or post game lobbies.
I feel like how people act in game chat nowadays affect it also. Cod isn’t just banter anymore that followed up with a 1v1 it’s people sweating and then teammates screaming and reporting you because of how you play. It feels like your not even in it for fun anymore it’s just constant sweating and no chilling at all.
I was recommended this video randomly from UA-cam and couldn’t be happier for it! Amazing job with everything you conveyed! I truly understand and have been gaming since the early 2000’s because of a little game called Halo combat evolved! I remember specifically finding and meeting so many people from Halo 3, Reach, Gears of war 2, Gears of war 3 and the original Modern 2! Such an amazing time that I still think was the peak for gaming! Luckily things go in cycles so, I can’t wait until we get back to those times of building communities and friendships in game rather outside of said games through social media!
I played halo reach at my friends house almost everyday for 6 years. Cops n robbers, the kitchen, Jail, Fat Kid. I will forever remember those amazing times with my friends on split screen and online.
This shit hits hard. Its rare at all nowadays to find even a single person wanting to speak through game chat.
I Miss the Old XBL Days. Some Of the Best Memories From Early On In This Life That I Have Were Made On XBL, Playing COD and Minecraft.
In All Honest, Games Being Less Social Speaks Volumes On How Much Anxiety People Have These Days Just Being In Public. If People Are Too Scared to Say Something to Anyone In an In Game Chat Because They Might Get Banned Due to An Arbitrary AI, Imagine What Will Happen 5-10 Years From Now As People Are Already too Afraid to Speak Out On Many Pressing Issues.
Very Well Done Video. You’ve Earned Yourself a New Sub!
Can’t even swear in cod lobbies rated M for MATURE AUDIENCES.
Extremely great video! The lack of in game voice chat and lobby retention these days has definitely been a huge contributor as to why games don’t feel the same. It sucks that studios and developers are seekingly getting rid of these purposefully. Hopefully things turn around eventually!
im 19 while i wasnt in the golden age of gaming, i started gaming really young, and caught the end of it, even though i barely played any of it, i missed playing halo reach and mw2 and all the fun stuff that the game allowed you to do, like talk shit, or make friends, new games give zero choice, you cant pick maps, queue up against the same players again, or play casually, every gaming experience is so competitive now.
I totally agree. I’ve played LoL since 2012 and am basically done with the game at this point. There’s zero social interaction, the ways to communicate with your team and enemies has been slowly stripped away after the years. The memories I have of fun exciting games has pretty much disappeared and what is left is a soulless game filled with people too addicted to step away. Not a fun experience.
I used to regularly host various lobbies in MW2 (sniping, michael myers, etc). I miss those days. I would play a few FFA matches and then send messages to all of my recent players inviting them to play, it was common to add people as friends and then you'd have a new buddy to play with regularly.
Good ole days 😢
the halo spotlight with jenga, man that brought back some memories. Awesome video.
this style of video fondly reminds me of the youtuber "under the mayo" if I remember correctly. Absolute knowledge with that guy and gaming. Wheezy knows how multiplayer games (should) work while under the mayo knows how singleplayer games should work. I'm already in love with this channel and its simple editing style with supreme writing skills, well worth my subscription.
I miss the days of playing with Michael and Tyler on MW2
Such innocent times
And yet the best too
Hope life's treating all those who abandoned the Mic well
This,,, I would agree with the term 'abandoned the mic' and hope all of you the best. In my experience at least, I had/have made multiple efforts to casually talk in many different games to be met with utter silence. I guess one could blame a lack of effort day in and day out of talking to rando's trying to find a good group again - but it seems so much more difficult now than it used to be. Wheezy is right, if mic is off by default, many players will never touch the setting leading to desolate feeling lobbies, even though they're filled with other gamers.
