My wife is enjoying being in Australia. While video-games are my way of getting away from it all, her own outlet is sport. Running being her big thing. I’m not much into running, unless being pursued by a large dog, but it’s her release. We were chatting yesterday in the back garden about this, whilst sipping our gin and tonics. She didn’t enjoy running in Italy due to the fact that Italians aren’t into sport in a very big way. Not only could she never find anyone to run with, but she received a great deal of unwelcome attention while running. To me running seems like a solitary sport. But my wife prefers to run with people or even race. She loves the interaction, the feeling of competing against others, or of simply sharing the joy of running together. As she said last night, no matter how much we may not like it, we are social creatures.
Yesterday I also discovered a wonderful blog called, The CRPG Addict. The blogger is playing through every role playing game for the PC ever released. Already he has played through some titles which I myself lost a great deal of time on back when I should have been doing things like studying for school, or chasing girls. I loved those games, but they are all single player. And I realised while talking to my wife that I too need that interaction from my own outlet, which is gaming. The ability to share the process of gaming with other people who love it as much as you do.
Social has become a dirty word in the gaming world recently. But social has different meanings. It’s negative connotation has come about from social as someone who blindly follows the herd, having to survive in a pack to feel any sort of self worth. But social also means the act of social interaction. And if we are playing an MMO then that is exactly why we are playing it. That is the only thing that an MMO offers us that single player games do not. The ability to log on at any time of the day or night and immediately encounter other people playing the same game that you are. You can see them, you can talk to them. I remember the first time that I logged onto an MMO virtual world and another player walked past me, and I realised that I had just seen another person playing the same game that I was. It was mind blowing.
In the brief time that I spent in EvE I didn’t have a single interaction with another player. I saw other players in the distance in their little ships, but that was it. I could have spoken to them I suppose, but there was no reason to. In my first couple of years in WoW I spoke to other players all the time. I had to if I wanted to progress. The game forced me to be socially interactive. That isn’t the case anymore, and thus my interest in the game has waned. I am still waiting for my gaming rig to turn up so I cannot play any games requiring a decent system to play them at the moment. Perhaps I’ll go back and have a look at some of those old games that The CRPG Addict is going through. But one thing will be sure, I will miss that interaction.
The Noisy Rogue 
February 1, 2011 at 8:48 am
Ignoring the superfluous and needlessly contentious EVE comment, I agree. In the end the direct and indirect social interactions make MMORPG what they are.
Btw: It is EVE, not EvE 🙂
February 1, 2011 at 10:55 am
Before wow all i ever played is single player games, as such i had never felt the need for socializing that much, but after trying wow i simply cant go back to single players. I miss the ability to talk to people and play with someone else.
February 1, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Sorry for offtopic: Elizza reached 1 month inactivity. Is there a hope you can return to us, or WoW (European) is game over for you?
February 1, 2011 at 3:16 pm
I should have my gaming rig in a couple of months, and my intention is to stay on the EU servers. I wrote a note on Elizza saying it should be end of March when I get back. Let me know if this is ok.
February 3, 2011 at 7:00 am
Fully OK. And you can delete this offtopic chat.
February 1, 2011 at 3:55 pm
In eve, you start out in empire space, and there it is essentially a single player game. You need never speak to or in any way interact with another person if you’re going to live in empire.
In low security space, on the borders of empire, socialization is still optional, but interaction with other players will eventually be forced on you, even if you only ‘interact’ with your guns. Though you could try to live as a solo pirate in lowsec, you will eventually encounter other players, and they will try to kill you, or you, them.
In outlaw space (also known as null security, nullsec, or 0.0), interaction is absolutely mandatory for survival. Not only are there roaming gangs looking to kill everything that wanders into their territory, there are also people who camp gates with warp disruption bubbles and kill anyone who comes through. Without active allies to scout for you, fly with you, and warn you about hostile activity, you will quickly find yourself out of ships and out of money.
If you want to try eve again, i would reccommend you leave highsec for good and never look back. Though my alliance doesn’t have a strong AUTZ presence, several of my friends from my old corp are in one that does. I can put you in touch with them if you decide to come back.
February 2, 2011 at 2:24 am
This makes sense, and puts Nil’s comment into perspective also. I’ll definitely give it another look when the rig shows up.