I really don't get it. I look at all those fortnites and PUBGs and whatever other generic same old kill each other type of sh** people play and cannot understand what causes these kind of games to be so popular. With singleplayer games its pretty obvious -- every time you get a more or less new experience that is embellished both artistically and mechanically to the degree that you can be immersed in it and extract an interesting and fun experience (in most cases). This is just a crude generalization of what single player games offer, but you get what im talking about if you played any good ones. With multiplayer though... I see people engaging mindlessly in the same activity just to feel a sudden burst of satisfaction that only leaves you empty after some time whilst making you crave for more. I'm not against multiplayer games per se, but the whole culture that it has built around it and the addiction that it causes in the young minds along with the fact that it's more popular than single player games is highly disturbing and I cannot grasp what's reason behind this. I assume that it's because western civilization is built upon competetive games which inturn made us create an economy almost solely based on competition but then there's the fact that loads of asians play Dota and league really well as far as I know. What do you guys have to say on all this?
Pox is one of the few multiplayer games I play, and even that I usually play single player. Single player usually has the better story, and when I play games it's usually an alternative to reading a book or watching TV.
I been playing both variants for decades and i agree on youre viewpoints and also have something to add. When you look at shooter games, you specific mentioned Fortnite and PUBG`s and also included the shoot em up genre. Where fortnite and PUBG is a solo/squad survival who have focused on short term satisfaction and then doing it over again, this is a new twist to the genre. Traditionally it has been team A against team B where you can build on the solo experience to see if you can add something to the team to make the team win the round. And then it becomes and new experience. Many players don`t focus on the team at all, and in a 40 player team that makes it very random how the team and also opposition unfolds. Sometimes it is just a steam roll and then i can go creative and perhaps learn something new about classes i don`t often play(like Assault or Medics), or when the teams are closely matched i usualy do what i know how to do(like Support class wich gives ammunition to the team, uses heavier machine guns for surpressive fire and high explosive & smoke mortar support). If you look at in ex football, there are two teams kicking the ball back and forth and not to many goals or immediate satisfactions, but suddenly one, two or three guys from a team get a breaktrough and scores a goal and the whole team cheers in joy. Wargames can be exactly like that. In team based shoot em up in ex Battlefield teamwork is a major part of the game, yet not every player in the game play the team game. So speaking for myself i join a game in example Battlefield1 and initialy i just want some short term satisfaction as you correctly say but i rarely play for long untill i try to play the team game. And helping the team turning a game is very rewarding, much more rewarding to me than personal gains. In fortnite(havent tested PUBG) i quickly get bored, was great fun the first two nights after that i was missing the teamwork. I had many epic battles in games like Americas Army, Bf2 and BF1 etc, winning or losing with the smallest possible margin after 40 minutes intense battling. On Console games it is more rare with that team feeling because there is no keyboard to chat with and call for help with. On PC you can easier get a confirmation that more people(especialy squad members) understand the plan to turn the game and jump on the wagon. In example asking a squad member to spawn on my location as a medic, wich often leads to other members of the squad spawn on me aswell. Communication will often get the ball rolling. Tldr: It is because of teamplay, winning and losing as a team, some people find that entertaining.
Basic psychology. Humans are social animals. Interacting with other humans makes a healthy human feel good. That's also why some activities that don't really give the chance for social interacting are still preferably done in a group. Going to the cinema for example. Many people find it awkward to be in a cinema all by themselves. They prefer to have somebody they know next to them while staring silently at a screen in a dark room for an hour or three. There's also the competitive nature. It can be expressed in more than just games. People enjoy being prettier, smarter, richer, faster, stronger, better, etc than somebody else. This is amplified by about a million if that somebody else is labeled as the enemy; Which is a given in competitive games. You can also enjoy multiplayer in non-competitive games. Some games these days like to throw challenges at people that require coordination and some kind of skill to be mastered. Overcoming those problems in a group usually triggers a higher reward from the brain than doing so alone.