I abandoned the mic because talking now makes me feel MORE lonely now since you get fewer and fewer interactions - you just end up talking to yourself all night. I'd say its almost easier now to not try, just so I'm not let down at the end of the session
I stopped using my mic a few years ago, people would be too loud, playing music or just super toxic. Also I enjoy co op games and there are SO MANY little kids on there. Id love to help them but then they always want help and talk a lot, have no volume control etc. Its just a burden. I have noticed a few times if I pop a mic in and start talking like on Deep rock galactic or back 4 blood that one or multiple people who were silent jumped into chat as well. Also you have to think of the times changing, MW2 age was the tail end of interacting in person outside of school consistently. Social media blew up from there, apps, everything went online. So younger folks dont talk or only talk to someone they know. Add in the new extreme corporate rules around "hate speech" and you have a recipe for people shutting up and keeping their heads low.
This hit me in the spot, I remember when the ps3/xbox 360 days were, I used to make friends and add them just because the fact that I was a kid and good at the game, and the people I met were the soul reason why I enjoyed the games I loved. When new gen’s started happening I felt like the whole aspect of talking in game was due to the fact that ppl will talk shit as soon as you step into game chat, that’s just what online is, yet I feel like nowadays people play with the ones in the school, which don’t get me wrong, even I’m in this group, but I feel like now it’s even more of a feeling that no one will be there in game chat, I remember hopping into a WAW or a BO2 lobby and everyone was having a good time, now every multiplayer seems so dead and there’s one dude talking but doesn’t even realize his mic is unmuted. Gaming used to me so much more enjoyable and I miss it so much
I love when I randomly meet even just one guy just chatting casually who I can talk to, even random things
I never really got to experience this era of gaming and it seems like such a fun time I’m genuinely upset I missed out on this
Like #700, great video, so relatable and honestly the whole industry makes me sad...
This social aspect is something that the Xbox 360 nailed, being it with their interface and Xbox Live or by the simple yet extremely impactful detail of including a cheap headset with their console. I'll always foundly remember late nights playing COD search and destroy because of all of this. Forced in-game voice chat is extremely underrated all these aspects are not understood by the big publishers, they don't even know that this is a problem and that it impacts theirs games.
I’m only 24 but played CoD when it was at its peak and definitely miss when people came to game chat to talk. The last game I’ve played that felt social was Overwatch 1 when it originally released. Now you’ll be lucky to catch 1 or 2 people on your team in game chat
My first multiplayer game ever as a teenager was Modern Warfare 2 (the…original). I’ve definitely noticed a subtle shift over time. People still use voice chat but it’s for such a different reason. There used to be all these weird and wacky one off conversations in voice chat. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it did get toxic. But now, 9 times out of 10, when someone is using voice chat it’s just to tell me that they think I suck or I ruined their rank in a game after sitting in silence the whole time. It’s really depressing honestly.
I really wish that Halo Infinite would bring back proximity chat, it would make a HUGE difference! Halo 2 was amazing because of it!
The most unforgettable experience from Battlebit when somebody drags your body, you cry for help and you hear in response "Long live the king"
As an introvert, I don't mind games becoming less sociable. Gaming by myself without my mic on just feels more natural to me even though I always used to be chatty in game chat back in the day. It was kinda what you did back then and it was all a new thing. I'll never forget using my mic for the first time over Xbox live thinking how cool it was tho
i wish for one day i could thank everyone alive and passed for the time i spent with them. i was never social in my life before the 360 and i met alot of people. i dont even feel like i like games anymore now that im trapped inside this bubble. every game might as well have bots only for how forgettable the experiences are now.
Great watch ! Encapsulates my feelings as well . Used to be on cod socializing everyday and playing with my best friends .. now it’s a ghost town
I could hear VERY few people who talked in halo infinite and I always tried talking to them but they could never hear me but then I found out that it was because of a STUPID ASS SETTING, that made it so people could not hear me. I spent around 3 quarters of the time played in that game just trying to figure out how to turn my damn mic on, and when I did turn it on I had a very nice conversation with a really cool and chill dude that complemented my voice and he made me feel really happy after words and he literally made my day. Wish I could have remembered his gamer tag just so that I could’ve talked to him one last time.
Hey huge point i think ya missed! Fortnite, after its first peak it started to just become competative and hard so people just quit. The devs noticed this and then immediatly came out with its unreal engine update and started making the game a social platform, kind of just like forge! After they gave the og update to spike its players again, its player base hasnt lost any of that spike and I think thats because people are playing these social gamemodes that are just minigames or small competition where most people have their mics on at all times. Great video!
Its become a much more sad and isolated state of things. How a few minor changes could improve things so much
People nowadays are crybaby snowflakes.
And peoble nowadays always insult peoble for the littlest mistake
Honestly, you're describing everything I didn't like about online gaming.
I found this on my timeline and this is a really good video. The nostalgia and very good points made. The game chat is literally the reason half my friendship group know each other.
Totally agree with your points on this one. I was born in 1989 and started playing games when Doom 2 came out, was a bit lonely of course, but with Counter-Strike and voice chat, that changed everything. Made lifelong friends and my best friend to this day, is someone I met in CS 1.6. Nowadays, I stick to singleplayer story-driven games because none of my friends have the time to play games anymore, everyone's got a family or a significant other, lots of work, etc. but when we do occasionally find some time to play together, it's a great thing. If I try to play anything alone however, completely different feel, I don't have fun, and I drop it a short while after. I guess you can go into the official Discord servers of games and find people to play with, but it was far better when it was natural through being thrown in the same lobby together. Hopefully they bring all of the social aspects back into games, but it's not looking promising, seems to be going the other way. Companies think just about anything will offend someone nowadays, so voice chat is super limited as-is.
All of this speech policing has made communities stale and boring. Sometimes people are scared of saying anything at all now if it carries the risk of a ban.
This is such a bullshit response lmao. If you are the type of person who cant communicate with others without acting like a total fucking sperg throwing out slurs 24/7 then yeah I'd imagine its pretty hard to socialise in a video game. Every person with a similar take to yours is actually just self reporting for being a massive loser.
bruh jus dont say slurs it aint a wild concept lol
I don't think people rarely talk out of fear of a ban, at least in my experience and friends. We don't speak because of how insanely toxic people get for a multitude of reasons; our main reason is because we are women. We are too afraid to speak out of fear of facing the most vile misogyny you could think of.
i think a good example of this is Unturned, I've played it since 2016 and accrued 2,514 hours in it as of now, back than i started playing a creative server, where anyone can spawn any weapon they like, this particular server even allowed you to spawn the Shadowstalker Mk.II, which most creative servers wouldn't let you spawn because in order to get it normally you have to do an elaborate easter egg to receive it and once it's 20 rounds of semi auto railgun fire were spent, you cant get any more, so people had the tools to terrorize anyone who dare spawn if they so like, and yet so many players chose to be social and friendly, and on that server i met people whom i still talk to today despite neither of us playing unturned anymore
but now, on modern creative servers if their even active feel completely cold, anybody who is solo and not already in a group of people they already knew is completely unsociable, and these groups goal usually is to work together to control an area of the server, which is player interaction but its just war at that point, you cant make friends there easily anymore like i used to, and survival servers are even worse since there's loot to be lost
I still remember making so many friends I still play with to this day on MW2 and Halo 3. I remember getting to play Halo 3 for the whole night for my birthday (I had to split play time with my older brother usually) and I remember telling the lobby and people actually sung happy birthday to me and then the people on my team basically played protect the president the rest of the night. I still think about it frequently and during the pandemic we got everyone back on to play again and it was so great. I genuinely feel bad for the people that didn’t get a chance to experience little things like that.
It’s because of pc culture, they don’t want people being bullied so no one can talk to each other anymore
seeing the 360p videos of lobbies from a phone recording was so nostalgic and just gave me such a warm, feel-good vibe
great video homie this is exactly how I feel about games as I become an old man at the ripe age of 30 trash talking back in the day used to be an art that you practiced and then used to make friends I can't tell how many games of cod started with shit talking back and forth with the top 3 players of the enemy team being the top 3 on our team to eventually party up with them and become friends and destroy lobbies as a full stacked team to then trash talk other full stack teams. ahhh when what was considered "toxic" was actually a fun way to connect wiht other people oddly enough. I stil lhave freinds of 15-17 years PLUS due to this type of gameplay that we meetup regularly to hangout.
Very good points. Thanks for sharing. My go to for in-game social interaction with strangers was, for years, Squad. Don't play it as much anymore today, but it still carries that spirit and is virtually unplayable without talking.
I never have the easiest time talking to strangers, but games with voice chat have helped me a lot in this regard.
Altogether a great video, it was a punch to the face of nostalgia. I was happy to hear you point out the big game changer about the xbox 360 era of online gaming at the end of the video... the consoles came with a cheap headset. This basically guaranteed that everyone had a mic, and therefore everyone could engage with the social element from the jump. These days, if I have a buddy that never uses a mic when he plays games, when he finally joins a party he's using these ratty old headphones with the worst mic and will be buzzing or you'll hear his controller, or he'll be too quiet, or he'll cut out... I could go on... the point is that these days to have a microphone you have to buy it separately, and even if it's $15 to get a cheap one it's still effort and money and a conscious social decision... I can't shake the feeling that some people that experienced that "golden age" of gaming when everyone had a mic almost don't want to go back to it. Like my crew, we don't play in the the lobby chat anymore, we are in a party chat or a discord. Again it was a great video, thought provoking and poignant. Subbed
Continued thought... I made genuine friends from that era of gaming. People I met in random lobbies and servers that stayed in regular contact for years. More than one friend moved across the country to be closer to the local friend group and became permanent parts of the circle. I don't know if that kind of bond is being made out there these days with the younger generation. But it's just wild to think about how these people I met when I was a teen in a WoW server, or on a Halo 2 match, are still around as friends, and that's because back then everyone rolled with a headset and was talking.
Watching this video takes me back to many special moments, the sleepovers on halo 3 and halo reach, 4 player split screen playing online on the most outrageous game modes, or trying to beat the legendary campaign on coop, or staying up all night playing zombies.
Recently I was able to play some dayz with some old friends. We used to play every day years ago now its about a few times every few months sometimes longer.
Playing with them really took me back, I remembered a lot great memories but it felt like no time has passed at all since the last we all played.
No matter how toxic Clash of Clans' global chat was, there tends to be just kind, approachable people, even if they were just merely messages, at the same time clans trash-talking each other on who gets to recruit a member first was a fun experience, I nearly cried over some dumb toxic joke since I was like 9 but looking back on it, it was funny, I wasn't even supposed to be playing COC as a 9 year old. The friends feature being so reduced is such a shame, as well as Clash of Clans feeling like a tighter game. Global chat made you feel like the community was sprawling with villages, and you were just another village chief communicating with other chiefs. Clan chat isn't a good substitute. It never was supposed to be. Global chat made the COC world feel alive.
You were actively seeking out other players, funnily enough chatting about fun topics and stuff while the village minds it's own business made it a "comfort game"
Glad you added the end portion. I think it’s a combination of games removing social aspects in favor of grinding loops and profit motive. But the fact that crossplay came about should not be underestimated. When you gamed on xbox back in the day, you were with other xbox players with terrible free mics. But now my lobby’s are sweaty, and 10 of 12 are on PC sitting in discord.
This deserves a lot more attention. Great Video!
this was such a beautiful video and very very important topic. Thank you for shedding light on this.
This is the only video I've seen on something that needed to be said. Nice work.